week 3 post from Kayu

Hey, guys. Its me, Kayu again. We are up to week 3 already. For my last 2 posts, I have been briefly talking about how does Asian pop music influence youth culture through introducing some Japanese bands and the most famous Chinese singer, Jay Chow. However, I reckon myself is getting a bit boring if keep saying ‘How does Asian pop music influence youth culture.’ So this time I want to talk about something special to escape a bit from this particular topic. Well, I would like to present some awsome Japanese cartoons to you guys. This is also one of the major issues to direct the trend of youth culture.





Before going more further, have you guys ever watched Japanese animation? They are good eh. Anyway, by the time you watch time, do you realize the song track in the beginning and the ending of the animation. Yea, they are the so-called opening track, op and ending track, ed respectively. What is the function of them, the first is to introduce or state out the name of people who has done any work to the animation. However, they will not just say out all these stuff normally, but combines them with visual picture and song and make it still looks like one of the entertainment parts of the cartoon. The second one is to impress audience as much as possible. Like create an image into viewer’s mind and therefore viewer can realize the cartoon and keep watching them in the next following days.

How do you think those ops and eds are made? People do not intended to make them with purpose just to fit in the animation. But is in the other way around that they choose recent, current and latest songs to be the ops and eds. The reason to do this is to keep the animation fresh so that audience would not forget it.

Do you notice the trend of cost play activity? Like people fully dress up like the character in the animation. I have been doing survey and even interview people who do this. I can tell that cost play requires more time and effort than a girl to put on perfect make up to go to any party.



For addition, there is an activity organizes in Sydney each year which calls Smash and it is all about animation stuff. Over there, you can see people dress up cosplay and even sing, dance and do performance as what audience see in the ops and eds. As in re do the ops and eds in real life. Moreover people would also have a chance to sing the songs from animation. More than this, there is always a singing completion in the end. Seriously, its really cool, feel free to check it out.



So, there is not only pop music to influence youth, but the grow of animation (songs, cosplay…etc) still consider as a great issue in this case. As I said last week that watching MTV is the other way to listen to stories. And here, ops and eds are also like MTV that can tell a story, but this time, we watch and listen some other styles stories in animation way.

Lee-Hom Wang By Fanli

Lee-Hom Wang was born in America. He is Chinese American singer,actor and song writer. Lee-Hom Wang is one of the most famouse super starts in Taiwan, China, even In Asia.


Early Life

Lee-Hom lived in America when he was young. When he was six years old, he took the music courses. He loves music in early age. As he said in a interview:" music is the whole life." He studies hard about every parts of music. The different kinds of training, the innate music ability makes him excellent in the modern society.

Musical Style

Wang's music style always changes greatly from album to album. he is considered as an R&B artist. Wang demonstrates music in a special way. He use Chinese traditional musical element and then adds some western ideologies and music components to create a new wave of music. These music is popular, famous and influential around the Asia. many styles of music Wang uses from traditional Mandopop, Broadway, jazz, rock, R&B, gospel, acoustic, Indipop, hip-hop, to rap. His music seeks to different styles to give audience different feeling about life, work and love. As Wang said:" I just want to show the best music to these people who always support me, love me. Life is limited. We should make everyday account and enjoy what the music bringing."


Excellent Star

Wang's great success not only base on his excellent music, but also as a good actor as we see.

When he was at student time, he had taken participate in some music products. These experiences are important to him. From 1999 to 2007, he had acted some good works. These works made Wang more famous in the Asia Culture. Futhermore, he is still considered as the most influential actor in Taiwan. In the 2007, Lee-Hom Wang acted in the film Lust, Caution. This film was directed by Ang Lee. It was his first Mandarin-language film. In this film, Wang received many praise from outside. It one of the films audience can feel wang as a potential actor.

