Enka | Department of Alchemy

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Lifted from the unkempt desk of Alexander C. Leavitt, Adjunct Professor, Department of Alchemy, 4-273

9 月 30 日 2008 年

The protean weather patterns of the fair city of Kyoto have as of late been lending a pinch of vigor to my lesser health, allowing a brief escape from the minutiae of my daily interactions and distractions around the office to let my mind wander like a Kamogawanian river koi. I have decided to approach once again the fickle topic of cross-culturalization and its implications in the contemporary Japanese nation-state. As recently as recent can ever be, I dissected the captivating subject of Jero, Pennsylvania-born Jerome White turned enka extraordinaire in the grand land of Japan. Having mastered the subtle strands of traditional enka vocalism, this young lad has captivated the minds of old and young Japanese alike, particularly given his American-hip-hop-ified clothing, dance breaks, and music videos. Realizing that I had only grazed the surface in my previous report, I have now set out to reanalyze the musical (or is it visual?) phenomenon known to all modern Japanese citizens as Jero.

From my previous engagement, I would like to reintroduce some important points, to be thrown momentarily into a paper shredder. Direct from Wikipedia’s article on what Japan calls its traditional music, enka:
Enka lyrics… usually are about the themes of love and loss, loneliness, enduring hardships, and persevering in the face of difficulties, even suicide or death.
Enka suggests a more traditional, idealized, or romanticized aspect of Japanese culture and attitudes…

Reuters reports:
Jero is bridging the generation gap.

And to quote my own phrasal abuse:
Basically, as hiphop was remixed in Japan stylistically and culturally, Jero re-remixed the hiphop genre and culture through enka’s respective genre and culture.

Lately, I have been immersed in Ian Condry’s “Hip Hop Japan,” an anthropological look at the Nipponese hiphop clubs and underground scenes, while being bombarded with criticisms from my fellow Japanese Popular Culture colleagues.

Just this week, much was to be discussed over the matter of authenticity of image, authenticity of sound, authenticity of culture. My own observations tend toward agreement with [name of source not included, as written document is here illegible], supporting culture as based on habits (read: actions) and subculture as grounded in style (read: impressions). Hip-hop, in just terms, falls under both culture and subculture: the former, through the trends in its music and associated dancing, graffiti, etc.; the latter, by ways of an aesthetic that conducts the masses into a homogenous flurry of caps and chains. Japan’s history of music follows a sinuous, beaten path of meticulous appropriation, ever striving for the pure authenticity of that which had been borrowed (ie. early jazz in Japan). The same seems to follow with image, even in modern times: Gucci and Prada and Coach; cut, dyed, and chemicalized hair; high heels and high-style garb of popular (American? Hollywood?), pleasurable visuals. Four weeks walked on the streets of the old capital accumulate to one word: image.

To emphasize, I must restate that enka as an art form, whether it shares any history with Western music (particularly country and/or folk songs), partakes of the same emotional urges that lead to its moving music and lyrics. “Enduring hardships” and so forth mirror the same sentimentality found in either blues (jazz) or hip-hop, a common area of some musical Venn diagram that led Snoop Dogg to cover Kyo Sakamoto’s Ue o muite arukō on his premiere album (read Condry for more).

The amalgamation of hip hop and enka in Jero’s compositions result in a harmonization of genres that pushes both styles beyond their original expectations, one that brings together modern and traditional, one that can no more contradict the statement that “enka suggests a more traditional, idealized, or romanticized aspect of Japanese culture and attitudes” (Wikipedia, above). In the first video I had displayed, a music store owner comments, “Great voice. Fantastic and tender.”

However, and here begins the dissatisfaction with my previous entirely-positive critical eye toward Jero, the amalgamation of hip hop and enka in Jero’s performances result in a general dissonance, both audially and visually. As my astute colleague Christina Xu has pointed out, “One thing I am wondering, though, is what role hip-hop plays exactly in all this. It seems to me that to characterize his music as enka remixed with hip-hop is a bit of a stretch. I listened to Umiyuki… in full, and there’s none of the beats or the flows that you would associate with hip-hop music.” Rewatching the Umiyuki music video, the first five seconds include an introductory phrase of hip-hop, but slowly transition to the electric-guitar-led, conventional enka sounds. As Jero and crew walk down a poorly-lit sidewalk, the pause and subsequent hip-hop break moves clash hard with the Japanese country tunes. As Jero initially begins to sing, his body stays firmly rooted on stage, hands passionately roaming in front of his face in the cliched manner that classical enka singers are known to use. If the music and lyrics were muted, the graffiti-styled lyrics displayed on screen plus Jero’s ghetto getup give the impression of authentic American hip-hop. Sound returned, the lyrics of frozen rain, ocean whitecaps, lost love, and desperate suicide confront the succeeding bridge, during which synchronized dance moves are displayed against a graffiti-covered wall behind a fence reminiscent of a public Bronx basketball court. The strangest transition of song and setting occurs between the first and second sections of the melody (preceding and following the bridge), when during the enka portions Jero stands lit on a stage, removed from the actual “hip-hop locale,” instead now performing enka in its original context. By the end of the song, the music jumps back and forth between the street and theatrical settings, to remind the viewer of the stark contrast between the hip-hop and enka styles, while they are forced together throughout the four-and-a-half minute music video.

