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Music and Words: Producing Popular Songs in Modern Japan, 1887-1952
Hardcover
Series: New Studies in Modern Japan
Japanese HistoryPop/RockWorld Music
ISBN13: 9781498550352
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: Oct 15 2018
Pages: 230
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Composer Nakayama Shimpei (1887-1952) wrote more than 300 popular songs in his lifetime. Most are still well known and recorded regularly. An entrepreneur, he found ways to create popular songs that powered Japan's nascent recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s. An artist, his combination of Japanese and Western musical styles and tropes appealed to Japanese sentiments in a way that not only reflected the historical and social context, but anticipated and explained those historical changes to his listeners.
The book concludes that Nakayama's uncanny ability to make listening to Western music a comfortable experience for Japanese by adding elements from Japanese musical styles allowed him to be successful financially, and to hold respect within the artistic community as well. His skill in creating songs that spoke to large groups of people, successfully marketing those songs through an understanding of how music would sound on record, and careful communication with his audiences to understand their interests and lives made him the most popular composer of his time, and a powerful asset for Japan Victor, Inc., his record company. The ultimate goal of the book is to show how popular songs can be utilized as primary sources to help deepen our understanding of historical contexts.
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