Japanese jazz, "j-jazz"

"To mark the release of 'J Jazz: Deep jazz from Japan 1969-1984' on BBE records on 23 Feb 2018, this is a two hour mix feat tracks from the compilation plus other J jazz killers. The compilation was put together by myself and Mike 'Bacoso' Peden. Heavyweight post-Coltrane modal/fusion/spiritual deepness from some of the rarest Japanese jazz albums ever produced."

https://www.mixcloud.com/TonyTales/j-jazz-deep-modern-jazz-from-japan-1969-1984/

A little peripheral but I'm putting it here because it never garnered much attention here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb4VjeiIU0M

i still like the smooth jazz that intersects with city pop. this sounds like it could be one of the better tracks on a sonic the hedgehog soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6NrWLUHr1I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTW8J1e8Fo

required:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBw5hSvK_Sk

wow is that walrdon / hino good! thanks, federico.

teruto soejima wrote a "history of japanese free jazz" in 2002. i wonder if it will ever be translated.

https://www.thewire.co.uk/news/31987/japanese-free-jazz-critic-teruto-soejima-dies-age-83

also i've been meaning to read this:

https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/Books/978-0-8223-2721-9_pr.jpg

Japan’s jazz community—both musicians and audience—has been begrudgingly recognized in the United States for its talent, knowledge, and level of appreciation. Underpinning this tentative admiration, however, has been a tacit agreement that, for cultural reasons, Japanese jazz “can’t swing.” In Blue Nippon E. Taylor Atkins shows how, strangely, Japan’s own attitude toward jazz is founded on this same ambivalence about its authenticity.
Engagingly told through the voices of many musicians, Blue Nippon explores the true and legitimate nature of Japanese jazz. Atkins peers into 1920s dancehalls to examine the Japanese Jazz Age and reveal the origins of urban modernism with its new set of social mores, gender relations, and consumer practices. He shows how the interwar jazz period then became a troubling symbol of Japan’s intimacy with the West—but how, even during the Pacific war, the roots of jazz had taken hold too deeply for the “total jazz ban” that some nationalists desired. While the allied occupation was a setback in the search for an indigenous jazz sound, Japanese musicians again sought American validation. Atkins closes out his cultural history with an examination of the contemporary jazz scene that rose up out of Japan’s spectacular economic prominence in the 1960s and 1970s but then leveled off by the 1990s, as tensions over authenticity and identity persisted.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/blue-nippon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SfQaabHBqY

is there a Japanese equivalent of Spotify I can subscribe to?

NHK radio has a weekly jazz program that i think you can stream:

http://www4.nhk.or.jp/jazz/#

That Atkins book is especially interesting on pre-war jazz -- especially the role of Philippine bands as role models and on Shanghai as a proving ground for Japanese players. He's also thorough on the war years and the grim ways musicians embraced or adapted to extreme nationalism. What we'd generally recognize as jazz didn't really get going in Japan until the Occupation years, when the scene shifted from dance halls to coffee shops. Atkins is a historian so his emphasis is more on the social contexts than on analysis of the music, but he seems to cover all the big-name players prior to 1980 or so.

The Japanese quest for jazz authenticity is pretty fascinating and puts concerns about authenticity within American music in a constructively weird perspective.

cool, i will have to check that out. tbh the premise sounded kind of insufferable to me, it's nice to know that the "argument" or w/e of the book is potentially as interesting as the facts i had hoped to gleam in spite of academic handwringing over "authenticity"

the volume that atkins edited -- "jazz planet" -- is positively packed with essays that each look super interesting. but that's for a different thread.

also, it looks like michael molasky (who made a contribution to "jazz planet") is working on a translation of a book he wrote originally in japanese -- "the jazz culture of postwar japan: film, literature, subculture"

https://apps.cla.umn.edu/directory/profiles/molasky

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%88%A6%E5%BE%8C%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%BA%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%E2%80%95%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB%E3%83%BB%E6%96%87%E5%AD%A6%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%83%A9-%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF-%E3%83%A2%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BC/dp/4791762010/

gleam = glean lol

Another nice one,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYxrq5UV_z8

Also interesting to hear about Jazz becoming popular during the Occupation in Japan. I recall something similar being the case - though pls correct me if wrong - in Germany while troops were stationed during/after WWII and with jazz clubs opening to cater to them.

Comp with more of an epic scope than the (awesome) BBE one, listening now and very much enjoying:

http://youtu.be/dUwUvZEuGGs

I wrote about the BBE and Jazzman compilations back in April. Now it turns out the very rare album Tachibana by the Tohru Aizawa Quartet, one track from which appears on the J-Jazz comp, is being reissued next month. I pre-ordered it on Bandcamp:

https://tohruaizawaquartet.bandcamp.com/album/tachibana

Listening to the J-Jazz Como a lot this week and Eiji Nakayama’s Aya’s Samba is a wonderful piece. Almost disarmingly simple and slightly melancholic but beautiful textured.

