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  • JPOP

    J-pop (?????? jeipoppu), an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a loosely-defined musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music such as The Beatles, and replaced kay?kyoku ("Lyric Singing Music", a term for Japanese pop music from the 1920s to the 1980s) in the Japanese music scene. The term was coined by the Japanese media to distinguish Japanese music from foreign music, and now refers to most Japanese popular music. According to 2010 global music industry market share data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Japan has the second largest market for recorded music in the world, behind the United States.

    The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by The Beatles. Unlike the Japanese music genre called kay?kyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English. One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word karada ("body") as kyerada. Additionally, unlike Western music, the major second (sol and la) was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan. When the Group Sounds genre, which was inspired by Western rock, became popular, Japanese pop music adopted the major second, which was used in the final sounds of The Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Although Japanese pop music changed from music based on Japanese pentatonic scale and distortional tetrachord to the more occidental music over time, music that drew from the traditional Japanese singing style remained popular (such as that of Ringo Shiina). At first, the term J-pop was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar, just after Japanese radio station J-Wave was established. However, the term became a blanket term, covering other music genressuch as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s.

    In contrast to this, although many Japanese rock musicians until the late 1980s disrespected the kay?kyoku music, many of Japanese rock bands of the 1990ssuch as Glayassimilated kay?kyoku into their music. After the late 1980s, breakbeat and samplers also changed the Japanese music scene, where expert drummers had played good rhythm because traditional Japanese music did not have the rhythm based on rock or blues. Hide of Greeeen openly described their music genre as J-pop. He said, "I also love rock, hip hop and breakbeats, but my field is consistently J-pop. For example, hip hop musicians learn 'the culture of hip hop' when they begin their career. We are not like those musicians and we love the music as sounds very much. Those professional people may say 'What are you doing?' but I think that our musical style is cool after all. The good thing is good."

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