Another trip to BOOKOFF, another list of crucial Japanese pop albums, this time by Kitanaka Masakazu: Jポップを創ったアルバム―1966‐1995. The picks, with some marginal exceptions, are fairly conventional (his inclusion of SDP and Boredoms is pretty cool, though). Kitanaka writes about 4 pages per entry trying to place each album in historical context.
But without any further ado, the associated YouTube Playlist:
I very much enjoyed Bruce Sterling's new "paranormal romance," Love is Strange. Prospective readers should be forewarned that it comprises three sections with rather different tones: a sweet ironic love story on the island of Capri (parts made me think it was a more self-aware 2010 tech version of Nantonaku Kurisutaru); a heavier, brooding (though still satiric) section based in Seattle and Italy; and a completely bonkers time-out-of-joint story (here the "paranormal" stuff really gets going) based in "Brazil."
Given my EH fixation, the Brazilian pop voodoo aspect of the book was a natural hook and while Sterling never mentions Mário de Andrade by name, Sterling's São Paulo is definitely a "Hallucinated City." I'd be interested to know if he read any 1920s Brazilian surrealism along the way. Needing to reassure myself that São Paulo was a real place, I took a long ride down a banal section of Rod. Anchieta (virtually, of course, via Streetview...)
Sterling tracks global pop music trends on his blog and references a couple of specific Brazilian trends in the book, which I immediately looked up: Baile Funk and the Abravanista movement. I like the sound of the former, though for my age and temperament, the "popozuda" element is a bit too pronounced. When I looked up "Abravanista," (Sterling's own post was my first hit), I immediately recognized something I already knew (but didn't know the word). He was talking about Cibelle!
My own "discovery" of Cibelle was accidental, stumbled upon during an investigation of YouTubed versions of Lully's Atys (the goddess Cybèle is a main character). [One of the arias from Atys was part of EH's repertoire]. Like Sterling I was immediately para-socially smitten. Electro-acoustics, Tropicalistic arrangements, wildlife field samples, a tool-kit of unusual percussion instruments and a mega-charismatic, super smart but down-to-earth diva. Her "Minha Neguinha" may just be a perfect song.
Oh and she's very funny.
And she has collaborated with someone already featured on this blog--the amazing iara rennó, interpreter of Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma and, coming full circle, fan of Elsie Houston.
This is not a review of Michael K. Bourdaghs's book Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon, though I can say right here that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book covers a number of themes related to the US-Japan cultural nexus that I have often thought of writing about. Fortunately someone with real Japanese language skills and cultural knowledge got there first. (I'm still working on the Shonen Knife-Boredoms paper I conceived 15 years ago...). It is probably the best book ever written about the concerns I've based this blog around.
Instead of a review, I'm providing a set of companion YouTube playlists linked to book chapters. I found that having the actual music at hand helped to understand Bourdaghs's cultural analyses. You can also find the Kurosawa films referenced in the book on commercial streaming services. I've found in my personal experience that the videos comprising these kinds of playlists can have short shelf-lives. I don't plan to do any updating so I apologize in advance for any deleted videos. Even though I've embedded them here, if you don't read Japanese you might find it easier to go directly to the full playlists hosted on YouTube (I've included English language titles there).
Playlist 1. Chapters 1 and 2. Immediate pre-war to immediate post-war. Kasagi Shizuko and Misora Hibari.
I'm just back from Japan, where I bought a brand new CD Journal "Mook," titled Nippon no Uta. The editors asked 100 relatively prominent people to provide a best song list (these are listed with accompanying essays--the number of songs on each list varies considerably). I drew upon the editors' summary of the lists to put together an overall top song playlist on YouTube.
The song appearing on the most lists (11 out of 100) was the Folk Crusaders' "Kaette kita yopparai," a song I've always dismissed as a novelty but one that apparently has a special place in the hearts of many Japanese people growing up during the late 1960s, early 1970s. Judging from the essays the song was received more as Sgt. Pepper than Alvin & the Chipmunks and its dark comic story (man drives drunk, dies, goes to heaven, gets kicked out of heaven for drinking too much, wakes up in the middle of a field) has its own anarchic appeal. If you listen until the end you will hear the signature anarchic move--Buddhist death chant into Beatles chorus.
