And Suddenly There Was “City Pop”: The Global Dimensions of the Retrograde Formation of a Japanese Popular Music Genre
And suddenly there was “City Pop”. The music sounded familiar, and its name also rang a bell. But even if those in the know about the history of popular music in Japan might associate the term with the late 1970s and early 1980s, the music that today goes by the name “City Pop” usually wasn’t called that back then. This is also the reason why there is much debate about exactly what Japanese popular music is meant by the term “City Pop”. “City Pop” only recently became a genre designation, and the coinage and filling of the term with musical content from the past appears to be a process that involves actors not only from Japan. Even if the production and reception of the music that today goes under the name of “City Pop” was completely analogue at the time it was created and was limited to Japan, the formation of the genre of “City Pop” seems to be a global process that retroactively takes place in the digital environment of the Internet and challenges existing academic genre theories which assume that the formation of music genres can be clearly dated historically and traced geographically.
The workshop will not be held in the form of a conference, but is intended as a kind of expert meeting during which scholars researching “City Pop” and/or Japanese popular music of the 1970s and 1980s will together attempt to trace this decades-spanning, global process in as much detail as possible, as an example of cultural production transitioning cultures, temporalities and technologies.
The workshop will include 8 chronologically organized panels as well as a keynote by Ōwada Toshiyuki (Keio University). Each panel will consist of two to three speakers who will give 30- or 20-minute presentations, which will then be discussed in detail in the plenary session. In order to give us the opportunity to fill the panels evenly and at the same time to ensure that as many presenters as possible can take part, we would like to encourage applicants to submit several proposals of no more than 250 words for different panels.
| Wednesday, 19.03.25The Pre-History of City Pop | Thursday, 20.03.25From wamono to (Neo-) CityPop | Friday, 21.03.25Global City Pop | |||
| 09:00-10:30 (CET)17:00-18:30 (JST) | Nyū myūjikku | The shibuya-keiEra/wamono | Vaporwave/Future Funk | ||
| 10:45-12:15 (CET)18:45-20:15 (JST) | Happii Endoand “CityMusic” | Keynote Speechby Ōwada Toshiyuki | The “Plastic LovePhenomenon” | ||
| 13:00-14:30 (CET)21:00-22:30 (JST) | “City Pops” avant la lettre | Neo-City Popin Japan | Non-JapaneseCity Pop |
The workshop will take place at the University of Amsterdam in hybrid form on three consecutive mornings (CET) so that colleagues from previous time zones can take part online. The working language will be English. Support with translations from Japanese will be provided.
Please send your proposal(s) to f.o.seibt@uva.nl andkenkato.musica@gmail.com by November 30, 2024. For passive participation (without presentation), online or on location (depending on capacity), please send an email to the same addresses no later than February 28, 2025.