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More bombs and rockets in the middle east, either way you spin it the situation isn’t looking very good. I have my opinions on the disproportionate amounts of military power on one side over the other, but bottom line it distubs me to see kids and civilians getting blown up and burned alive. This is a decades, maybe centuries old conflict that has been festering and was bound to explode eventually. I also can’t see how sending more bombs to the region is going to help any, even if they are supposedly precision bombs, or smart bombs. a really smart bomb would not kill anyone, maybe like those psychotrophic LTN (Love Thy Neighbor) Bombs in a Stanislaw Lem novel.
More Youtube browsing, moving on from the reggae I ended up looking into some Japanese hiphop. I think there is something to be said about the fob factor which wanes in and out of the music depending on whether or not you watch the video, it seems strange hearing hiphop or reggae, in another language especially with the themes and gestures of the artist as a testiment to how the genre has evolved as it was exported from home country to overseas. hiphop has evolved as a brand that has become a sort of subculture in other countries like Japan packaged in the blingbling cristal-drinking partying form that dominates but more the MTV top 40 playlists today. The hiphop of today seems so commercialized and detached from its roots as a vessel of American urban political and social commentary, something that seems to have been lost as it has exported from America to the world. It shows in the garb, gestures and scattered ebonics among the crossover international artists.
This disconnect is true even within the home country, you definitely see this among a lot with Asian American artists taking on the hiphop inspiration, with varied amounts of success. It all goes my ongoing observations that APIs are out of touch with their culture, and in search of something to define them and to identify with. Maybe the MTV-ized, commercialized party version is something that they can identify with better than the street version. Too often though, you end up seeing APIs trying to act black, ghetto, or just speak ebonics, despite never really having any real contact with black people growing up. Take off the mask of the aspiring hiphop artist and they would avoid living anywhere near a black neighborhood. They end up looking ridiculous, sadly, kind of fobby. To contrast this, I guess when you export something overseas you have the chance that it’ll be misunderstood, but then again absent memes of direct comparisons it allows the host culture to run with it and eventually adopt a more original feel, or even funkier music
the basic disconnect is along ethnic lines given the history of both music genres were formed originally as outlets of expression by ethnic minorities that sweltered under the oppression of slavery or colonial rule. Maybe that might explain the rise of reggae in the kansai area as opposed to Tokyo, but I don’t think the comparison quite the same. Maybe 2nd generation north korean immigrants to Japan, that would be interesting.
Then again it probably is the same for hawaiian hiphop and reggae, aside from the common language. For some extent I think Hawaii’s history has many historical similarities with colonial societies, in many ways the plantation system is still very much intact.