“You should be more cute, you know”: cuteness and negotiations of power in Japanese vocal jazz

Abstract

Jazz has for a long time been a male dominated field and is to a great extend produced as a hegemonic masculine project still today. In this study, our focus is on the social context of music performance in Japan, rather than on an analysis of jazz music itself. We attempt to understand musicians’ meaning making processes: the ways in which they talk about their music, manage identity-related tensions, and ultimately how musicians make sense of their experiences on and off stage. Studying the social context around music therefore provides insight into social history itself, into different constellations of gender organization available at any given moment, whether these are hegemonic or resistant.