Paper short abstract:

Singer-songwriter Matsutōya Yumi is typically associated with the birth of New Music - a hybrid pop genre emphasizing musicians' authorship and authenticity in the 1970s. This presentation examines the implications of 'new' in Matsutōya's work with an emphasis on production and textual content.

Paper long abstract:

Singer-songwriter Matsutōya Yumi (b. 1954) is typically associated with the birth of New Music - a prominent genre of Japanese popular music in the 1970s. As the name of the genre suggests, New Music was associated with novelty. But what was exactly 'new' in New Music, and what does this suggested novelty contrast with? This paper seeks to answer these questions by locating the 'new' in the genre based on Matsutōya's work from viewpoints of both production and textual content. Musically, New Music is distinguished by its hybridity, but it can be also defined as a production model. Like politically and socially subversive folk and rock of the late 1960s, New Music claimed the musicians' 'authenticity' by emphasizing their 'authorship.' In contrast with rock and folk, however, New Music did not negotiate its position by claiming 'anti-commercialism.' Rather, it was openly commercial and disinterested politically from the outset; Matsutōya, for example, famously referred to her musical style as 'middle-class sound' (chūsan kaikyū saundo). In other words, New Music assimilated certain ideals of folk and rock but articulated them through the more commercial practices. There were several social, productional, and musical implications in this process that are best located by conceptualizing New Music as a musical discourse representing changes in Japanese popular music and society of the early 1970s. Matsutōya played a significant role in these changes by introducing new musical idioms and lyrics celebrated for their novelty, and by establishing the concept of the female singer-songwriter in Japanese popular music. Based on her example, the rise of New Music was principally enabled by two factors: productional practices established by the older, socially subversive genres, and Japanese society becoming middle class in the 1970s. By asserting content celebrated for its innovativeness - eventually resulting in the genre conceptualization 'New Music' - Matsutōya's work both reflected and participated in constructing the 'new' in Japan of the time.