SWAY -- Minminzemi no Natsu（ミンミン蝉の夏）

Neotibicen linnei by Bruce Marlin
via Wikimedia Commons

 

We have cicadas here in Canada, too, but the ones in Japan sound like they were inspired by heavy metal. At the end of every summer, they make their noise as if they were armed with amplifiers but I cannot deny that they are the harbingers of the end of a season and the entry into a cooler one.

In all likelihood, things are completely quiet now that we're fully into autumn, but I would like to introduce this folk duo SWAY that has given us this reminder of cicadas as the first track of their March 1994 album "Horo Basha"（ほろ馬車...Covered Wagon）. "Minminzemi no Natsu" (Robust Cicada Summer) is a relaxing and refreshing number delivered by Kana Sugiyama（杉山加奈）and Masako Horibe（堀部雅子）which brings to mind hot cloudless summer days and babbling brooks of fresh water. Sugiyama was responsible for the song's words and music. During a decade when folk songs were perhaps treated as nearly non-existent as compared to the 1960s and 1970s, for those who did discover SWAY, their discography must have been quite a nice change of aural scenery, especially with their harmonies.

Sugiyama and Horibe first joined up under the duo name of Sasori-za（さそり座...Scorpio） in the mid-1980s when they were only junior high school kids. They scored a nice hit with their debut single in 1985 and continued to sporadically release singles and albums in the folk, pop and anison genres. In 1990, they changed their name to SWAY after which they released four singles and three albums. Horibe herself would leave the duo in 1999 due to marriage to be replaced by Megumi Maruo（丸尾めぐみ）, but SWAY itself would only last one more year before calling it a day because Sugiyama herself would get married and move over to Thailand.