rock intro to the topic:
Yellow Magic Orchestra & Japan (the band of David Sylvian)
How The Far East Once Influenced The Far West
It was probably with the travels of Marco Polo when the Far East and the
Far West for the first time better got to know each other culturally. However,
if you explore art and popular culture more in details from then till now, you
will notice that, throughout all this time, the West has had a far more
cultural impact on the East. Not only has it colonized over the long centuries,
but also has dominated in the exchange of cultural goods. The Practical West
took only rice, pasta, paper, gunpowder and few more necessities for the most frequent
consuming, and sent to the other side everything more refined, more spiritual
and immaterial in culture. Until today, you can see that far-eastern people
look to the West as something rich and advanced, trying to imitate and take
these customs much more often and in much more detailed way than the
materialist West looks at, or even has time to look at, the spiritual East. Far-Eastern
parents even today more often give their children Western names than the other
way round. Actually, I can not remember any of the reciprocal examples. Perhaps
you have not heard of it, but for example in South Korea today Christian
religions make majority of believers in the country, while in any country of
the materialist West it is quite unbelievable to expect it for Buddhism. So it
is in taking musical influences. Today's popular music of China, Japan and
Korea is called by the people themselves, what else then C-Pop, J-Pop and
K-pop. Nevertheless, in the history of classical music, there were some examples
of a successful cultural transfer from East to West. You've probably heard of
several operas and symphonies with a Far-eastern place of action like Madame
Butterfly, but the most obvious composing example is the other Puccini's opera,
the Turandot. Not only is it wholly inspired by the Far East, but also by the
aria "Nessun dorma", one of the most famous in the entire operatic
repertoire of the West, is actually a composition with a distinctly Chinese
folk influence. Strangely enough, Giacomo Puccini never visited China, but with
his friend, who came back from China after the Boxer uprising, he only listened
to a collection of Chinese folk songs and chose the motives for his opera. The
rest is history.
While the Far East takes over the culture and music of the West much
more seriously and more pedantic, when the West borrows music from the East,
this is actually the most common work of some frivolous carnival entertainment.
The most obvious example is Carl Douglas with his unforgettable song "Kung
Fu Fighting", which was made in the mid 70's at the time of the greatest
mania of the western audience for Hong Kong martial arts movies and
unfortunately for too early deceased kung fu master, the Chinese from America
called Bruce Lee. (The song probably would never have become such a global hit
as it was at that time, at the right moment.) The very creation of that song
speaks for itself. Jamaican Douglas came to a London studio, with a producer of
Indian origin to record another song, but something was needed to record for
the B-side. The producer did not have anything prepared so Douglas had suggested
a song on which the producer worked more for fun, added a few "huh",
"hah" sighs at the end of each verse and recorded with Douglas that
parody in the last 10 minutes of studio recording. So the hit "Kung Fu
Fighting" emerged, and today no one ever remembers the "main"
songs for which Douglas came to the studio.
After Carl Douglas, it took several years for a new wave of far-eastern
exotica to overwhelm world pop music in the early '80s with new one-hit
wonders.
The Vapors featured with a pranking song "Turning Japanese",
whose intro to the song imitates far-eastern folklore and the song has achieved
some success in Japan itself.
Scottish singer Mary Sandeman, known as Aneka, has released the hit
"Japanese Boy", which uses Chinese(!) and not Japanese pentatonic
melodies, moreover in the video, she is dressed in clothes that in the Far East
are used for posthumous cremation. The song has made great success everywhere,
except in Japan where the song "Japanese Boy" sounded to the Japanese,
of course too much Chinese.
It was then Lee Marrow. (In
fact, Italian Francesco Bontempi with an artistic name just perfect for
spaghetti westerns.) If you don't know, Sergio Corbucci was then called Stan
Corbett, and Mario Girotti is still known as Terence Hill. Only Sergio Leone
has always been Sergio Leone. This Lee Marrow released a disco hit
"Shanghai". (However, even after the italo-disco era, Bontempi was
once again on the world top charts, in the new dance genre of the 1990s, then
as a duo Corona, with the song "Rhythm Of The Night," sung by
Brazilian Olga Souza. So the Italian DJ was at least a two-hit wonder.
There were also few artistically more ambitious bands like German
Alphaville with the song Big In Japan. However, Alphaville and other similar
bands used the far-eastern exotica in music as a metaphor for something else.
