Covering Disclosures: Practices of Intimacy, Hierarchy, and Authenticity in a Japanese Popular Music Genre

Abstract

This paper analyzes cover songs and other forms of repetition in the Japanese popular music genre enka, a sentimental ballad form. The performance practices in the enka world are not only enterprise driven, but also embedded within cultural values and aesthetics. The paper argues that covering in a Japanese context poses a challenge to Walter Benjamin's concept of aura through kata (patterned form), which derives authenticity over time and by way of repetition.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.