WRITINGS
NOVAK David
Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of "Onkyô"
Edition: Asian Music 41. 1 (Winter-Spring 2010): 36-59.
Date: 2010
Region: JAPAN
Origin: UNITED STATES
Type of media: Article
Language: English
Editor: M.B.
Comment:
Abstract:
The author describes the Tokyo-based musical genre known as "onkyo" as a transnational coproduction of Japanese cultural difference. He suggests that "onkyo" was realized through the "untranslation" of musical genre names and the attribution of local origin to aspects of sound and performance. The "Japaneseness" of "onkyo's" silence derives from postwar discourses of development and nation-building that have been crucial to Japan's modernization. By juxtaposing site-specific performance against a global circulation of musical genres, "onkyo"musicians voiced the ambivalence inherent in the "task of the translator." "Onkyo's" experimental critique of genre became a project of untranslation.