音楽と社会フォーラムのブログ

政治経済学・経済史学会の常設専門部会「音楽と社会フォーラム」の公式ブログです。

政治経済学・経済史学会大会でのパネル・ディスカッション

 師走に入りました。みなさまいかがお過ごしでしょうか。

 今回は、政治経済学・経済史学会2015年度秋季学術大会(於:福島大学)において開催された、
本フォーラムのパネル・ディスカッションの内容をご紹介します。
 大会初日である10月17日の9:30〜12:00、L講義棟1階L−2教室において行われました。
英語によるセッションという初めての試みとなりました。


 以下に井上貴子さんによる報告要旨とパネルの状況について記した文章を掲載します。

 井上貴子さん、まことにありがとうございました!


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Diverse Paths of Development in Local and Trans-cultural Music Industries

This panel will investigate ways in which music industries have developed and examine whether the world's music markets have been unified along with the rapid growth and restructuring of global major labels. Though these labels control almost 90% of the music market today, there still exist many small-scale record companies which distribute domestic or specific styles to their local markets.
The history of music industries has been documented and analyzed from the perspectives of the development of media technologies and establishment of the music business model, as led by global major labels. Despite the growth of small-scale local music industries through the development of media technologies and their dissemination to non-Western countries, scholars have rarely paid attention to them. Thanks to the diffusion of low-cost, high-performance equipment, non-Western labels became able to provide ongoing supply of music exclusively to their domestic markets, distributing diverse styles to local consumers who may have little or no interest in pop music produced by global major labels.
This panel will also emphasize the role and significance of music industries in cross-cultural communication. Since the late nineteenth century, distribution of recorded music has played the central role in propagation of sound culture between countries. Formerly restrictive implications of geographical borders have been weakened by technological development of ever-more efficient means for recorded music's transmission. As this phenomenon is said to yield proliferation of varieties of music across the globe, we also explore the causal nexus of music industries, cross-cultural communication, and diversified sound culture.
Through examining small-scale music industries, their means of production and distribution, and their economic, social and cultural relations with the global majors, we will explore the transformation of music industries in the globalizing world. The panel comprises the following four papers.

