America's Sonic Weapon redux

Here we go again. Jazz Diplomacy, this time aimed at the Middle East. Appears we'll be using a lot of "soft power" tactics in the next four years.

Here's a link to this widely distributed AP story from the CBS News site.

Here's a video version from Reuters (I could only find the Arabic version).

Constantine Dima jazz
Uploaded by Zouaghi25. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Actually, Dimajazz looks like a good time.
Here's a clip of Minnesota blues man, Bernard Allison (one of the beneficiaries of the State Department program).

Dear Fu-Fu

Interesting thing about the most recent Deerhoof album, Offend Maggie: Satomi sings a lot of it in Japanese. We saw this a little bit on Green Cosmos (originally intended for a Japanese audience) but this is the first time it's been fully integrated into the act. Maybe it's just for this album--Offend Maggie's reincarnation theme is all about blurred and shifting identities and the Japanese-English movement helps to produce that effect. But I find it also draws attention to cross-language puns (the so-called soramimi). I hadn't noticed, for example, the band's name itself is a near homonym in Japanese pronunciation for "Dear Fu-fu"--Dear Husband and Wife. Now that Greg and Satomi are married this actually takes on some significance. Also interesting--they've been touring with Experimental Dental School (another US/Japan Dear Fu-fu).

Why is this funny?

Jumping to the top of the popurls list is this clip from SNL, featuring a "Japanese" version of the Office. I'm serious. Why is this funny? Anyone the least bit familiar with Japanese TV knows that the workplace, complete with buffoonish boss, is in fact a stock comedic context. So the whole set-up of the gag, that it would be "funny" for The Office to be set in Japan, is wrong. Is it funny that everyone is speaking intelligible (and very bad) Japanese? Would it be as funny if everyone were speaking French poorly? Or is this all an Albert Brooks-like exercise in making the audience squeam? I honestly don't get it. [And don't get me started on the "wacky" Japanese commercial parody.]

Radiolab on Songs that Cross Borders

I thought I should mention a couple of segments from Radiolab's most recent podcast. One on the popularity of American country music in Thailand and Zimbabwe (one key, it seems, is the simulation of "crying" by both voice and instrument (steel guitar). The other on the sad story of Afghan pop legend, Ahmad Zahir (the "Afghan Elvis"). The first speaks to the universality of some musics' effect on us. The second to the intertextual/intercultural nature of pop music.

SUPER ZIZEK

I don't even know what this is. But the reference is no accident. Slavoj is IT.
[UPDATE: What it is is pretty damn good.]

Ethiopian Idol

One of my students referenced Ethiopian Idol in a recent paper about global TV and I've been hooked since. Unlike most of the Idol versions around the world, the performers on the Ethiopian version channel local pop songs and singing styles. And aside from tonal issues I have no clue what makes for a satisfactory vocal performance, which is what makes it interesting, I think. The YouTube channel doesn't provide English translations so I don't know what the judges are saying. Apparently, some of the judgments are rather harsh from an Ethiopian cultural perspective but they are wrapped in a calm restrained tone (unlike Simon Cowell's). Reading the comments also provides some insight into local politics (local ethnic conflicts, cultural imperialism, etc).

Japrocksampler

I'd like to state at the outset that I find Julian Cope's Japrocksampler to be an extraordinarily useful reference to a short but previously neglected era in Japanese popular music--the hard rock/psych period of the early 1970s. It provides a context for understanding the interconnections between the bands of the period and their predecessors in both the "Group Sounds" and avant garde electronica movements. Any book that spends so much time trying to unpack the work of J.A. Caesar deserves a medal.

But

Cope's supreme confidence in his critical opinion (and he does have a good ear, even if I'm not as fond of the Black Sabbathisms of the Flower Travellin' Band or the druggy drones of Far Out as he is) turns to ignorant arrogance in respect to Japanese culture and language. Here's a hint, in the mandatory preface indicating how an author will handle the order of Japanese names:

Japanese names note: During the past decade, the Japanese have been returning to their old tradition of placing surnames first and given names last. And so, in the interests of cultural correctness, it would have been preferable for this Japrocksample to have followed a similar path. For the purposes of this book, however, Julian Cope has considered that such a line would not be possible because of Yoko Ono's role in the storyline; her fame is far too great, and her place in rock'n'roll myth far too established to attempt to foist the name Ono Yoko on the public at this late stage.

The man has no idea what he's talking about, yet manages to assert a picture not just of expertise but of complex contextual understanding (during the past decade indeed...rather it's standard surname first in Japan and variable in English depending on one's projection of Westernization). Not that he would necessarily know a surname when he saw one (the rockabilly star, Kosaka Kazura (sic, it's actually Kazuya), gets indexed under Kazura). He also defies the standards of romanization, insisting on inserting "t"s where they don't belong (Utchida and Murahatchibu). Add a handful of silly errors (he misspells Hibiya and Hakone and places the protest movement at Haneda instead of Narita Airport) and it becomes clear that Cope thought he could just plow through with some books about the history of Japan, a translator for lyrics, and no real expert Japanese oversight. (He does mention Alan Cummings in the acknowledgements section. I trust Cummings didn't read the full draft).
Which brings me to my real contention. The era that Cope describes does have a standing body of critical discussion in Japanese. Why he couldn't have reached out to some of the real experts in this area for some help in this project is a mystery to me. (By the way, I don't mean myself. I used to think Les Rallizes Denudes's name in Japanese was the "Naked Larries.") I'm happy to see that he is, wikipedia-style, opening up his web-based reference area to contributions. I just wish some knowledgeable folks from Japan would get involved...