Japanese Music

Music in Japan is called ongaku, which when directly translated can be taken to mean as sound for comfort. Although mostly identified nowadays by the outside world for its pop, “bubblegum” type of songs, Japanese music is essentially an eclectic combination of musical influences from all over the world. Much as it is steeped in local tradition and history, the scales, instruments and styles however were borrowed and loosely adapted from neighboring countries such as China, Korea and Indonesia and has evolved to integrate Western musical styles such as jazz, rock, ska and reggae. There is a definitive emphasis on words rather than the instrumentation and one East Asian musical scholar has attributed this to the Japanese “love for storytelling and preoccupation w View the rest of this article