Ryohei Yamanashi -- Jungle Love

 

I gotta say...this opening track from singer-songwriter Ryohei Yamanashi's（山梨良平）1984 album "La Habanera", "Jungle Love" has got a lot of Kid Creole & The Coconuts vibe to it.

First off, though, until now when I heard "Jungle Love" the title, my mind had always gone back to Morris Day and The Time's "Jungle Love" associated with Prince's "Purple Rain" movie. But this "Jungle Love" by Yamanashi is a slightly different animal. As I just mentioned, there is some similarity with Kid Creole & The Coconuts which has been totally into disco and Latin jazz, and the song that I always think about is their "My Male Curiosity", also from 1984.

Behind both words and music, Yamanashi's "Jungle Love" is one fun mix of jazz, Latin and City Pop with one majorly catchy beat, and like Kid Creole, when Yamanashi puts his heart on his sleeve to sing this one, I can't help but imagine what the young Duke Ellington was doing when he was performing up on stage. Those are some ferocious horns there and I especially love it when they go all Maynard Ferguson near the end, and to throw in another reference, when that dreamy backup vocal oozes in, I also gets reminded of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana". I've been hearing some of the other tracks on "La Habanera", and it appears that he wanted to get a bit of a concept to hash out with that Latin jazz.