Electronic sound and its popularisation in Japan: from the discourse of specific technical skills to that of capacity for autonomous creation
Résumé
Electroacoustic music and popular electronic music are based on different economies of music - institutional music for the first, popular music for the second. Electroacoustic music was founded around the beginning of the 1950s in experimental creation studios supported by organisations attached to media structures - very often radio stations - scientific research establishments or artistic research centres. Electroacoustic music depended on the close collaboration of composers and sound engineers, whose role was to develop experimental tools for producing and transforming sound. Popular electronic music grew out of the development of the synthesiser industry in the 1970s, with the production and distribution to the general public of musical instruments promoted as capable of producing previously unheard sounds or imitating existing sounds. Electroacoustic music and electronic music are however connected by a certain form of technical continuity. The foundations of popular electronic music are in fact based on technical developments, as well as on certain speculative questions that accompany the development of electroacoustic music - in this case, overcoming the limits inherent in the technical capabilities and traditional playing of conventional musical instruments, and exploring new sonic possibilities. The questions I raise here concern the evolution of electronic sound at the point of contact between electroacoustic music and popular electronic music in Japan. From the point of view that interests me, that of the history of representations, it is not a question of limiting our gaze to the question of the economy of music and the question of technique, but of using these elements to open up the perspective to the question of the significance of electronic sound on a social and political level. What place did electronic sound occupy in the daily lives of the Japanese in the 1970s and beyond? Which media were used to popularise electronic sound? What discourses accompanied the circulation of electronic sound and its representations? Who are these representations aimed at, and what practices shape them? What does electronic sound in Japan tell us about Japanese modernity, that is, about ways of thinking about everyday life and about Japan's place in a world marked by international exchanges? Finally, what are the power relations that are established through the process of disseminating electronic sound, and at what levels are these tensions played out? These questions are just some of the ways in which we need to look at electronic sound in order to gain a fresh understanding of the transformations taking place in Japanese society at a time of rapid economic expansion.
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