America and Japan is as different as it can get; from cuisine to culture, language to fashion and everything else. Even their rock culture, which originated from the same roots, has such a stark difference that it almost seems like Japanese rock, better known as j-rock, seems almost like a different music genre altogether.
It's not just the music, but their dressing style and the image presented by their respective bands or individual singers is just completely different!
Rock music in the western continents are mostly mainstream rock or pop rock music, but Japanese have an even bigger rock music industry; whether mainstream or indies. In fact, j-rock branches into different variations of music, such as oshare kei, visual kei, punk rock and many others.
The underground music scene in Japan is low-profiled, but being part of the crowd is acknowledged as cool in Japan. Various bands make it big by performing in gigs until record labels discover their potential and sign them up, either commercializing them or selling them as an indies band.
The differences of the western rock and j-rock is best described with pictures rather than words. First, let's take a look at popular western rock bands:
KISS was one of the most popular rock bands. Like typical rock bands, they have a similar dress code of black and white, complete with masks and unkempt, long hair.
The contemporary rock bands, however, are more decently and casually dressed, as can be seen in Paramore, a band consisting of all males and a female vocalist, Hayley Williams.
And probably one of the most controversial and bizarre Western rock bands, Marilyn Manson and his crew are not afraid to be loud and rude!
And now, for Japanese rockers:
Guess what's the similarity of the lady on the left, and the cap-wearing man on the right?
Highlight the below text for answer:
[Both are the same person! Miyavi, a rock vocalist-guitarist sometimes cross-dresses as a woman!]
All-male bands usually dominate the j-rock scene with elaborate clothings and makeups, such as The Gazette:
A sample of Paramore's Misery Business:
A sample of Gazette's Cassis:
1 comments:
*THUMBS UP* for this post! Didn't know that cultural differences does exist among ROCK culture over the world! THANKS for sharing! Keep it up! 0oo0
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