Memes and Asian pop music

When Americans hear pop music from other countries, the tendency is to immediately assume that they are some kind of bad rip-off of the American originals. Now, barring the fact that often enough the originals are uninteresting pieces of fluff themselves, the argument does have at least some merit. In Asia, it seems like every major country has gone through a temporary period directly imitating Western culture before settling on a distinct identity of its own.

Part of that identity-building comes at the interface of ancient cultures and customs versus what is cool and modern. For many in the older generations, this is less of an interface and more of an insurmountable impasse, but for many of those growing up and making music today, there is a strong desire to retain cultural identity while keeping one’s hipness. The examples that will soon follow I think demonstrate that this goal is indeed achievable.

However, as the title above suggests, there is another benefit to marrying longstanding cultural memes, those things that make a culture special, with modern pop music sensibilities: the depth and beauty of the older form often enriches the vocabulary of the music. When the classical composer Wagner wanted to lend intricacy and richness to his famous Ring opera cycle, he created a huge repository of leitmotifs, an immense vocabulary of short melodies, tunes, and harmonies based on characters, emotions, actions, etc. that might reappear throughout the work. For those who understood the new language he had created, an entirely new level of comprehension and appreciation could be reached. A similar effect is achieved by borrowing the vocabulary of one’s cultural past, with the added benefit of having an audience who more-or-less has that vocabulary ingrained (learning Wagner’s leitmotifs is no small feat).

I don’t think I can explain much further without an example, so I’d like to begin with the Yoshida Brothers, two siblings from Japan who are masters of tsugaru shamisen.

These guys are cool. Really cool, as evidenced by the hordes of screaming Japanese girls that regularly attend their concerts. The pop-rock motif here is nothing new, as there are plenty of American bands with cocky lead guitarists, but the language of tsugaru gives the song a definite Japanese feel. By borrowing from that vast language (which works well in this context because of its flashy and improvisatory nature) the song itself has cultural identity. The pop style makes it accessible across cultures, but the percussive strumming of the two shamisen allows the Japanese to mark this song as their own.

This song by Punjabi MC does the same thing. It’s irresistibly dance-able and would be great for a club anywhere in the world. Heck, the guy calls himself Punjabi MC, so he clearly has a taste for hip-hop sensibilities; indeed, he has even collaborated quite successfully with rapper Jay-Z. Nonetheless, when you hear the dhol (Indian percussion) and tumbi (Indian string instrument) setting the rhythm, you immediately think bhangra. He has taken native sounds from India, a culture that historically loves its percussive and complex rhythms (and dancing!) and put them in a place that absolutely makes sense: the club/dancehall.

Now, these two examples are a little superficial, invoking the aural qualities of the culture but not much else. The following example goes one step further:

Wang Lee Hom, a popular Chinese singer, performs this song, which seems peculiarly self-aware of its role as a fusion piece. He watches a video of Chinese traditional opera on his little hand-held music player, which then magically moves to a real stage. It’s a little gimmicky, but it’s also compelling, seemingly saying, “I am trying to connect these beautiful sound and images of my cultural past into the music I am making now.” He pays homage to the old opera style right in the middle of the song, giving a group of opera musicians an opportunity to strut their stuff while all his beats drop away. Furthermore, the opera bit that unfolds in the music video creates a sense of something very sweet and precious. Anybody who watches Chinese operas knows how many of the plots are sappy love stories…in that regard, R&B seems to follow in those footsteps without missing a beat. Short of all that, it’s also just damn catchy.

Of course, I have to take a brief look at the music of my own people, the Vietnamese. The following two clips are different approaches to the same goal of fusing traditional ca tru (also called hat a dao) with modern pop-style mixing:

They both keep a minimalistic sound, just like the traditional source material. The inflections and lyrics point to something archaic and mystical. My preference is for the second one, written by talented young composer Nhat Trung and sung by Ngoc Ha, one of my favorite vocalists. My reasoning is that it sounds less like traditional music simply put to a beat (which the first suffers from slightly) and more like a unified song that hearkens back to the genre. Nonetheless, the use of imagery and melodic contours in both songs is quite compelling and uniquely Vietnamese.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that for now, which is probably more than anybody will read, but at least I’m satisfied. Good night!

Saturday, March 17th, 2007 : Music : No Comments

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