Touching upon my old amity toward the "Star Trek" franchise, I knew about Brent Spiner's singing ability (heck, I even bought his "Ol' Yellow Eyes is Back" album) and so I enjoyed the above video by Lena Kingsleigh who spliced together a few scenes from the episodes "Data's Day" and "Datalore" from the fourth and first seasons of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" respectively with a scene involving Spiner's turn as nasty cruise director Gil Godwyn in the 1997 movie "Out to Sea".
The thing is though that I don't think it was the above that first got my attention about the song "Oye Cómo Va" originally recorded by Latin jazz great Tito Puente in 1962. I had heard it before though I didn't know of the title and something else led me to the "Out to Sea" scene with Gil's mechanical delivery. However, it was enough to check out its origins.
Then I read that the band Santana blew the doors off with their Latin rock rendition of "Oye Cómo Va" in 1971 on their venerated album "Abraxas".
I'm sure that there have been many other covers of "Oye Cómo Va" over the decades, but I just didn't expect one from Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）. But I heard from KKP co-administrator and friend Marcos V. that the singer-songwriter did her own rendition of the Puente original for her October 1990 album "Kokontozai"（古今東西...All Times And Places）. With Hideo Saito（斉藤英夫）providing the arrangement, I read on J-Wiki that it's supposed to be a bossa nova take but all I can hear here is Moritaka and company basically following the Santana model. In any case, it's been placed on the album just before her "Ame"（雨）.
Just for trivia's sake, although the version on "Kokontozai" was titled "Oye Cómo Va", the song first came to Japanese ears as "Boku no Rhythm wo Kiitokure"（僕のリズムを聞いとくれ）which is a direct translation of the title. In English, it's translated as "Listen how it goes".
I know Chisato Moritaka best for「私がオバさんになっても」and the fact that she wrote many of her own songs. She was also a great dancer. In some ways, I think she was a pioneer and someone with a sense of humor, so it seems fitting that she would cover Oye Cómo Va.
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