So the song Big In Japan talks about two Berlin drug addicts dreaming of getting
rid of addictions and all the vices that go along with it and finally achieve
something big in life. That is why these musicians do not even know the
difference between Japanese and Chinese. It's just important that it sounds
like a good “Far East”.
Nevertheless, none of the Western pop musicians entered into the far-eastern
music so seriously and literally as David Sylvian and his band Japan. On its
latest, most commercially successful and also most ambitious album, "Tin
Drum", the band Japan has entered very thoroughly into the Chinese
folklore in songs such as instrumental “Canton” and “Visions of China”.
The Tin Drum title itself is not a reference to the famous Guenther Grass's
novel about Germany in the twentieth century, but it is about China of the
twentieth century, or more precisely the boy from the Canton region who bangs
his drum in the song Cantonese Boy.
Especially the music video for the song "Visions of China"
from that 1981 album is a school example of the catalog of cultural stereotypes
that we Westerners have about this great far-eastern country. I recommend you
to look at it, there are masses, political uniformity and even uniformity of
clothing, Mao's cult, fighting and playing of two groups of dragons and two
kung fu fighters, the imitation of traditional far-eastern instruments and
pentatonics, and probably something else that I haven't noticed.
Before that wave of far-eastern
exotic music in the early 80s, one wave had occurred in the opposite direction
that had a significant impact on it. In 1978, Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro
Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto started playing in Japan as an electro pop band
the Yellow Magic Orchestra. As experienced and successful musicians in Japan,
they sought the kind of music they could come across on a world music scene,
music in which the Japanese language itself would not be a limit to reaching
the audience. Thus, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, experimenting with electronic
sounds in pop music, and parodying the already mentioned Western stereotypes of
the Far East, hence themselves, became innovators of the entire electronic,
computer-programmed music and electro-pop of 80-es, much more than well-known
Kraftwerk before them.
In the innovative use of synthesizers, first samplers, rhythm machines
and other computer equipment, they were helped by the fact that at the time
personal computers became cheaper and more accessible. Which means that old
versions of the personal computers and especially gaming consoles could
abundantly serve creative artists to create music of a new sound, based on video
game electronics. In that way, they became the precursors to the development of
new genres of electronic music, of which dance, house, hip-hop and rap are the
most common knowledge. In the short period from 1978 to 1983, with its 8 albums
of electronically programmed music, with a few texts mostly of futuristic style
and in English, they have achieved success in the world so much that they have
been practically in service for years, as demonstration examples of the latest
possibilities of using the new instruments of the Japanese electronics
industry.
So YMO became the first musicians to use the Roland TR-808's drum
machine on their album as soon as it came out on the market. This is an
electronic instrument model that is still used in professional recording and is
used for studio recording of the greatest number of international electro-pop
hits, more than any other drum machine after it.
To their popularity in the younger generation has undoubtedly
contributed the fact of the return effect, that their looped and sampled music
was then often used in the early 80's video games. Besides, their music is
often used in popular Japanese anime films, about what I will write a little
more in my next text.
After that, all three of
them: Hosono, Takahashi and Sakamoto, the last as the most successful among
them, turned to their solo careers, with an occasional reunions. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the Far East Lover David Alan Batt, better known as
David Sylvian, worked in his later solo career with Ryuichi Sakamoto from YMO
on numerous songs and also on the well-known, award-winning song Forbidden
Colors, a theme from Nagisa Oshima movie "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”
After listening to their innovative, electronic music from the late 70s
and early 1980s, you will see that the Yellow Magic Orchestra is not a band of
typical Japanese pop folk music, but rather globally oriented to the world
audience. They use a lot of names and lyrics of songs in the languages of great
Western cultures; English, German and French, but in the same time YMO know
well and use in its music the influences from other far-eastern cultures, such
as Korea and even Indonesia.
So while for a British David Sylvian, all that Japanese and Chinese looks
very interesting, attractive and original, because of cultural exoticism, to
someone else who is Japanese or Chinese throughout all his life (and let's
suppose he is widely educated and globally oriented) it is somewhat boring
constantly to confirm his "japanesity" or "chinesity". For
someone like Ryuichi Sakamoto it is understood even before he starts to deal
with music.
a) Atari
b) Fuji
c) Roland CorporationYou can also add your comments and suggestions at:
Igor Suljagić
(@IgorSuljagic) | Twitter
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