This is a long overdue post, but here it does offer a lot in the themes I've been presenting about music, Japanese society, and all of that. My musically-knowledgeable former Folk Song-member of a friend told me about a live show at a venue in the small coastal area of Shioya, very close to the closest station to my residence, Tarumi. The venue caters to experimental, rare kinds of music, and he said it certainly is an experience that not many Japanese know about. And so it was natural to go and see it.
I was surprised at the quaintness and seaside beauty of the area when I got off the train. Apparently there's a lot to be found in Shioya, as there was a tourist map in the station detailing different paths up through the neighborhoods. When my friend arrived to the station he started telling me about how interesting the area was. According to a friend of his who lives there, it's very popular with gay men, featuring a gay beach where the fishermen will tell you they're 'fishing for men'. The "quaintness" of the area certainly could translate to "cuteness" which would be an obvious draw to gays (sorry if I'm stereotyping). After the initial "If gays like this place what does that say about my tastes?" self-questioning that any slightly homophobic American would question, I settled into the surrounding scenery which featured a lot of foreign architecture amongst traditional Japanese-style buildings. Focusing my eyes on a European-styled house that sat across the train tracks, I soon found that was the venue. 
Outside on the porch of the house (vantage point in the photo above) we took a smoke break before going inside. The musicians performing were Austrian, and I wasn't completely sure at the time what kind of music they did, but it turned out to be ambient. Ambient is not a genre I know too much about or care to listen to, but the experience of seeing it live and in Japan was rewarding on different levels.
I won't go into too much detail on the performance of the performers as they weren't Japanese. Mainly, it was interesting to see how people listened to the music. Many of the listeners, including my friend, sat with their heads hanging down, cross-legged on the floor. As ambient attempts to create an effective mood or sense of place, the people listening in this manner probably had a better grasp on how to listen to ambient music than the other listeners who would watch the artists performing (I was among these listeners a lot of the time) the various sounds that added to the atmosphere of the music. There were two Japanese artists that collaborated with the Austrian group during the show, one of them a Japanese woman with a Yoko Ono vibe making bizarre vocalizations, the other a young man who uses old Gameboys to produce sounds. Other listeners would sit there, quietly trying to eat the Udon noodles that were being served at the bar of the venue.
At the end of the night it was clear that places and events like this are what make up real underground culture in Japan. By real, I mean that it's completely under the radar of the normal Japanese person. It doesn't necessarily denote any more value as being underground, but serves as a distinction between superficial underground and counter-culture in Japan. As I will explain later, superficial counter-culture often flows in the same stream as mainstream society; a live show I went to the other night as King's Cross, the venue used for Folk Song performances, featured thrash metal music, which drew a much tamer crowd than a show of that genre would in the United States. Ambient music, however, is a completely foreign concept to a lot of Japanese, and judging from the few people (about fifteen or so, not a huge crowd for an internationally touring Austrian ambient group, but then again what kind of a crowd is normal for an Austrian ambient group?) that did show up for the show in Shioya, it doesn't serve as a level of underground or counter-culture that's been popularized enough through media to be palatable to the Japanese mainstream. An interesting night and certainly an addition to my studies of music and culture in Japanese society.
No comments:
Post a Comment