Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how Japanese audience shaped the framework of jazz as cosmopolitan music through live music exchange in the post-occupation era, by tracing the routes of the various musicians to argue that the embodied cosmopolitanism on the stages paradoxically triggered conservative backlash.

Paper long abstract:

To discuss the transnational aspect of popular music, we must not ignore the influences of touring musicians. One of the most essential characteristics of popular music is its mobility. Besides the globalization of several songs, styles, recordings, movements or technologies, the musicians themselves have also traveled around the world. Especially, the development of aircrafts and international civil aviation after World War II enabled Western popular musicians to visit Asian countries easily and rapidly. In the early 50s, Pan American Airways' trans-pacific routes that combined American west coast, Hawaiian islands, and east Asian nations, opened up new opportunities for Western popular musicians to visit Asian and Polynesian countries. Furthermore,, the Western allied powers deployed their forces in West Pacific as barriers against communism. In the Cold War era, the US entertainers frequently flew around the pacific along this half-civil and half-military network. After Japan regained its state sovereignty at the Peace Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, Japanese concert promoters began to cooperate with the US agents to invite famous American musicians. Various musicians such as Gene Krupa, Xavier Cugat, Jazz at the Philharmonic, Louis Armstrong, Juan Canaro, Damia, Delta Rhythm Boys or Johnnie Ray visited post-occupation Japan. These concerts attracted a great number of people, and reached the first peak in 1964, the year of Tokyo Olympic games. As several previous studies have mentioned, even though they had different musical styles and regional identity, they were all accepted as "jazz" music in those days. In other words, the word "jazz" had represented cosmopolitanism in the post occupation era. One of the most remarkable changes in this period is the rise of the so-called "Black" or "colored" virtuoso performances. Japanese concertgoers praised their shows enthusiastically, and music critics exaggerated "Blackness" embodied on stage to examine the frenzy performances. By examining the usage of the word "funky"—before the invention of Funk music—this paper argues that these shows paradoxically mediated both Afro-Asian or cosmopolitan connections and Afro/Asian alienations within essentialist's discourses.