Event

Japanese Reggae: Translation, Performance, and Ethnicity in a Global Subculture

Reggae music has been flourishing in Japan for over four decades. Many Japanese reggae artists have sought to translate the music’s presumed Afro-Jamaican blackness so as to make it more approachable for Japanese audiences. They have for example used reggae to celebrate the Japanese language or the physical beauty of the Japanese nation. But this celebration of Japaneseness can be unsettled by the ethnic backgrounds of the artists themselves, whose heritages may be Chinese, Korean, Okinawan, or otherwise marked as minority. Marvin Sterling, the leading authority on this complex musical subculture, will discuss how these artists translate the conventions of reggae to assert their own ethnic identities even while remaining acceptably “Japanese.”

Marvin D. Sterling is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University.