Jazz, Japan, Analog: A Conversation

Mark Katz; Kevin Fellezs

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2026)

The Bridge

Jazz, Japan, Analog: A Conversation

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Mark Katz,
Kevin Fellezs

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Mark Katz
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bio

Author Biography

Mark Katz is John P. Barker Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book is Rap and Redemption on Death Row (2024), co-authored with incarcerated musician Alim Braxton. His other books include Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music (2004, rev. 2010), Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ (2010); Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World (2019), and Music and Technology: A Very Short Introduction (2022). He was co-editor of Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History (2012) and served as editor of the Journal of the Society for American Music (2012–15). He is the Founding Director of the U.S. State Department hip hop cultural diplomacy program, Next Level (established 2014). He is currently preparing a third edition of his first book, Capturing Sound, and in 2027 will be in residence at Yonsei University in Seoul as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar, where he will be researching analog culture in Korea.

Kevin Fellezs
Bio

Author Biography

Kevin Fellezs is an Associate Professor of Music (ethnomusicology) at Columbia University. His recent book, Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific (Duke University Press), is a transnational study of the ways in which Hawaiian belonging is articulated by Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and non-Hawaiian guitarists in Hawai‘i, California, and Japan. The book was awarded a 2021 Honorable Mention for the Best Subsequent Book award from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. His first book, Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion (Duke University Press, 2011), is a study of fusion (jazz-rock-funk) music of the 1970s, which was awarded the 2012 Woody Guthrie Book Award. He has published articles on music from Hawaiian slack key to jazz, heavy metal, Broadway musicals, and enka in Jazz Perspectives, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the Journal of the Society for American Music, among others, as well as in numerous anthologies.

Published 2026-07-29

How to Cite

Katz, M., & Fellezs, K. (2026). Jazz, Japan, Analog: A Conversation. Journal of Jazz Studies, 17(1), 105–118. Retrieved from https://jjs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/jjs/article/view/366

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Abstract

This conversation was inspired by Mark Katz’s recent research on jazz listening cafés, or jazz kissa. This work, which will appear in the next edition of Capturing Sound (University of California Press), is an extension of hislong-standing interest in the relationship between music and technology. It also grows out of a larger project on global analog cultures. Kevin Fellezs joined Katz for a lively conversation on Zoom on February 19, 2026. They began by exchanging stories about record collecting and crate digging, which set a comfortable tone for the conversation that followed. The journal is grateful to Mark for generously sharing his work and to Kevin for agreeing to serve as interviewer.

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