TY - JOUR
T1 - Cocco's musical intervention in the US base problems
T2 - Traversing a realm of everyday cultural sensibilities in Okinawa
AU - Inoue, Masamichi S.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - This essay intervenes in the political contradiction between the pro-base and anti-base positions in Okinawa while at the same time seeking to provide an alternative to the binary at the level of everyday cultural sensibilities. I will accomplish this task by exploring the activities of charismatic Okinawan musician-artist-activist Cocco. More specifically, locating Cocco's music within-and also outside-a long, complicated genealogy of Okinawan popular music, I will trace how she has grounded the formal political problems of the US military in Okinawa's everyday dilemmas concerning money, memory, and globalization. In my view, Cocco has done so in a way that prods us to move beyond the pro-base/anti-base binary and to navigate an uncharted realm of culture, power, and history. I will also pay attention to how the audience in Okinawa and beyond, as a co-producer of Cocco's music community, has participated in this process. In so doing, I will show how Cocco's music has brought to light possibilities of transforming the existing political inequalities from below, possibilities that may be destined to disappear as soon as they are materialized as an explicit political program. I will articulate these possibilities with reference to what French writer-critic-philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1908-2003) once called the 'unavowable community'.
AB - This essay intervenes in the political contradiction between the pro-base and anti-base positions in Okinawa while at the same time seeking to provide an alternative to the binary at the level of everyday cultural sensibilities. I will accomplish this task by exploring the activities of charismatic Okinawan musician-artist-activist Cocco. More specifically, locating Cocco's music within-and also outside-a long, complicated genealogy of Okinawan popular music, I will trace how she has grounded the formal political problems of the US military in Okinawa's everyday dilemmas concerning money, memory, and globalization. In my view, Cocco has done so in a way that prods us to move beyond the pro-base/anti-base binary and to navigate an uncharted realm of culture, power, and history. I will also pay attention to how the audience in Okinawa and beyond, as a co-producer of Cocco's music community, has participated in this process. In so doing, I will show how Cocco's music has brought to light possibilities of transforming the existing political inequalities from below, possibilities that may be destined to disappear as soon as they are materialized as an explicit political program. I will articulate these possibilities with reference to what French writer-critic-philosopher Maurice Blanchot (1908-2003) once called the 'unavowable community'.
KW - Everyday culture
KW - Okinawa
KW - Popular music
KW - US military
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80055103657&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1080/14649373.2011.578789
DO - 10.1080/14649373.2011.578789
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80055103657
SN - 1464-9373
VL - 12
SP - 321
EP - 340
JO - Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
JF - Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
IS - 3
ER -