The Anonimity of Culture

[lincsyokel2]

Heres a concept and revelation id like to share with you.

I worked in Tokyo for three year teaching english. When I was there i heard a lot of japanese pop music.

What I realised was that you cant hear the words to a lot of modern western pop music anyway, and in fact in a lot of cases its irrelevant, its the sound, the musicality, that matters.

To demonstrate this, heres a japanese pop song, called 'Memories' (actually its called 'Memo wa', ie 'My memories', but arguing the finer points of translation isnt worth the effort). The point here is that its still a pleasant pop song and a watchable video even though you cant understand the words (unless you speak japanese). As such, i now listen to pop music from all over the world, it s all good. The Koreans are pretty slick at it.  It doesnt matter one jot that you dont know what the words are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBP_NHK3Mo

On a  side note............
The band is a girl group called Morning Musume ('The Morning Daughters'),  the japanes equivalent to Girls Aloud. (Yes, i know the name doesnt make sense, nothing does when translated from Japanese).  This band was assembled from a competition, and that competition spawned  all the other pop band programs around today, such as 'X Factor' and 'Pop Idol'. MM are still going, however, and have become one of the top selling bands in Japan, they regularly fill 60,000 seat stadiums with there concerts, and there face is EVERYWHERE on merchandise.

So tell, me do you agree with my proposition?

[lincsyokel2]

[Melbourne12]

It's an interesting proposition, but I have to admit that it immediately made me uncomfortable.  Is my culture so closely aligned with every other culture?  I don't think so.

I watched and listened to a little of the video (I'm afraid that I have a very low tolerance for popular music), but it's clear that it's highly derivative from european ballads and something like hip hop, just with a faintly Japanese flavour.
 
So I think that what you've identified is the globalisation of culture rather than an anonymity or sameness.  I can imagine that rock bands the world over sound somewhat the same.  You can probably identify a similar fusion in popular "chocolate box" art.  It's certainly true that Hollywood and recently Bollywood churn out formulaic movies with global appeal.

[Digeroo]

Now I know why I do not understand hip hop it is in Japanese. ;D

Not my taste but classical music sounds the same in any language. ;D

[Melbourne12]

...
Not my taste but classical music sounds the same in any language. ;D

Even that isn't quite as simple.  Discounting folk music, there are classical musical traditions such as Gamelan (and others) in Indonesia, and Carnatic and other forms in India.

And I see (I had to look this up!) that Japanese courtly music is called Gagaku, although whether it's still widely performed I don't know.

[Unwashed]

Here's some more.

I don't think they target the adverts before these videos very well - exactly how many pre-pubescent girls buy Jeep 4x4s?