Quote:
Originally Posted by Corybobory
This question is like asking 'who do you think is more creative- Westerners or Asians?' (which esentially it is, wince Westerners generally make western music and Asians make Asian music....)
Which is why I think this question is kind of ridiculous. Creativity has to do with the individual, and once you analyze it in a group of that size it's incomparable.
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Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.
Though two of my favorite all time artists are Asian (namely Japanese) I still can't badmouth the entire Western music industry just for a lot of bad apples. I mean, take a look at Sufjan Stevens or St. Vincent, Murder by Death, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Placebo, The Dresden Dolls, Regina Spektor, Rammstein, OOMPH!, Blue Foundation, Portishead, Radiohead... they're all fantastic western acts whose Asian duplicates (or near cousins) I've yet to see. Of course I'm not saying there aren't Asian artists who dapple in the genres the bands above fall into, but I just haven't found them yet!
I still really strongly agree with Cory's point, though. This question is very vague because when you ask a question like this you have to take so many things into account: is the artist motivated by their own creative disposition to create music or are they a manufactured act who gets their songs and lyrics handed to them (effectively making them a mouthpiece for the songs and albums they churn out)? I'd say in terms of mainstream acts, Asian artists win hands down, but Asian artists
also have innovators in their genre. Just look at Dir en grey. They started out as a visual kei act and broke away from it by their third album--hell even on their second album they were experimenting with their sound. Today they sound totally unrecognizable from any other Japanese metal/rock band that's on the scene, and you can't really find their western equivalent, either.
Also, the west brought us the geniuses known as Frank Zappa and Mike Patton. Gotta give some love for that, those men were/are
phenomenal.