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Concept
Enka
Summary
is a Japanese music genre considered to resemble traditional Japanese music stylistically. Modern enka, however, is a relatively recent musical form, which adopts a more traditional musical style in its vocalism than ryūkōka music, popular during the prewar years.
Modern enka, as developed in the postwar era, is a form of sentimental ballad music. Some of the first modern enka singers were Hachiro Kasuga, Michiya Mihashi, and Hideo Murata. The revival of enka in its modern form is said to date from 1969, when Keiko Fuji made her debut. The most famous male enka singers are Shinichi Mori and Kiyoshi Hikawa.
The term enka was first used to refer to political texts set to music which were sung and distributed by opposition activists belonging to the Freedom and People's Rights Movement during the Meiji period (1868–1912) as a means of bypassing government curbs on speeches of political dissent – and in this sense the word is derived from "enzetsu no uta", meaning "speech song."
Another theory holds that modern enka means "enjiru uta", meaning "performance song."
The genre called enka is also said to be an expedient classification for record labels as well as J-pop. For example, Harumi Miyako, who has been usually considered as an enka singer, said "I don't think that I sing 'enka'" and "In fact, there was no such term as 'enka' when I debuted."
Modern enka'''s mainstream scale is called ヨナ抜き短音階 or "Minor Scale without Four and Seven (fa and te)," and is a modified version of ヨナ抜き長音階 or "Major Scale without Four and Seven (Fa and Si)," which came from an older Japanese scale, the "Ryo Scale". One of the earliest Japanese songs that was said to have partly used it is Rentarō Taki's "Kōjō no Tsuki," which was called 唱歌 in the Meiji period. The seventh- scale degree is not used in "Kōjō no Tsuki", a song of B minor.
The music, based on the pentatonic scale, has some resemblance to blues. Enka lyrics are usually written similarly around the themes of love and loss, loneliness, enduring hardships, and persevering in the face of difficulties, even suicide or death.
Official source
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