First released in a single that was reported to have sold more than two million copies in Japan, “Minatochō burūsu” is a song typical of mūdo kayō whose melancholic expressions often adapt elements of blues and sentimental ballads for lyrics on the heartbreak of romance. Featuring vocal techniques such as ko-bushi as well as accompaniment parts written for instruments such as saxophone and steel guitar, “Minatochō burūsu” earned Mori Shin’ichi (1947– ) the “best vocalist” recognition in the eleventh Japan Record Awards in 1969. It became an enka standard whose renderings included those by eminent singers such as Mihashi Michiya (1930–1996), Ishikawa Sayuri (1958– ), and Sakamoto Fuyumi (1967– ). Its popularity and critical success in Japan also inspired record companies in Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Jakarta to produce, market, and distribute its Mandarin, Hoklo, Cantonese, Thai, and Indonesian covers. Noting the quantity and variety of these covers as well as the multiple ways these covers were circulated across mediascapes in East and Southeast Asia during the Cold War, this paper uses these covers as examples to interrogate the logic of covering, reconsidering covering as: 1. a pragmatic response to restrictions on music-related or language-related material and information flows in particular locales; and 2. a business strategy that exploited the creative labor of lyricists and, to a slightly lesser extent, the multilingual talent of pop stars such as Teresa Teng (1953–1995).

French politicians and artists today are turning to cultural policies to address extremist politics, mitigate institutional mistrust, and counter anxieties about cultural loss. This is particularly visible in their reappropriation of folk music in Provence—a culturally diverse southeastern Mediterranean region grappling with a migrant crisis and growing far-right politics. Local politicians have inserted themselves into a long-standing conflict between two regional folk music movements—Occitan and Provençal—to promote different views of regional identity. Musicians, meanwhile, redefine these music cultures to speak to right- and left-leaning governing bodies as they build their careers and identities amidst shifting politics. Drawing on ethnographic research (2014-2023), this paper shows how musicians and politicians leverage regional folk musics in politically salient and ideologically driven ways.

Occitan musicians define themselves as innovative cosmopolitan professionals. Their eclectic aesthetics celebrate Mediterranean cultural exchange (yet compress cultural difference). Occitanistes eschew Provençal music as amateur “folklore” that promotes a 19^th century “ghost of a …White and single Provence” —a position some right-leaning politicians reinforce by subsidizing Provençal music to attract far-right voters. Occitan musicians thus appeal to policies that privilege professionalism and to politicians hoping to associate themselves with cultural diversity. Provençal musicians promote an arguably less aesthetically diverse vision of local folk music while critiquing the Occitan movement as ill-defined. Some mitigate far-right appropriations by nuancing Provençal identity as culturally specific, but not racist or closed. Musicians and politicians thus dance around identities and ideals to redefine artistic traditions to their own ends in an ever-shifting political landscape.

This paper explores Central Asia’s embrace of Russian dissident 'guitar poetry' (Smith, 1984) during the late Soviet period, and the expressive and political possibilities of the genre for one practitioner and his disciples in Tajikistan. Pioneered by legendary bards (in Russian, bardy) such as Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotskii, guitar poetry entailed the highly individualistic, and often deliberately unpolished, solo recitation of original texts to simple melodies and the sparse accompaniment of an acoustic guitar. Lidush Habib, the self-proclaimed 'first Vysotskii' of Tajik Badakhshan, adopted the aesthetics of guitar poetry and modelled his distinctive vocal style and stage comportment on those of his namesake. Like the Russian bards, he circulated his recordings through informal networks (e.g., magnitizdat), performed in unofficial spaces, and articulated experiences and perspectives not sanctioned by the Soviet state (cf. Daughtry 2006 and 2009, Platonov 2005 and 2012). Yet importantly, Habib also integrated local musical idioms and wrote in the minority language of Shughani, thus nativizing the genre while still capitalizing on its broader transnational valence as cosmopolitan and anti-establishmentarian (Djagalov 2013). This paper analyzes Habib’s recorded performances and public statements alongside the musical-literary and social praxis of contemporary bards from his region to show why—and how—Russian guitar poetry took root and continues to thrive in a place far from its origins. “Translating” musical dissent to local conditions has involved an alchemy of imitation and modification, yielding a powerful and durable resource for site-specific resistance.