Noriko Manabe

Noriko Manabe is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology and music theory at CUNY Graduate Center. She has presented papers on Japanese rap, Cuban zarzuelas, and Verdi at several conferences and lectured on the musical interpretations of Don Quixote at the Brooklyn Conservatory. She has taught world music at John Jay College, and Marymount Manhattan College. She is a singer and Board Director for the Dessoff Choir, where she oversees its endowment, and serves on the Investment Committee of SEM. Her article on Japanese rap and language will be published in Volume 50(1), Winter 2006, of Ethnomusicology.

Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptation of Japanese Language to Rap

October 1, 2018February 3, 2006 By Noriko Manabe

As a musical form without the distraction of a melody but a well-defined beat, rap offers an opportunity to explore the rhythmic and musical aspects of a language. An interesting case study is rap in Japanese, which has completely different syntax, vocabulary, accent patterns, and phonemes from English. Several pioneers of Japanese rap initially thought … Read more