What is Visual Kei?
Visual Kei (in Japanese: visual style) is a Japanese musical movement that focuses not only on the music but on a specific aesthetic and identity proposal. Hairstyles, makeup, and colorful outfits combined to create intricate and extravagant looks, with a generally androgynous style. This genre emerged in the late 80s, so we could say it has a lot of influence from the 80s western musical types like glam and new wave.
Music-wise, as well as in terms of their appearance, they are a blend of glam, heavy metal, gothic rock, electronic, and pop. There’s no clear music genre that unites all these bands, because what really defines them is the visual aspect.
The Visual Kei pioneer band in the 80s was X Japan, and in the 90s bands like L’Arc-en-Ciel, Malice Mizer, Dir En Grey, and The GazettE gave the movement more popularity.
How did I know this genre?
My awareness of this style came around the year 2000; I don’t remember a specific date. My mom and my younger sister started to like these bands and became so involved that they took Japanese courses. Also, a female friend from school and later university (my only metal friend at that time and with whom I went to many concerts) began to listen to these bands too, mostly because she liked the gothic look that some of them had.
In those years, I didn’t like these bands very much; they wouldn’t bother me, but they weren’t my style. I was more into heavier stuff like heavy, thrash, and black, since the Internet was just beginning. The music that I had access to (besides classic rock from my parents) was classic metal bands because of my friends, bands like Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Sepultura, Pantera, and a lot of Norwegian black metal like Dimmu Borgir, Enslaved, and Borknagar. So, for me, these Japanese bands, even though I was able to recognize their quality as musicians, I didn’t connect with them due to the fact that they sang in Japanese. Neither with the gothic aesthetic nor with the music, which was very different from what I was listening to at that moment.
Now, many years later, I’m still not a fan, yet this music brings me a nostalgic feeling since it reminds me of my mom (who is rocking in another dimension). I’m capable of appreciating this genre from a different perspective, yet always with a lingering feeling of sadness.
Final Thoughts
Besides my personal recollection regarding Visual Kei, I find it very valuable that all of these bands have taken clear Western influences in their music, yet adapted them with their own culture and identity. They sing mostly of their songs in their own language.
This is an example of what is wonderful and what I have always loved about music. They are immense movements, yet at the same time, so underground that the majority of people don’t even know that they exist. They see them all as screams and something weird, ignoring all the history, nuances that are behind, and how important they are to millions of people around the world.
As I always say, it’s not just music, it’s the soundtrack of our lives. It stays with us, no matter what, in our happiest and saddest moments, providing us strength to move forward. Sometimes it is our only friend (as Jim Morrison once said). It’s always there, unconditional, waiting for us to press play.