Wang is excellent on different musical instruments, such as piano, violin. He tries his best to do new challenges on music and film career. Wang stands for a kind of positive, active and energetic force in the society. Lee-Hom Wang creates a good example to the youth generation.

4th entry of Ripina: Ta Ta Young

Tata Young (born Amita Marie Young, Thai December 14, 1980 in Thailand) is a Thai singer, model and actress. After becoming a Thai superstar in her early teens, she became an international success with the release of her first English-language album I Believe in 2004. She remains one of the most popular performers in Thailand, and is a perennial "favorite" pick by magazines and music-video channels.
Tata Young is the only daughter of her father Tim Young and her Thai mother, Bunchorn Young, Thai. She started singing and dancing at an early age. At age 11, Tata surpassed 5,300 other children to be crowned winner of the international division of the nationwide Thailand Junior Singing Contest with her performance of One Night Only. Among the prizes she won was a keyboard, which she donated to her school, the Bangkok Patana School. The victory earned her a contract with Yamaha Music, which groomed her for entry into the entertainment business. In 1994, the 14-year-old caught the eye of A&R executives from GMM Grammy, Thailand 's biggest entertainment conglomerate, who offered her a recording contract.
She soon released her debut Thai-language album Amita Tata Young which shot to the top of the charts and sold more than 1 million copies in less than five months. At the age of 15, Tata became the biggest pop sensation in Thailand.
Her reputation was solidified when sales of her follow-up album Tata 1,000,000 Copies Celebration, which included the hit single Chan Rak Thur (I Love You), hit the 1 million sales mark as well.
For her first year in the business, she collected a string of awards and accolades, included "Entertainer of the Year" by the Bangkok Press, as well as "Best Recording Artist for 1995", an award for "Music Video of the Year", awards for no 1 and no 2 "Single of the Year", and "Album of the Year" for Amita Tata Young at the Radio Vote Awards in Thailand.
Young has been working on her junior studio English album for quite a while since the beginnings of '08 in Berlin, Germany, working with Sony BMG Europe. The records have unofficialy announced including 15 tracks, and most of them will be the pop-dance beats, similar to her previous records. The songs in this new record will be a lot more upbeat and more fun than One Love. She has also announced that this is her favourite album, it's also the best album she'd ever made before, the beats will help the album climbing up the charts all around the world easily, it has got to be the best one! Moreover, one of the tracks is also written by Timbaland's "right hand" as well.
The first single is going to be released in January 2009, followed by the whole album in April. The record's main target is now going to be Europe and Australia, not like her 2 previous records which were launched in Asia.

Gcast 2-By Ripina and Fanli

Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

Timmy - 3rd Post ! Asian Pop/Hip-Hop

Hai !!! Me Tim la , OkOk, this week I will be exploring the influences of Asian Pop/Hip-Hop music towards young youth of many Asian countries. With the rise of popularity streaming through Asia, many regular people, apart from celebrities are also embracing the fashion trend that is sweeping across the music industries especially the genres I have just mentioned before.



Hip Hop was first used as an instrument of therapy to escape the harsh realities of hard ghetto life. Which is the slums and lower classed parts of a city. Hip Hop was originally an assault of music bringing a new bevy of fans, which includes people of non-English speaking dialogue. Hip Hop has now reached all parts of the world affecting people with more hardships in life. With Asia embracing the same culture, the dramatic impact especially influenced to idealism of young youths.

Fashion has played a wide role in representing and portraying the personality of the individual. In Asia people have taken part and resemblance in American culture. Such clothing such as long baggy T-shirts, caps, hoodies are common trends related towards the music genre. A wide fashion industry dedicates themselves in producing the exact the fashion for the particular audiences, such brands as Stussy, Zoo York, Kikstyo G-Star and Stray.



Thx for reading again this week, and read all my other buddies posts : )

Next week ill be posting about another Asian band that is widely known la , tyty xie xie all that good stuff !

kayu's week 2 post (I no its a bit late coz technical error)

Hi guys, this is the second week for us to process our particular topic. This time I found an awesome example to show the influence of Chinese pop music, and here we have Jay Chow. I can tell that most of the Asian would know who is he, and even some parts of western people would know who is Jay as well.



