Ian Condry (condry@mit.edu)
Ian Condry s a cultural anthropologist of Japan and professor at MIT since 2002. He is the author of two books, Hip-Hop Japan and The Soul of Anime, both of which explore globalization from below. The books are available for free, thanks to Creative Commons and Duke University Press: mit.academia.edu/IanCondry. In the fall of 2019, he launched the MIT Spatial Sound Lab, a community production studio for immersive, multiperspective, sonic experimentation. Among the goals is to provide a space for using sound to disrupt hierarchies, reduce inequalities, and cross borders. He is co-organizer of Dissolve Music, a sound conference and music festival, in 2018 and 2020 (mitdissolve.com). Since 2018, he is the radio DJ for Near and Far, a Japanese hip-hop show, on WMBR 88.1FM Cambridge, and online at wmbr.org, alternating Wednesdays, 6-7pm. Archive at mixcloud.com/iancondry. Since 2006, he has organized the MIT / Harvard Cool Japan research project, which explores the critical potential of popular culture. He is currently working on a book about musicians on the margins in Tokyo, Boston, and Berlin.
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The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story
Ian Condry explores the emergence of anime, Japanese animated film and television, as a global cultural phenomenon.
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Post-3/11 Japan and the Radical Recontextualization of Value: Music, Social Media, and End-Around Strategies for Cultural Action
“Music provides a model for cultural movements that do not attack power directly, but rather operate through a slippery, insidious, “end-around” strategy.”
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Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization
Ian Condry interprets Japan’s hip-hop scene, how a music and culture that originated halfway around the world is appropriated and remade.
