Second Draft

This weekend I will work on the second draft of my paper, in which I explain how music is my “home” in that it is something that resonates with me emotionally and is a comforting refuge in times of stress or loneliness. Given that this is a class about APIA popular culture, I will talk about the Japanese music that I developed a fondness for due to my experience studying Japanese language/culture/history, as well has living and studying in Japan twice in the last few years. With my first draft, I took Kris’ advice about “shitty first drafts” and really just focused on getting my ideas, as undeveloped and raw as they may have been, out of my head and onto the page. I focused mostly on establishing my idea of what Asian-American music means in the context of my paper. Rather than focusing on Asian-American music as simply music performed by ethnically Asian musicians of American nationality, I decided to look at it from a more abstract cultural perspective that is more relevant to my experience and musical taste. In my paper, I am focusing on Japanese music that is influenced by American music, or is in a genre that is American or usually associated with America. After establishing this, I gave some examples of artists that fit this criteria. I also looked at the history of American influence on Japanese music. For much of Japan’s history the island nation purposefully isolated itself from foreign countries. It was during the Meiji Restoration that the leaders in Japan decided to modernize Japan by looking to foreign powers, particularly Western powers such as the United States, for influence in reshaping Japan. This is when American music first entered Japan. For the next draft of my paper I want to connect this further to my idea of “home” and the emotional connection I have with music. I also plan to include more personal anecdotes in my next revision since I included mostly impersonal research-aided writing in my initial draft. Using the peer review sheets we worked on during our writing workshop last Wednesday I will bring the length of my essay up to seven pages while hopefully improving the overall quality and cohesiveness of my paper.