1. Hugh de Ferranti “The Success of an Okinawan Indie Label and Inter-cultural Experience in Prewar Osaka” 
This paper concerns one of prewar Japan's first successful independent record labels and the inception of Okinawan popular music through mass-mediated production, marketing and creative development of song styles and performance genres that had origin in Ryukyu culture.
The Taihei Marufuku record firm was established in Osaka in 1926, when Japan’s ‘second metropolis’ was for a time its most vital urban hub and the centre of popular performing arts. Taihei Marufuku’s music was performed, arranged, composed and apparently solely marketed to Okinawan people. It will be argued that the firm’s robustness was due to the identification by its founder, Fukubaru (Fukuhara) Chouki, of a niche market entirely overlooked by the Japanese industry’s then-majors because it was transnational in nature, comprising communities of listener-consumers in Okinawa itself and throughout the Okinawan diaspora in Japan, the Pacific and the Americas.
Drawing upon recent research on the early output of Fukubaru and Taihei Marufuku, it will be suggested that in the particular setting of interwar Osaka, Fukubaru’s openness to forms of inter-cultural musical experience between norms of Okinawan performance traditions and Japanese popular genres yielded significant innovation in the use of formal and sonic resources. His remarkable creative activity occurred at a time when Okinawans residing in mainland Japan were being exhorted to assimilate by keeping their Okinawan language, customs, music and dance to themselves, so as to give ‘the Japanese’ minimal grounds on which to discriminate against former ‘Ryukyuan’ people.
While the Taihei Marufuku firm as a whole could be characterized as an inward-oriented vehicle for Okinawan popular culture of the interwar era, certain aspects of what it produced can be interpreted as outward-oriented in the way language, musical resources and performance formats were intermixed – almost always at the hands of Fukubaru himself. That very ambiguity reflects the marginal, ‘newcomer’ status of Okinawans at the time, both in the Japanese nation state and as migrants in urban Osaka, the industrial heart of imperial Japan. As such, this little-known Japanese case may bear useful comparison with the circumstances and strategies of ethnic minority record labels viz a viz the majors of both the prewar and postwar era recording industries in the US and elsewhere.
2. Minako Waseda “The Pre-World War II Japanese Record Industry and the Japanese American Community”
This paper explores the flow of culture and people between Japan and Japanese American communities in California and Hawaii as well as the resultant development of specific musical cultures in close association with the pre-World War II Japanese record industry. Four historical phases will be identified:
1) The exportation of pre-war Japanese records to Japanese American communities not only consoled the immigrants’ nostalgia for their home country and helped them maintain their Japanese identity, but also enabled first-generation immigrants (Issei) and their descendants (Nisei) to catch up with contemporary Japanese popular culture, which in turn enabled Japanese performing artists to expand their performance venues overseas.
2) The imported Japanese records contributed to the development of “Japanese-American” musical practices. A so-called ondo boom (when commercially produced “folk-like” songs and accompanying dances became hits) took place in the Japanese American community. The ondo songs and dances were incorporated into Buddhist Obon services, then led to the development of distinctive “Japanese-American” bon dance practices. In Hawaii, imported Japanese records also triggered formation of numerous Nisei bands that specialized in Japanese popular songs.
3) Japanese American musicians from California and Hawaii played important roles in the pre-war Japanese record industry. Their contracts with Japanese record companies enabled them to enter the Japanese entertainment world. Through their recordings, they introduced American songs, musical instruments, and performance styles to the Japanese public.
4) Japanese popular music was influenced by the popularity of Japanese American recording artists. The distribution of recordings by Japanese American musicians who uniquely combined the contemporary American popular music with Japanese musical elements resulted in new developments in Japanese jazz and Hawaiian music.
Thus the pre-war Japanese records contributed to musical connection and exchange between Japan and Japanese American communities, as well as the evolution of new musical cultures in both settings.
3. Nahoko Matsumoto “Record Industries of Minorities in Turkey”
This paper explores the development of record industries of minorities in Turkey by focusing on a music label called “KALAN”, a pioneer in introducing minorities’ music to the public. The Republic of Turkey is a melting pot of more than 50 ethnic and religious minorities. Despite the complicated mix of inhabitants, all Turkish citizens are defined as ‘Türk” by law. Though the recording of music started in the 1900s in the Ottoman Empire, music in minorities’ languages could not be recorded nor performed in public spaces after independence in 1923. Under the rather democratic 1961 Constitution minorities’ cultural activities were revitalized in their own communities, but the Constitution was revised towards suppression of minorities after a coup d’etat in 1980. Law No. 2932, which restricted the use of languages other than Turkish, was also implemented to restrict their activities until its repeal in 1991.
On the other hand, the basis for EU accession dates from 1959 when Turkey was a candidate for associate membership of the EEC. The negotiation was frozen until the 1980s because of political problems, then Turkey applied for full membership of the EC in 1987. The EU demanded Turkey makes reforms particularly in the field of human rights. In the process of democratization, Law 2932 was abolished in 1991 and consequently minorities’ cultural activities were revitalized again. Minorities started to sing in their own languages in their own communities, but their music companies could not find ways to distribute their products to the national market.
One of the domestic music labels, ‘KALAN’, was established in 1991 in Istanbul. Its owner Hasan Saltık decided to produce minorities’ music as well as Turkish folk, Turkish classical, Turkish pop and other styles. Records were usually released with rich liner notes or a booklet. Thanks to his policy to diversify production, minorities’ music could be successfully distributed to the public. Hasan continued his activities despite the risks of prosecution. Consequently he was highly evaluated at the international level as a winner of several awards. His activities promoting minorities’ musics to the public have been regarded as among Turkey’s most effective measures since the commencement of negotiations for EU accession in 2005.
4. Takako Inoue “Starting from Bootlegging and Piracy: Popular Music and Film Industries in India”
This paper explores the changing relationship between popular music production and film industries in India. The Indian cinema is famous for its quasi-musical style, characterized by a lot of songs incorporated into the story. Until the 1980s, Indian popular music had been almost wholly comprised of film songs that film stars appearing on the screen pretended to sing with lip-syncing. In practice these songs were sung by playback singers behind the scenes who never appear on the screen. As recording film songs continued to be a part of film industries that in effect had control over the popular music scene, the copyrights or royalties of recorded music for singers, composers and musicians were largely neglected.
Moreover, as the Indian economy from independence until the 1990s was characterized by regulations, protectionism, and public ownership of large monopolies, the production and distribution of disk recordings was monopolized by the Gramophone Company of India Limited, which kept the price of a disk too high to be affordable by the masses. Consequently the circulation of film songs was largely dependent on bootlegging and piracy, which checked the growth of normal music industries. Thus 90 % circulation of music cassettes were said to be bootlegs and pirate recordings.
In the 1990s, along with economic liberalization many small-scale local music labels were newly established, global major labels advanced into the Indian market, and MTV and other music channels became available to the masses via satellite broadcasting. Newly founded Indian labels groped for substantial independence to separate from the film industry and also had to compete with global majors by partially adopting the global business model. This led them to be aware of the problem of bootlegging and piracy, and to reorganize their association called the Indian Music Industry so as to initiate a stop piracy campaign to protect copyright. As a result, they successfully reduced piracy to almost 30% by the early C21st. Film music, however, still occupies almost half of India’s net music sales today, so many music labels depend on film sales. Hence the music industry of India is still trying to construct an equal partnership to free itself from its subordinate status to film industry.




政経史学会秋季学術大会では、初めて英語による報告募集が行われたが、報告、パネル等を含め、英語のセッションは本パネルのみであった。
会場の参加者は日本人ばかりで英語ネイティヴがいなかったにもかかわらず、議論は活発に行われた。
特に、マイノリティの音楽録音を販売する意義、その受容者あるいはリスナーの意識、録音産業の将来と著作権問題等について、会場の関心が集まった。



井上貴子