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I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Friday, May 1, 2020

BEGIN -- Kono Machi Hanarete(この街はなれて)


I think that there's a saying about really getting to know your own hometown only when you're separated from it for a length of time.


Perhaps that is the thrust behind Okinawan folk-blues band BEGIN's "Kono Machi Hanarete" (Leaving This Town), a happy-sad tune that talks of a young fellow who's leaving his own home willingly to go on a search for himself, and maybe to realize how good his birthplace has been to him all these years.

I don't know very much about Okinawan music, but what I do know has been wrapped around the native three-stringed lute known as the sanshin, and with "Kono Machi Hanarete", there's something more foreign. This seems to be more planted in the terra firma of America with a zydeco accordion and a twangy blues guitar that sounds as if someone from Ego-Wrappin' decided to drop in for a spell.

BEGIN was responsible for words and music, and it probably made its first appearance in the band's first BEST compilation, "FAN -- Little Pieces" released in March 1995. But it has also appeared in their third BEST album "Ballads" in March 1999.

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