It will be no surprise that Kyu Sakamoto's "Ue o muite arukou" also ranks high. He shows up a couple more times in the top 50. Please feel free to skip if you've heard that one just a few too many times...
Here's the playlist, embedded below. (Given ongoing copyright claims it is likely more than one of these videos will be deleted in the near future.)
Marston's new Elsie Houston CD is a thing of beauty. It is as comprehensive as one could ever expect, including recordings from each stage of her career, and the sound quality--newly restored by the geniuses at Marston--is terrific for tracks this old.
The recordings include her set of Villa-Lobos Serestas from 1928, a sampling of Brazilian and Paris recordings from the early 1930s, her Liberty Music Shop sides from the late 1930s, and her main commercial release--Elsie Houston Sings Brazilian Songs, from 1941. But the reason this is a must-get for Elsie Houston fans (and music historians in general) is the inclusion of a series of never-before-released test tracks from the Liberty Music Shop as well as an unpublished set of de Falla songs, "Siete Canciones Populares Españolas."
The new LMS tracks are:
"Toada P'ra Você" by Oscar Lorenzo Fernández
"Xango" by Villa-Lobos
"Villancio Andaluz," "Villanacio Gallego," and "Villancio Castellano," by Joaquín Nin
"Sur l'herbe" by Ravel
"Quand je Chante Cette Melodie" by Nilvar
According to the liner notes, Elsie Houston handed the LMS test pressing to her friend (and photographer), Marcus Blechman, a few days before her suicide. The disc is lost but a tape remains, the source of these tracks.
For better or worse, I can see quite a bit of my own work informing the liner notes (for which I get a thanks in the acknowledgements), which is concerning simply because my own knowledge of EH is so tentative and fragmentary. At the same time, the notes provide some splendid new (to me) pieces of information--including an ironic twist to the financial crisis that pushed Elsie Houston to take her own life. Apparently, a large check from a Georgetown arts patron was in the mail.
I was pleasantly surprised (to say the least) to stumble across this recent video of Brazilian artist, Iara Rennó, performing the Elsie Houston standard, "Cadê Minha Pomba-rola."
From Elsie Houston to Carmen Miranda by Iara Rennó from MOCHILLA on Vimeo.
(I'd forgotten the song translates to "Where is my turtle-dove?" or more to be more ornithologically specific, "Where is my ruddy ground-dove?"). Rennó is a particular fan of the Brazilian art scene in the 1920s and 30s, thus the Elsie Houston tribute.
Incidentally, Marston is getting ready to release a comprehensive Elsie Houston CD, which will apparently include the some of her earliest recordings in addition to the better-known Brazilian Songs album.
Here is a longer excerpt from the opera from what is apparently a more recent production.
This is the kind of thing the American Repertory Theater has been staging recently (in fact, Rennó's sinewy confidence as a performer reminds me a bit of Amanda Palmer, star of the ART's production of Cabaret). I wonder if anyone from the ART is listening...
[Note: this post replaces a somewhat more elaborate version that Blogger seems to have lost in its great meltdown last week. If and when the old version comes back, I'll delete this one] Song 3. "Gomen Nasai" sung by Richard Bowers. (I couldn't find a YouTube version). You can listen to the track via original Beware of the Blog post.
"Gomen Nasai" is perhaps THE classic example of the GI song. Written by and for Americans stationed in Japan (and marketed to the Japanese public on that basis), its title is a common Japanese phrase used to request forgiveness, including situations when one is turning down a romantic overture. It is a phrase that GIs in Japan were probably quite accustomed to hearing. In this case its use is reversed so that it is the English-speaker asking forgiveness in order to repair a relationship with a (in this case explicitly) Japanese lover. The use of the native phrase shows a willingness to accommodate and the beginnings of an intercultural attitude. The fact that most versions began with some "oriental" sound (Chinese gongs, or the Japanese folk tune "Sakura Sakura" in Bower's version) maintained its "exoticism," nevertheless...
"Gomen Nasai" was a modest hit in the United States and became something of a vocal standard among American singers. A brief run through its varieties in iTunes reveals recordings by Slim Gaillard, Eddy Howard, Margaret Whiting, Sammy Kaye, David Hughes, and the Club Nisei Orchestra. And Harry Belafonte, for which we do have a YouTube version (though I suspect not for long).
