Senior music major Nicholas Kloor will present his senior capstone: "Anemoic Ailments: Affection for Japanese City Pop among American Youth."
Japanese music from the 1970s and 1980s, spread through YouTube and Spotify, has captured the fascination of many Millennials and Gen-Z Americans. “City pop,” a genre of music analogous to the Californian yacht rock of the same era, seems to create feelings of nostalgia among some American youth. But how did this music, 40 years after its peak, find an audience so far removed from its original context? What is it about city pop that creates feelings of nostalgia for Americans who have never been to Japan, those who were not even alive at its inception? This research presentation explores the transnational development of city pop and the transcultural interpretations that have fueled its revival.
Nicholas Kloor is a music and Japanese major from Brooklyn, New York. In the Music Department, he has studied ethnomusicology and non-Western music with Professor Maria Mendonça and jazz and 20th century music history with Professor Dane Heuchemer, in addition to jazz theory with Professor Ted Buehrer. He also studies trumpet with Adjunct Instructor of Music Heather Faulkner and has played in the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble, and Chinese Music Ensemble, and he has organized concerts at Kenyon, including Terry Riley’s In C, performed in the Church of the Holy Spirit. Outside of the Music Department, he has studied Japanese for three years with Professor Kai Xie and Professor Yuki Ishida. Nicholas spent his junior year studying at Waseda University, located in Tokyo, Japan, where he was involved in the Waseda University Modern Jazz and Latin American Music Study Groups, as well as leading an independent 20-person band with performances throughout Tokyo. While based at Waseda, Nicholas also had the opportunity to engage in Raga classes with Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto in Kamakura, Japan.