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Story by Karryn Cartelle

With Japan being the second largest market for music in the world, talented foreign bands like Monkey Majik and singers like Kat McDowell are grabbing a slice of the action. But how difficult is it to make your way in Japan’s music industry and what is going to set you apart from the rest?

Multi-cultural singer KAT sings in her music video “Rock’n roll boys club”. Courtesy of Binyl Records.

First off you need the right connections. If you’re a singer you might want to check out Dagmusic.

Interview with Dagmusic General Manager Chizu Iwaki

“(Dagmusic is) an agent for foreign singers, musicians, artists, composers, narrators, voice characters, etc, based in Tokyo. We provide singing, narration, etc., with music to Japanese clients. (The jobs) can be commercials, game software, or educational programs.”*

A recent Canon Camera commercial is one example of the type of work Dagmusic creates. They were responsible for the background music.

On jobs like this, as with all their jobs, Chizu believes professionalism, flexibility, and personality will get you ahead. With jobs through agencies like Dagmusic artists must remember the idea has already been created and a singer has to fit to the role the client wants—not the other way around.

If you want to keep your own creativity you may choose to go it alone. Superfunktion, a rising funk band who sings in English, has worked hard to get where they are. They first started by placing an ad for band members in Metropolis magazine. Once the group was formed they began by playing covers and performing in pubs before moving on to live houses and eventually creating their own original funk music.

Singer Todd Shymko of Superfunktion. Courtesy of Superfunktion.

Interview with Superfunktion members Todd Shymko and Marcel Albert

“We started playing open mic nights. You get our band to come and you get on stage. You get to know the club owners from doing open mic nights and you ask if there’s an opening, and if you can come play.”*

Kate Sikora, an American singer-songwriter, believes bands here are helpful towards each other and will invite fellow musicians to play with them at shows. She also thinks open mic nights are great for networking, breaking into the music scene, and if the bar owner likes your music you may get booked for your own night.

American singer Kate Sikora performs at Shibuya’s Pink Cow.

Singer Emi Evans from Freescape has been with her band for six years. From her experience she has found that lyrics that incorporate both English and Japanese are the most popular. With a combination of the two, Japanese people can understand and relate to the Japanese lyrics while also being intrigued by the English scattered throughout the song.

Freescape members Emi Evans and Hiroyuki Muneta perform at SuperDeluxe.

Regardless of language if you have a unique sound and want to sing originals, perhaps one way of getting started is to balance side jobs like singing corporate jingles with performing at local venues.

Interview with Superfunktion

“A lot of hard work and a little bit of luck. We’re just really lucky. You just kind of make friends. You ask if you can open for your friend’s band. Networking.”*

If you are a singer-songwriter here, make sure to check out our Open Mic Night YSK article for recommendations for great venues the host the liveliest of open mic nights here.

* Quotes have been slightly altered for print. For the accurate quotations, please refer to the video.

All Rights Reserved, Spinshell Inc.

Spinshell Reports are three minute episodes of useful information about visiting and living in Japan.

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2. Open Mic Nights
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4. Live Music Venues
5. Tokyo Club Scene: Large Venues

Tags: Dagmusic, Emi Evans, foreign musician, Freescape, japan, Kat McDowell, Kate Sikora, music, Superfunktion, Tokyo

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 23:08 and is filed under Spinshell Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.