(Bowers, an African American NCO from New Jersey, by the way, has better Japanese pronunciation than Belafonte)
The relative success of a song called "Gomen Nasai" in the United States, it should be noted, was a fact not missed in Japan.
HERE'S THE THING
One of the many early 1950s recordings of "Gomen Nasai," was by the 16-year old (!) Japanese singer, Chiemi Eri. I have not actually heard this recording but it is documented in the Federal Records discography. It was the B-side of "Pretty-Eyed Baby," a song that IS available on YouTube in both English
and Japanese versions.
The American version is credited to "Chiemi Eri and GI Joe." I don't know who "GI Joe" really was (the YouTube uploader credits the Chuck Miller Trio, though there is no other documentation of this). If the recording of "Gomen Nasai" is like "Pretty-Eyed Baby," it is all Eri, thus reversing the original dramatic context and returning the "I'm sorry" part to the Japanese female speaker (and re-orientalizing such phrases as "my butterfly heart.")
Chiemi Eri, it should be noted, was a pioneer Japanese cross-over into the post-war US musical marketplace. While there was surely some novelty connected to her success, it is also clear that she had the musical chops to sing with groups like the Count Basie Orchestra and the Delta Rhythm Boys.
It would also appear that she herself, known by the troops as "Ellie," was a product of the post-war GI music scene. It is this context that allowed the development of her signature style--singing in both Japanese and English--and her success for different reasons in both countries.
Song 4. "The Soba Song," sung by Hibari Misora.
"The Soba Song," known as "Charumera Sobaya" in Japan, is so rich with meaning it may just blow the doors off this intercultural theme. In fact, it has come to symbolize (and I think this was the intention from the beginning) crazy cultural mishmashes. Here is a YouTubed taste.
Written by Bobby Norton, it is a C&W take on a Japanese topic--the traveling ramen maker who pushes his cart around announcing "O-soba, O-soba!" blowing a tune on a specialized double-reed horn called a "charumera." (The violin/kokyu? figure at the beginning/end of the song is supposed to represent a typical charumera phrase.) Note, "ramen" is categorized in Japan as a Chinese food and was apparently known as "shina soba" (recognize that banned term?) in the immediate postwar era. Charumera is now a popular brand of instant ramen that trades off of the nostalgic imagery.
The singer is Hibari Misora, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese singer of her era. Like Chiemi Eri, she was 16 at the time of the recording, though Hibari had been a popular singer since the age of 12. Hibari sings in both Japanese and English, though she's clearly not in her element in the English verses and the lyrics may be difficult to make out. Here's a video of someone singing the English verses clearly.
As you can tell, the song uses the classic food-as-nation trope, the sobaya as both a means of understanding a foreign culture and as a delightful, slightly salacious ("soba slurping time"), point-of-entry. (I don't know if Bobby Norton is also responsible for the Japanese lyrics, though it would be pretty cool if he was...)
HERE'S THE THING
In the China Night version of "The Soba Song" there is a stunning musical break which suddenly transitions from C&W guitar plucking to pentatonic kokyu/koto(?) and then suddenly back to C&W again--an abrupt contrast between "East" and "West" that nevertheless shows the commonalities of guitar/koto and fiddle/kokyu. This syncretic moment has made it attractive to other artists in the cross-cultural mode, the most celebrated version provided by the 3 Mustaphas 3.
The 3 Mustaphas 3 version swaps out the pentatonic "Japanese" passage for something more "middle eastern," but, nevertheless, maintains the deliberate cultural juxtaposition.
My favorite version is by a contemporary Japanese group, "Kiwi and the Papaya Mangos," which adds a host of other musical styles, including Brazilian Forro, to the mix.
And amplifying the remarkable kitsch value of the original, we have the 5.6.7.8's releasing their version a couple of months ago.
The a-side of the 5.6.7.8's single is "Sho-jo-ji (Hungry Raccoon)," another kitschy song from the "oriental pop" genre in the 1950s. It is based on a children's song from the 1920s, but recorded in an English version (complete with undifferentiated "oriental" sound and exaggerated "Japanese" accent) by Eartha Kitt.
I think you will find the 5.6.7.8's version is an improvement
