JAPANESE MUSIC SCHOLAR ALAN CUMMINGS DISCUSSES KAN MIKAMI'S WORK

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Kan Mikami is often referred to as a folk singer, one of the many who emerged out of a boom in folk music in late sixties and early seventies Japan. This was a period that saw a flowering of radical experimentation in many art forms in Japan, coupled with an unprecedented surge in political activism. But what precisely did 'folk music' imply in the context of the Japan of this period? Where did Mikami himself fit into the folk movement? And what are the roots of his so-called enka blues?

Japanese music scholar Alan Cummings attempts to answer these questions and more.