The Japanese have always had the skillset of adopting other cultures’ strengths… tech, film & animation, scotch whiskey, baseball… and amplifying their qualities, repackaging them, and exporting them successfully. I think Japanese cosplay has shamed Americans. Jazz is no different, and the history is not only amazing and fascinating, the rabbit hole of Japanese Jazz could be life consuming, and certainly is for a few friends.
NPR link first: https://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2014/04/30/308275726/how-japan-came-to-love-jazz
That interview with Atkins is all you need, but I’ll summarize here…
This story map history of Japanese Jazz is fascinating, especially as Jazz was “enemy music” during WW2, but it leaked into Japanese society as GI wanted live entertainment and hired Japanese musicians to play for them on base. But it was already a big deal, with the first Jazz cafe listening “bar” opened in the 30s! It’s wild to think if the earthquake hadn’t happened in 1920’s Tokyo, how differently jazz would have spread, and how differently it would have sound versus the Osaka or Kobe sounds.
This was really my philosophical point about the notion of Jazz, and how it represented into and influenced the Japanese communities, namely because of the difference of how the societies worked. I would be lying if I hadn’t thought about the collectivist nature of Japanese culture vs the notion of improvisation, and standing out as an individual within a group. It’s a foreign concept, relatively, culturally, for most Japanese of the time.
From the above linked article:
“The cultural touch of Japan on its jazz music is much more unclear and relatively unexplored. Although many critics are only able to speculate what jazz means to the Japanese, they nearly always refute the notion of jazz representing freedom as it does in the United States. Longstanding jazz enthusiast and record collector Tony Higgins substantiates this idea while also providing a different perspective on the cultural meaning of jazz in Japan, stating”:
“Several years ago I interviewed the American bass player Gary Peacock. He lived and worked in Japan for several years in the late ’60s and early ’70s, moving there ostensibly to study macrobiotic cooking and meditation. But, of course, he ended up playing there. He told me that he hadn’t realized that at that time the notion of individuality in Japan was relatively alien. There was an amazing album called The Individualism of Gil Evans and he told me a story where he had to explain to Japanese musicians what was meant by individualism. Part of their culture was about maintaining the harmony of the group, not being an outsider. It’s different now, of course, but back then it wasn’t a fully formed idea. With that in mind, the music of the late ’60s to late ’70s, saw a lot of musicians trying to break away from that group mentality, that stifling of individuality, yet still remain within a coherent whole. They were trying to redefine the balance.” – Tony Higgins, UK-based jazz record collector
The whole story is here, but it’s an endless rabbit hole when you realize how much you love their music:
Here’s a group of embedded jazz albums and performances of note.
Toshiko Akiyoshi to start. =)
This gets love as it arrived in the mail today:
Ryo’s work is from the time of my birth:
AKIRA ISHIKAWA INTERLUDE
okay back to the programming:
And for the Hip Hop Jazz Genny… “Who says a jazz band can’t play dance music?”
Indigo Jam Unit:
These guys released about 25 albums in their 10 year run 2005 – 2016. This is one of the most beautiful songs… the salsa and melancholic mix is wild, and that brushwork!