Agreeing with Xu, I hold that much of the pleasure behind Jero’s popularity is derived from his foreignness (read: that black American who can sing in Japanese). In interview, although some of the audience comment on his perfected tenor, one woman merely mentions, “I nearly fainted when I first saw him. He’s so cute.” And this comment comes from the young Japanese lady sporting cornrows and a Fubu-style hoodie.

The fascination of image and style in Japan is not a negative aspect of the fashion culture or popular culture of the area by any means. Consequences abound, such as the visual’s penchant to categorize and stereotype. Such an emphasis on the visual merely means that in the battle for authenticity, the subcultural attitudes shine much more brightly against a cultural background. Instead of discovering a new genre or remix, we see Jero as a black mask over a yellow face. In the first photo in the set above, Jero’s profile gives the appearance of an ordinary album cover (one that may or may not typify enka albums); however, the diamond earring stands out as a beacon of the hipo-hop subculture awaiting any listener. In the second photo, we see Jero in his hip-hop-styled attire, but his background dancers were hats, clothes, and a crewcut that disguise the bodies underneath, as if their Japanesenes must be repressed to achieve the authentic American rap style. Finally, in the third picture, more than the microphone or headphones shine a thick ring, watch, and chain — the bling to which younger fans uninterested in the enka will be drawn. Jero certainly bridges the generation gap, but it seems that he sits between the generations, stuck among two conflicting genres, instead of drawing the two eras together.

I want to retract my previous statement: “Basically, as hiphop was remixed in Japan stylistically and culturally, Jero re-remixed the hiphop genre and culture through enka’s respective genre and culture.” Remix as it is known contemporarily cannot be used to describe the Jero phenomenon. Instead, Jero’s boon of popularity is caused by an attempt to remix two cultures, the enka musical culture and the hip-hop musical culture, but one that results in the layering over of the style-based hip-hop subculture on the enka musical culture. It is a masque of masks that imitates an amalgamation of genres but one that in reality echos facial make-up or the wrapping of a gift.

Please expect to see more writings soon; I promise I’m working on composing my ideas into solid forms. Next up, probably more on Japanese visual culture in the analysis of Engrish, quotidian philosophies, and the massage of the message. Also, Japanese toilets.

NOTICE: It seems that all of the videos have been taken down from YouTube… Sorry for the inconvenience. Check out my other Jero posts here and here

I should be writing about the 27 Bits blog project (or reading for that matter), but I had to compose this article tonight out of a pure buzz for 1) blogging and 2) magnificent content.

If you know anything about the history of Japanese animation, it should be that anyone can easily trace its origins back to the United States and Walt Disney. Osamu Tezuka (most famous for Astro Boy) was inspired by Disney’s work, but of course moved well beyond the scope of serious content that the Disney Corp. would ever attempt to consider. The ironic thing about contemporary broadcast American animation (the stuff on Cartoon Network targeted at the ordinary youth demographic) is, of course, the influence of Japanese animation (see, for example, the art style of Teen Titans).

But I don’t want to blabber on about anime, even if I can be a real geek about it. That’s for later (aka. YouTomb blog post I’ve been meaning to compose for a while). What I do want to introduce, though, is a strange yet fascinating instance of secondary cross culturalization, but one that has to do with music.

This evening in my weekly Japanese class, 雨水先生, before we started our lesson, wrote on the board a popular singer’s name, ジェロ, and mentioned something about J-Pop, all of which went for the most part over my head. The name, though, transliterates to Jero. I assumed, after a syllabic translation, that she had been talking about J-Lo. 日本語-fail.

Actually, Jero, the pseudonym for Jerome White, of Pittsburg, PA, is a black American kid, now five years out of college, who sings enka. Yes, 演歌, the twentieth century Japanese music genre. But not regular enka, oh no. Enka, remixed with hiphop.

