A List
4/18/05

TOKYO'S UNDERGROUND CLUB MUSIC TOPIC FOR SLU TALK

CANTON – A Union College music professor who has studied "hardcore" 
music in Tokyo will give a talk at St. Lawrence University on "The 
Underground Tokyo Hardcore Scene." The lecture by Jennifer Milioto Matsue, 
associate professor of music at Union, will be on Thursday, April 21, at 
8 p.m. in Room 123 of the Griffiths Arts Center. Sponsored by the Asian 
Studies Initiative with a grant from the Freeman Foundation, the talk is 
open to the public, free of charge.
	Matsue recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 
ethnomusicology with the dissertation titled "Performing Underground Sounds: 
An Ethnography of Music-Making in Tokyo's Hardcore Clubs." She is researching 
women in traditional Japanese performing arts as well as further aspects 
of Japanese popular music. Matsue has also taught at Dartmouth College, 
the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Chicago, and Sophia 
University in Japan. 
	She states, "On any given night, the curious novice or expert prowler 
can visit any one of myriad bars, clubs, and livehouses that spread 
throughout Tokyo. Located in the basements of buildings, down shopping 
arcades, or tucked between a coffee shop and Italian restaurant – hip-hop, 
techno, noise, punk and various types of hardcore pour from the distorted 
sound systems, sometimes reaching the street despite double doors. These 
spaces offer an opportunity not only to participate through the 
performance of music and dance until dawn breaks, but also to escape from 
daily social expectations."

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