For his biography, Jay Chow is actually from Taiwanese, but doesn’t matter what, from my aspect, I will vote him as the first choice to represent Chinese pop music. In fact, he is not a singer only, but also work as a musician, producer, actor and director. According to what has he done to music field, his potential and passion to music, Jay used to win the World Music Award for 4 times. (Come on man, its 4 times, u know 4 times. Guess how hard is it to obtain this award). Jay came out started working with music as his job since 1998. Since, his talent of song writing and piano playing skills was somehow discovered in a talent contest.

He is kind of different from the other song writer, since he likes combining Chinese and Western music style to form a new element of music and song, such as R&B, rock, pop genres. Those are all the style that he would like to put in his music. Forgot to mention one thing, and this is also one of the reasons that Jay became that successful and famous. It is where his songs are not only about love. (Ask yourself a question, do you realize that most of the songs you listen to are about love, or fall in love and stuff like this?) But for Jay himself, he tries to tell some more different kinds of stories through music, and therefore he puts in issues of domestic violence, war, and urbanization in the songs. This new feature works out very well.

Since he first came out, he started producing one album in each year. However, all albums come with at least 10 new songs and no old song repeated from pervious albums. Beside making songs, he recently produced few films which are directed by him as well, such as Initial D, Secret, Curse of the Golden Flower and so on. Moreover, His movies are promoted to Western Culture as well.



According to my research, factors indicated by Jay would somehow influence youth culture. However, he doesn’t effect because he is good looking or good dancing skill, like the other Korean pop star, Rain, but his new idea of songs writing and MTV (Music Video) making. As I mentioned before, he means to combine Chinese and western style together, and this feature can be seen more easier through his MTV. Jay would try to invite people from different countries to star his MTVs. Sometimes, he also creates new feeling with using both culture style, like Chinese dancer with fully western hip hot dressing and western dancers dress up like in the other way around. One more, the location he picks for his MTV is also the point to deserve compliment. Since Jay chooses world wild spot to star his MTV just to let audiences to feel and understand more about his songs.

Finally, I think not only youth is influenced, but also current song writers are still trying to learn his skill in this field to improve themselves. However, back to our topic, I reckon Jay is trying to let Asian youth understand more about other western music culture through the interaction of communication with audiences in ‘Chinese’ way, as in like Jay himself is Chinese, and what he does is to show that it is possible to combine different music culture, old and new fashion, to form another new music style. (Think about there is music which is played by an erhu fiffle (Chinese violin) and violin, and imagine what kind of special outcomes will you get.)

S.H.E

Hi, everyone. I am Fanli. Now, I will introduce a famous Taiwan girl singer group called S.H.E. This group is made up by Selina Ren, Hebe Tian, and Ella Chen.


In 2001, they released the first album called “Girls Dorm”. This album aroused great attention. The audience memorizes these three beautiful and cute girls. Their business success leads S.H.E to take part in every kind of activities in every aspect. There is no doubt that S.H.E stands for a kind of confidence, a kind of energy, a kind of glamour. S.H.E gives a great influence on the youth in China.


Some of their songs delivery a strong message: people should overcome whatever difficulties in life. Sunshine in life will come out one day. It gives really positive influence to the youth to do their best in their golden moment in life. One of S.H.E fans said to the reporter: “S.H.E‘s songs encourage me to be strong, to be actively face life and study!”


As we know, Selina, Hebe and Ella all come from ordinary families. Their success is due to their own efforts. In the course of becoming famous starts, their stories effectively prove that confidence and good life attitude are vital to be successful. This also shows huge influence to the modern young people.

I like S.H.E not only their good music, but also a kind of inspirit to delivery active energy.