Student: Rachel Aragaki
Graduation date: May 2019
Type: Area of Interest (double major)
Date approved: December 2016
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Summary
As the field of environmental studies develops, it has grown to encompass various disciplines and contexts, including musicology. However, due to their extreme specificity, some intersections between musicology and environmental studies have been left behind. Modern scholars suggest, “It cannot be denied that East Asia has been an almost forgotten area in the academic study of the popular music of the English language sphere” (Shin et al 2013). Although Shin et al focus their discussion on the study of popular music, evidence of this claim is observable elsewhere. In the extensive Zotero library of 1440 items for the group “Ecomusicology,” there were only 38 viewable documents tagged “Asia”—a startlingly low proportion given Asia’s enormous geographical space, population, and engagement with Western societies. Given these observations, it seems that there is a lot of work to do with ecomusicology in Asia. Due to its rapid post-war development and modernization, I will be focusing primarily on East Asia. Ecomusicology, as defined by Aaron S. Allen, is not “ecological musicology,” but rather “ecocritical musicology,” which “imagine[s] and portray[s] human–environment relationships variously from scholarly, political, and/or activist viewpoint” (2011). In summary, I hope to use the next few years to examine relationships between humans and their environments situated in East Asian musical media contexts.
Different types of sound move in different ways and with different motivations. Music traditions that were formerly exclusive to small, local villages far from urban centers have made their way into mainstream media via radio, television, and the internet. Chinese scholars have recently been discussing what they have dubbed “original ecology folksongs,” which hail from rural montane settlements. Original ecology folksongs suddenly became valuable in Chinese culture when UNESCO’s “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” program applauded China’s entries in all three rounds (Rees 2016). Although scholars disagree on the authenticity of music like the original ecology folksongs once they have been removed from their original geographic and cultural context, folk music traditions that were stifled by the Westernization of Chinese culture in the late twentieth century are becoming popular across the nation because of media coverage.
With a more economic focus, the commercial music industries in East Asian countries also spread cultural norms and ideas. The genre of “Asia pop” (with subdivisions such as J-pop and K-pop, for Japan and Korea, respectively) took off in the 1990s, and artists quickly transcended national boundaries to achieve popularity both across East Asia and in the western hemisphere. Performers have even situated their careers and their music in the industries of other countries, which has sparked a lot of discourse around cultural exchange across historically unfriendly borders (Shin 2009).
Soundtracks for video games and music are also heavily involved in media and the dissemination of pop culture. Japan, a global hotspot for video game production, has turned out nature-focused games such as Capcom’s Okami, which features several hours of original soundtrack inspired by Eastern music traditions to accompany a story that highlights nature-based spirituality and rewilding. Joe Hisaishi’s film soundtracks also evoke certain emotions and atmospheres for some of Hayao Miyazaki’s environmentally-focused animated films, which have found popularity and acclaim both in Japan and internationally (IMDb 2016). Because of the global reach that movies and video games have, students have been inspired to examine the ways that their soundtracks may perpetuate cultural stereotypes via appropriation of musical traditions (Park 2015) or convey narrative and emotion (Mouraviev 2015).
It is important to acknowledge that while technological developments in media have vastly improved the exposure of ideas to larger audiences, there are still many demographics based on age, economic status, culture, and geographic location that are underrepresented in mass media. Radio, television, and the internet will engage different groups of people in different places, and each of those environments come with their own cultural and ecological contexts. Although it occurs within a time and space, music can create its own sense of place and even become a place itself in which action, emotion, and thought can occur (Watkins 2011). This further complicates the relationships between people, music, and place. Examining the relationships between environment as place and music as a cultural phenomenon can establish a foundation for future research in the burgeoning field of ecomusicology.
Works Cited
Allen, Aaron S. “Ecomusicology: Ecocriticism and Musicology.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (August 2011): 391–94. doi:10.1525/jams.2011.64.2.391
“Hayao Miyazaki: Awards, Nominations, and Wins.” IMDb. Accessed November 11, 2016. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/awards
Rees, Helen. “Environmental Crisis, Culture Loss, and a New Musical Aesthetic: China’s ‘Original Ecology Folksongs’ In Theory and Practice.” Ethnomusicology 60, no. 1 (2016): 53. doi:10.5406/ethnomusicology.60.1.0053
Mouraviev, Ivan. “The Synchretic Network: Exploring Relationships between Music, Narrative, and Emotion in the Video Game Journey,” 2015
Park, Hyeonjin. “Melodies of Distant Realms: World Music in the Context of Video Games,” 2015. https://ida.mtholyoke.edu/xmlui/handle/10166/3680
Shin, Hyunjoon. “Reconsidering Transnational Cultural Flows of Popular Music in East Asia: Transbordering Musicians in Japan and Korea Searching for ‘Asia.’” Korean Studies 33, no. 1 (2009): 101–23
Shin, Hyunjoon, Yoshitaka Mōri, and Tunghung Ho. “Introduction: Special Issue – East Asian Popular Music and Its (dis)contents.” Popular Music 32, no. 01 (January 2013): 1–5. doi:10.1017/S0261143012000505
Watkins, Holly. “Musical Ecologies of Place and Placelessness.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (August 2011): 404–8. doi:10.1525/jams.2011.64.2.404
Questions
- Descriptive: How do ideas about nature find musical expression in popular media? Who is reached by modern media in various parts of East Asia? What is being discussed or emphasized in music being performed or consumed today?
- Explanatory: How have music and perceptions of nature developed historically alongside each other in East Asia? How does music relate to religious, cultural, and ecological beliefs and practices?
- Evaluative: Does music in modern media reach enough people to have a social impact? If so, what are some of the possible cultural and political implications when music involves environmental discourse?
- Instrumental: How can performers, composers, and managers take a more active role in environmental discourse across various media? Under what circumstances could music empower actors in environmental discourse?
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- HIST 112 (Making Modern Japan, 4 credits). History of Japan from circa 1600 to present day, taken as preparation for overseas study at Mt. Fuji. Provides cultural and historical context for a major actor within my area of interest.