Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - [article] Soulhead: We are harmony geeks

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One girl does the singing, one girl the rap. If this sounds like a familiar formula in contemporary J-pop, Soulhead, who are currently celebrating their fifth anniversary with a nationwide tour, number among the better duos.

The two feisty sisters from Hokkaido are known for a higher-than-average standard of singing and for their harmonizing, as can be heard on their best-of release, which came out earlier this year. Among the soulful vocals, bursts of rap, heavy bass lines and beats on the compilation, you might even be tempted to call their music J-R&B. But if they catch you saying that, you'll be in for a tongue lashing.

"I hate that. It sounds awful," says Yoshika, the duo's main singer. "Can you really put a 'J' in front of hip-hop and R&B like that? We still don't think of what we are performing as R&B or hip-hop."

Whether the "J" represents a copying or an appropriation rather than simply a particular genre as played in Japan, for Soulhead it gives the impression of something light, something second best, while to some extent also trivializing the original genre.

"It's like you're stuck at No. 2, stuck at the wannabe level," rapper-singer Tsugumi says. "Trying to make things sound easy to understand by putting a 'J' in front of it, that's a bad part of Japan. What we're making is our own interpretation of music, our own Soulhead genre. Soulhead sounds..."

"Yes, it's Japanese, but without any 'J' in front of it!" Yoshika says, dovetailing her remarks with her sister's.

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