Why is this cool? Well, let me quote from Wikipedia for a terse explanation on what enka is: “Modern enka (演歌 — from 演 en performance, entertainment, and 歌 ka song) came into being in the postwar years of the Shōwa period. It was the first style to synthesize the Japanese pentatonic scale with Western harmonies. Enka lyrics, as in Portuguese Fado, usually are about the themes of love and loss, loneliness, enduring hardships, and persevering in the face of difficulties, even suicide or death. Enka suggests a more traditional, idealized, or romanticized aspect of Japanese culture and attitudes, comparable to American country and western music.” Essentially, enka is already a blend of multiple genres of remix: Performance and song. Modern/postwar and traditional. Japanese scale and Western harmony. Nippon country culture and American country music. I find the last one the most unusual, because the country melodies sound particularly corny.

Who’d have thought that you could remix this music any more? Well, apparently Jero, and I now brand him as officially badass.

The above video is a profile of Jero and how he got into enka as a child. Just the fact that he learned from his grandmother makes him awesome. And traditional. Traditionally awesome. The Japanese are raving about this guy, too. One interviewee says, “He sings enka, but he looks like a hiphop guy.” This is kind of important, since in Japan physical looks do carry some social weight. I’m sure that a lot of press he receives revolves solely around the fact that he’s an African American who can speak fluent Japanese. But with hiphop rising in popularity, the authenticity of his image in a society foreign to something so culturally American compels Japanese viewers, especially younger ones, to pay more attention.

Here’s another video profile, this time from Reuteurs. The phrase I pulled from the audio is “bridging the generation gap.” Of course, Reuters is directly referencing the multiple issues that the older generation in Japan has had with the younger demographic over the years. However, the phrase also suggests the remix culture that seems to be ever more associated with the Millennial generation. The fact that remix is acting as a bridging agent is beneficial for distinctly traditional societies ordinarily hostile to change. The title of the video also highlights an unexpected element in the enka-hiphop relationship: the “blues” allusion. Blues, in American society, refers to a specific genre of the jazz movement. Plugging blues into YouTube’s search bar yields a B.B. King video heavy on the improvisational nature of American jazz.

Let’s take a quick look at the jam session. First, the audience’s cheers beat down the guitar in the first few seconds of the video; important, because jazz is “social music”, according to Miles Davis. Though, although the audience participates, the spotlight remains affixed to King and his guitar. Second, watch King’s face. Emotional. A bit self-aware. Pretty funny too. The musical performance becomes theatrical in its presentation. Third, if you listen closely, you’ll notice that he reuses melody patterns to remix on the third or fourth repetition — a common and yet necessary component of jazz. Blues, then, is communal, dramatic, and blended.

Above is a generic enka song that I found, sung by Itsuki Hiroshi. Compared with B.B. King’s video, Itsuki’s song shares a number of ingredients though the music remains different. The singer of enka appears to depict him/herself more emotionally even than the blues’ singer. Antithetically, enka seems to focus more on the individual performer than the communal experience, though this reflects the nature of personal storytelling present in common American country music. The spotlight here also stays with the performer. Enka might even be associated with the theatrical monologue: one performer, alone, telling the story from his/her perspective. This again applies to blues, without or with a vocalist such as Bessie Smith. The remixed measures in the enka melodies are subtle, yet the meld between traditional, archaic instrumentation (the koto on the right side of the camera view at the start of the clip) and sung/played notes stands out easily.

This is the final Jero-related video that I’ll reference, but I wanted to throw up a sample of one of his music videos to analyze its aesthetic qualities. The clash between antiquated instrument (shamisen) and modern hiphop moves (yet these are also mashed together with fluid movements which I would refer to as strangely relevant to Japanese seasonal culture and, here in the video clip, the lyrics). Jero’s vocals I find utterly eerie, both in their texture and the fact that they’re too indistinguishable from an ordinary enka singer’s tonality. The video itself should even be viewed as a new style of remix. American hiphop music videos focus on the performer and assistant dancers, yet Jero’s video incorporates the addition of the acoustic instruments, borrowed from pre-hiphop visual styles. I like the more modern instrumentation of this video, because Jero strives for similar sounds those he updates to electric guitar and synth keyboard.

Jero’s remix of the hiphop and enka genres gives birth to nothing seen like this before in Japan, or around the world using these styles. I mentioned before the term secondary cross culturalization which, applied to Jero, relates to the adoption in Japan of American hiphop and Jero’s subsequent return to traditional enka. Basically, as hiphop was remixed in Japan stylistically and culturally, Jero re-remixed the hiphop genre and culture through enka’s respective genre and culture. I hope that people will look at Jero’s work with a critical eye, because it’s interesting to discover what camouflaged nuances you can discover by looking at your own culture through a different variety of window.

Tag Archives: enka

Revisiting Jero: Authenticity, Subculture, and the Japanese Visual