Just got this press release:

BBE Music is proud to present the next instalment in the J Jazz Masterclass Series: ‘East Plants’ by Takeo Moriyama, one of Japan’s finest jazz drummers.
A genuine ‘under the radar’ album known only to a handful of Japanese jazz collectors, ‘East Plants’ is now available once more, reissued for the first time as a double 180g LP, with exact reproductions of the original artwork, obi strip and insert. It also comes with the original notes fully translated. ‘East Plants’ is also available as CD and digital formats. This reissue is fully endorsed by Takeo Moriyama himself.
Originally released in 1983 on the Japanese VAP label, ‘East Plants’ is an essential album in the J Jazz canon. It’s an album that distils several key characteristics of Moriyama’s music: clearly articulated and inventive rhythms, open yet orderly arrangements, and an accessible groove balanced with a graceful control.

the Tohru Aizawa Quartet record is (mostly) awesome. some seriously fiery playing.

That Takeo Moriyama is great. The two epics that bookend it in particular.

this is it! (satoko fujii, natsuki tamura, takashi itani) 1538 album. opens up with this absolutely smouldering maelstrom that I've repeated a couple of times now, without listening to the rest of the album yet.

public bath press has just put out a first-ever english translation of teruto soejima's landmark history of japanese free jazz:

https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1820x1280:format=jpg/path/sebbe8eddd3189d65/image/ifeb8f616fab5f063/version/1545123392/image.jpg

This book, the only history of free jazz in Japan, has been reprinted many times in Japan and is finally available to readers overseas in English translation. From its earliest stirrings in the 1960s until it reached international recognition in the 1970s and after, free jazz in Japan is a unique music that has found its perfect scribe. Soejima Teruto was a writer who fell in love with a music and devoted his life to it as promoter, critic, label owner, tour organizer, and much more. All new photos in this edition, none used from the original Japanese volume. Introduction by Otomo Yoshihide.

you can get it here:

https://www.publicbathpress.com/

this sounds soooo good right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R62xjHtOi0

also i finally got my copy of the soejima teruto book i posted about above and boy is it great, just super interesting and full of great recommendations for music of course

i'll probably be posting some of those things here if i remember to, almost tempted to put together a discography or maybe just post a playlist online somewhere

There's a second volume of the BBE J-Jazz compilation coming in September - you're better off buying a physical copy than just getting it from Bandcamp, though, 'cause they only licensed I think 5 tracks for digital and the 2CD set has 15. I pre-ordered mine already.

https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/j-jazz-volume-2-deep-modern-jazz-from-japan-1969-1983

did they do the thing again where there is vinyl-exclusive content ?

oh it's the other way around this time (14 vinyl tracks, 15 CD tracks)

This Hiroshi Suzuki album keeps coming up on my youtube recommendations - and according to this guy lots of other people's.

Few albums better illustrate the magic of YouTube as a music platform...

And it's pretty great, even more when I realised the fellow was playing the trobone.

There's one other album on discogs but seems to be very little else.

https://youtu.be/b8YLcVFmowY

nice!

I haven't seen Cat on my recs list for a while since I stopped doing J music deep dives, however, I still get Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi all the time, it's up to 12m hits, insanity.

27 million actually. Crazy.

Still loving the Takeo Moriyama

Listing to Japanese radio this afternoon and they were interviewing the leader of Soil and ‘Pimp’ sessions was jntroduing their new album recorded at roni Scott’s. He played ‘Space Drifter’ - well worth looking out for when it comes out on Tuesday.

https://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/-/Artist/A018653.html

Aspirations of Madness, Blank Forms' fifth collection of archival, unpublished, or newly translated texts, takes its title from a series of interviews with Japanese free jazz pioneer Masayuki Takayangi that were published in Japanese in 1975-76 and are published here in English for the first time. The interviews provide a rare look at Takayanagi's eccentric practice and personality, both long under-recognized by audiences outside (and often, inside) of Japan.

https://www.forcedexposure.com/App_Themes/Default/Images/product_images/product_page/B/BLANK005BK_PROD.jpg

https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/blank-forms-blank-forms-vol-5-aspirations-of-madness-book/BLANK.005BK.html

Bought an LP from 1982 by an outfit called Jazz that's named 'Live Jazz.' I got it on a hunch because it's on the Better Days label and features Yasuaki Shimizu and other members of Mariah. It's a little experimental and has some really bizarre spoken-word bits. As you can gather, the release is pretty unsearchable... just wondering if anyone has heard it or knows anything more?

this ?

https://www.discogs.com/Jazz-Jazz-Live/release/7168074

Haha yep, and that's about all I saw on it.

https://img.cdandlp.com/2017/01/imgL/118515252.jpg

this rules

cooldix, did you ever find any more info about the "live jazz" LP ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFvwKoWsyI

Yosuke Yamashita Trio ‎– Concert In New Jazz - ぐがん [Gugan] 1969

feat. thread favorite takeo moriyama on drums

Nice revive! Picked up a few of Yamashita's albums - really cool. Also, kinda hard to find English info for for some of his stuff.

On that subject, I never did find anything more about the Live Jazz album, budo jeru. All good,

Been into selected albums by Akira Sakata and Masahiko Togashi in a big way lately. The latter's "Spiritual Nature" is a good, cheap entry point if you're coming at things from a Japanese ambient/environmental music kinda angle (though it gets noisy in parts).

My copy of that "Free Jazz in Japan" book just arrived. Stoked! Thanks for the tip off from way back, budo jeru!

awesome, you're quite welcome !