Asian Music That Blends World Styles

This truth is being recognized in the electronic streaming music world, including our very own Freegal and Hoopla!  You can access the Freegal app and website to listen to free music to stream and 6 free songs to download each week, through your library card number and pin.  You can access the Hoopla app and check out ten titles a month using your library card and pin.

While the music we listened to in the 1980s was mostly from the Americas and Europe, with the blending of Jazz, Disco and Free style or Beat music, in the world of anime a blending of east and western styles of music started branching out.  In the anime world, what was produced in Japan was shown in Japan before it was shown in the US.  The Japanese were blending styles for themselves.  Some of my first anime series had blended music while in Japan.  The Japanese opening for GoLions, through youtube, (which was changed to Voltron in the States) had more of a disco style of music, with Japanese lyrics.  In the US Voltron's opening, as well as G-Force's had more uplifting music with an electronic addition, because they were produced for people within the US. G-Force is now called Gatchaman. You are able to check both series out from our collection.  

The Asian young adults and their parents of the late 1990s were able to enjoy new series like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun with music that took Jazz, Electronic, Beat, and Rock music and made two beautiful fast paced opening songs to get the viewer ready to enter two different worlds of a possible future.  Thankfully by this time the producers in the US presented the series to the US viewers, yes with English dubbing, but also with the music as it was made in Japan for the Japanese viewers.  

Then with their popularity in the US, more anime were brought over with their original music intact.  D. Gray Man, Full Metal Alchemist and Soul Eater had music that blended Japanese, Rock, Hip Hop and fast paced beats.  The blending can be heard especially for different characters in Soul Eater.  You can click on the two previous highlighted links.  They take you to Youtube.com to listen to the songs by RhythmMusicMaster that go with two character themes, outside of the opening and closing credits.

Hearing the music in it's original form, with English subtitles helps not only to learn their language, but also to hear how those in the Japanese art world feel about things now.  This opens up a new world and perspective, that our artists can answer, and back again through the last few decades.  To me, Supernatural the series is a part of this communication.  There is an episode with a Japanese style game show involved.

Gackt and Hyde are two Japanese artists that have also made music that transcends one style of music. Gackt's music is found on Freegal.  Gackt's music has been played on a Kamen Rider Double vs Decade movie, as well as parts of other Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) storylines.  The US version of Kamen Rider was called Dragon Knight.  The song Ghost, played in Japan for their showing of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  The song Ghost can be found on Youtube, as just the song (with English subtitles), a concert showing as well as the music video for Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.  

Hyde's music can be heard in FullMetal Alchemist's opening song Ready Steady Go under L'Arc En Ciel.  You can also hear L'Arc En Ciel's song Spirit Dreams Inside at the end of Final Fantasy The Spirits Within.  Hyde's Anti album can be heard on Hoopla.  More of Hyde's albums can be listened to on Freegal.  A song that Hyde put out in March 2020, called Interplay, hints at how we can listen to each other, and answer through our own stories.  To be continued in another blog, as music really helps the heart, soul, and mind. 

Hidden jems of music styles blending in the late 1990s, if not before, and definitely beyond, the fields of anime and music between the east and the west.