Cultural Translation and Musical Innovation: A Theoretical Model with Examples from Japan

Abstract

This paper explores various ways that intercultural analyses of musical meanings may offer theoretical insights applicable to the broader field of cultural translation. Music, like language, qualifies as a field in which “ideological horizons of homogeneity have been conceptualized,” and postcolonialist scholars such as Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy have acknowledged its critical role as an emblem of identity within the very sites of hybridity that particularly interest scholars of cultural translation. While much has already been theorized regarding how foreign musical genres may be transplanted, adopted and fused with indigenous traditions, the notion of cultural translation may most accurately fit the specific objective of intentionally representing significant aspects of one musical tradition through the techniques of another distinct tradition. Artistic choices to (or not to) explicitly aim for this mode of cultural translation are routinely made by contemporary musicians active in hybrid genres, and analysis of specific examples from such ensembles as the Helsinki Koto Ensemble, Yoshida Brothers, Moscow Pan-Asian Ensemble and Tokyo Brass Style will illustrate how cultural translation can be either conscious or unconscious, and deliberately highlighted or shunted in such music projects. A theoretical model will be proposed as one way of conceptualizing various approaches to cultural translation in music.