The news that Bill Monroe died stimulates me to jump into this thread. There's a song named "you don't need a reason to sing". (I foget who wrote this). When my mate banjo player proposed to play this tune in my band, I opposed to it because I could not like the phrase. It's 20 years ago, I believed there must be a reason to sing. Though I loved and still love to hear and play that white music (bluegrass), I once seeked to find out any "red" in it. All I could find was some rumpen-proletariat factors. Unlike bluegrass, I often see proletarian factors in (american) old-time music. A collection of such is Mike Seeger's "Tripple, Loom & Rail"(Folkways). Besides those traditionals, I learned many songs of struggle in american folk music, too. Needless to mension Woody Guthrie or other CIO organizers, songs were weapons of working class in US, I believe. In the case of Japan, we traditionally sang and played only so-to-say official labor/struggle/revolutionary songs in Japan or from east europe and USSR in our movement. The only exception has been "L'internationale". (It's from western europe, isn't it? :)) Most of folk songs sung were russians. Adding this, our predecessors recommended to listen to classics so that we would learn the best part of bourgeois culture. Native pop culture had been ignored untill mid- 70's. But the situation changed in younger generation in 70's. Japanese youth became much culturally "americanized". Folk music revival was imported directly. Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Tom Paxton, ... became very popular in japanese youth at the time. Students began to learn to play the guitar and sing anti-war songs (imported) in the campus struggles. But as the heat of student power diminished, the music scene also changed. Inside the left culture movement, there came a discovery of native japanese pop culture. Many activists in this field picked up native pop music like Tsugaru shamisen, Kawachi-ondo, etc. At the same time, some activists began to write and play american folk songs-like songs in japanese to express the present motivations of workers struggles. Right now in mid-'90, I don't see any good attempt to establish proletarian music movement among youth in Japan. American folk song-like songs are boring for the youth. Reggae seems to turn to appear as love songs in Japan. (where's Bob Marley?) Raps, too. I think development of such proletarian pop culture is not independent from real avtivity of labor movement. We can't sharpen our class conciousness if we are apart from concrete struggles. The form of expression may change into any direction. If we can apply appropriately to some concrete struggles, Karaoke may turn to be our weapon. Iwao Kitamura [EMAIL PROTECTED]
