Orange Range -- Melody

 

Orange Range has been a band that I've known for their rock and hip-hop music in the 2000s such as "Locolotion" (ロコローション) but it's been a while since I heard from them.

It's been a few months, but if memory serves, Orange Range did make an appearance on "Uta Con"（うたコン）to perform a song from their latest EP released in February this year titled "OKNW.ep". High energy is what I've been accustomed to when it comes to this band, but this particular track "Melody" is much more easygoing and heartwarming with a slower tempo and the Okinawan feeling although the rap is still in there.

Written and composed by the band, "Melody" has also been designated as the official theme song for NHK Okinawa's "Hondo Fukki 50-nen"（本土復帰50年...50 Years After the Return to the Homeland） program, according to the Orange Range website. The music video, set in Okinawa (presumably Naha), had me confused for a few minutes when I saw that last scene focusing on the photograph of the tousled-headed boy and his mother which was dated May 16th, 1975. I was wondering about the significance of that date since I knew that Okinawa had been returned to Japan in 1972, thus this year's 50th anniversary. The only thing I could find about that day vis-a-vis the country was the fact that Junko Tabei（田部井淳子）became the first woman to reach the top of Mt. Everest on May 16th, 1975.

So, also judging from how the mother dressed and the interior design of the home in Okinawa (take a look at the old-fashioned TV set just before the photo pops up), I figured that the two were living in the mid-1970s. However, "The First Times" website describing the song and the video states that the Naha being displayed is very much contemporary (there is one present-day kid giving a weird look to the 1975 boy), so I guess that the kid and his Mom are somehow able to traverse the timelines. Maybe the various members of the band walking through Naha are playing cosmic guides. All I can deduce is that it was all about how the prefecture has come along in the past few decades with the kid looking all wide-eyed at what has changed.

(instrumental)