An Ethnographer’s Perspective on

Japanese Musical Modernity

Dr. Bonnie Wade

Professor of Ethnomusicology,

University of California, Berkeley

Bonnie Wade is Professor of Music and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Chair in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A distinguished ethnomusicologist, Professor Wade is a specialist in Asian music with emphases on South Asia (particularly North India) and East Asia (particularly Japan) and focuses on genres, historical perspectives, iconography, improvisatory work, contemporary Japanese music, and ethnography.

One hundred forty years since Japanese leadership started the country to modern nation statehood is a sufficiently long time that we should be able to comprehend something of the nature of particularly Japanese musical modernity. In this paper I draw on more than a decade of ethnographic field research to reflect on aspects of the indigenization of Western music in Japan, taking as my lens the systems and values within which composers have worked as creative contributors to their society.