CJS Noon Lecture Series. "Antinuclear Protest Music in Post-3.11 Japan: Communication Methods in Cyberspace, Recordings, Festivals, and Demonstrations"

Abstract:

In a nation whose leaders remain pronuclear despite an antinuclear Japanese public, musicians have expressed their antinuclear views in four distinct but interacting social spaces—cyberspace, recordings, festivals, and demonstrations. Each space entails varying risks, attracting different classes of performers using contrasting communication techniques. For each space, I will outline the constraints experienced and the communication methods used. Anonymity makes cyberspace fertile ground for song remakes, mash-ups, and invented characters. Due to self-censorship, commercial recordings rely on allegories, metaphors, and metonyms. In concerts, concession items, posters, and the setting itself can communicate messages. Music in street protests have evolved into a participatory form that engages the protesters. I propose a typology of intertextuality in protest songs and show that different types work best in certain spaces.

Speaker:

Noriko Manabe is an Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University, teaching courses in ethnomusicology and popular music. Her monograph, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Music of the Antinuclear Movement in Post-Fukushima Japan” is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She has published articles on Japanese hip-hop, the mobile internet, and Cuban music and has ongoing projects in Japanese children’s songs and Japanese club scenes.