Yumi Arai/Ayaka Hirahara -- Banka （晩夏）

I might be writing about "Banka"(Late Summer) a few months too early, but I think I can swallow my pride here. This was the final track on Yumi Arai's（荒井由実） marvelous album, "The 14th Moon" (1976), and it has that feeling of satisfying finality for me (although I'd like to know if Yuming herself would agree). After some of the bouncy tunes on the album, the singer finished it off with a quiet ballad with that late-sunset glow. I could imagine a baritone announcer during the last few notes intoning that we've all come to the end of our broadcasting day....time for sleep.

But that satisfying finality didn't just refer to the album, but also to the first stage of her career. In a way, "Banka" was that signoff to Yumi Arai. Afterwards, she would become Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）, after marrying her producer and fellow musician, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, and eventually go into a poppier direction.

But the first time I ever heard of "Banka" was actually through Ayaka Hirahara's（平原綾香） cover of it several years ago. I had heard of Hirahara via her hit debut, "Jupiter" back in 2003, but didn't buy a CD of hers until I saw her cover of the Yuming classic on an episode of "Bokura no Ongaku"（僕らの音楽...Our Music）, the Fuji-TV Friday night music program. I just found that her mellow voice fit the melody so well, and the producer/arranger of this version was none other than Masataka Matsutoya, who added an instrumental bridge. For the video above which seemed to have come from an NHK show, the bridge was covered by a jazzy guitar, but I prefer the version that was on "Bokura no Ongaku" and on the official single version....a nice group of horns. It was from this version of the song which led me to track down and buy "The 14th Moon".

Hirahara's cover was the singer's 9th single, released in September 2005, which reached as high as No. 16 on Oricon. It was also the first track of her 3rd album and an album of covers, "From...To", released in November of that year. In that album, Hirahara covered everyone from Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵） to Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）. The album peaked at No. 4.