{"id":138739,"date":"2022-01-12T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=138739"},"modified":"2022-01-12T19:18:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T17:18:04","slug":"how-japan-created-its-own-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/music-en\/how-japan-created-its-own-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"How Japan created its own jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Featured photo: Pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi in 1958. She is still active today at the age of 92.\u00a0Photograph: Everett Collection Historical\/Alamy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postwar Japan embraced the music of its former enemy \u2013 and, powered by anti-establishment feeling, remade it. As they find a new global audience, the country\u2019s jazz innovators explain what drove them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of Japanese jazz is about music and a movement, but also a nation\u2019s state of mind \u2013 a daring vision of a better future after the second world war, sounded out on piano, drums and brass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jazz is a distinctly American art form \u2013 the US\u2019s greatest cultural achievement, in fact, along with hip-hop \u2013 and a healthy scene had formed in the 1920s and 30s as American players toured the clubs of Tokyo, Kobe and Osaka. But Japan had historically been an insular nation \u2013 its policy of sakoku, which for more than two centuries severely limited contact with the outside world, had only ended in the 1850s \u2013 and an increasingly nationalist government, feeling jazz diluted Japanese culture, began to crack down. By the second world war, \u201cthe music of the enemy\u201d was outlawed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the country\u2019s surrender, occupying forces oversaw sweeping reforms. American troops brought jazz records with them; Japanese musicians picked up work entertaining the troops. There was a proliferation of jazz kissa (cafes), a distinctly Japanese phenomenon where locals could sit and listen to records for as long as they wanted. For some, jazz was the sound of modernity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those early postwar years, Japanese musicians were essentially copying the Americans they admired. \u201cThat\u2019s what you do,\u201d says Tony Higgins, co-curator of the J Jazz reissues series. \u201cYou start off imitating and then you assimilate and then you innovate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Higgins and his fellow curator Mike Peden, both Britons, are longtime collectors who have spent vast quantities of time tracking down records, investigating labels and poring over obi strips (a band of paper wrapped around Japanese LPs). For the past few years, the pair have worked on Japanese jazz reissues for BBE Records, typically drawing from the late-1960s to the mid-80s, a period of fantastic innovation when a generation of musicians found their own voice. These releases have been part of a broader wave of Japanese jazz of the era reissued for western ears on labels such as Light in the Attic, Impex and We Release Jazz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Koichi
Power and passion \u2026 Koichi Matsukaze in 1978. Photograph: Shigeru Uchimaya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s humbling that there\u2019s a lot of people obsessed with this sort of music worldwide,\u201d says saxophonist Koichi Matsukaze. Matsukaze\u2019s 1976 album At the Room 427 is set to be reissued as part of the J Jazz Masterclass series this month, and follows the 2018 reissue of his classic Earth Mother, from 1978. \u201cI am at an elder age and I\u2019m still active in my music,\u201d he adds. \u201cAll of this is my origins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s humbling that there\u2019s a lot of people obsessed with this sort of music worldwide,\u201d says saxophonist Koichi Matsukaze. Matsukaze\u2019s 1976 album At the Room 427 is set to be reissued as part of the J Jazz Masterclass series this month, and follows the 2018 reissue of his classic Earth Mother, from 1978. \u201cI am at an elder age and I\u2019m still active in my music,\u201d he adds. \u201cAll of this is my origins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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