On April 15, 2008, Michael Bourdaghs, Macalester '86, and now Associate Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, presented:

"Distilling a Japanese Essence: Geopolitical Impurities in the Music of Misora Hibari"

Misora Hibari (1937-1989) has been widely celebrated as the most Japanese of singers. In a triumphant career that stretched from childhood recordings made in the late 1940s to her astonishing comeback in the late 1980s, she became the undisputed queen of enka, the popular music style thought to be most authentically Japanese. Her 1960s hits such as “Kanashii sake” (Mournful sake) and “Yawara” (Gentle) are in many ways the definitive cornerstones of the genre.

This hagiography, though, requires the abstracting away of seemingly impure elements from Hibari’s musical brew: her roots in both American and Asian cultural forms. This talk explored the geopolitical complexity of Hibari’s music, examining what had to be distilled away from her image in order to produce a treasured national icon.

Michael Bourdaghs, Asian Languages and Cultures Spring Seminar