91AV原创 bubble era ended more than 30 years ago. The soundtrack for those heady times is still going strong.
On Aug. 7, nearly 15,000 people gathered at London’s Crystal Palace Bowl for City Pop Waves, a festival headlined by 73-year-old fusion-jazz legend Masayoshi Takanaka and featuring singer Junko Yagami and keyboardist Himiko Kikuchi. The crowd was , waving along to Takanaka’s instrumental tracks played on his surfboard-shaped guitar.
It was a striking demonstration of how a once-nebulous label for Japanese music has mutated into a full-fledged genre — and one of the most popular styles associated with the country today. City pop now is broadly understood as Japanese music influenced by funk, disco, R&B and other Western sounds, particularly from the late 1970s and early ’80s, with an emphasis on an urban, sophisticated aesthetic. Call it yacht rock’s Japanese cousin.
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