Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band -- Kogun（孤軍）

 

When I saw jazz pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi's（秋吉敏子）name appear on NHK's 9 pm evening broadcast this morning, I assumed the worst considering the number of musicians that have passed away even in the first few months of 2023 and frankly the lady is 93 years old. However, I was happy to find out that the feature on Akiyoshi was a piece on her longevity and her jazz prowess. Whew!

However, I did have one beef about the five-minute piece on Akiyoshi. The pianist has been married to tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin since 1969 and together they formed the Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band in 1973 covering Big Band and BeBop. Tabackin himself was shown wielding his instruments during some of the performance coverage on NHK. And yet, in their home, Tabackin was merely introduced via graphics as "Husband: Lew" and the short snippet of conversation merely had Tabackin answer his wife's query on what he was going to have for dinner (pork). Yeah, I know the focus was on Akiyoshi, but still...

One of the songs by Akiyoshi that was played during the report at a recent concert at Lincoln Center in New York City last month was "Kogun" (Forlorn Force) which apparently was based upon those Japanese soldiers who had been so deep in their lives in the jungle that they never found out about the end of World War II and just kept on maintaining their posts for decades. What the report didn't say was that "Kogun" had been the title track of the first album by Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, released in August 1974.

Listening to "Kogun" (which lasts for a little over 8 minutes) a few times already, it seems to melodically describe the old forgotten soldier waking up to his usual day but then somehow getting discovered by society and thrown pell-mell into the world of the 1970s. To match the fear and bewilderment of the soldier, I would have thought the jazz to be have been more free and cacophonous but the tight swing in the arrangements had me thinking that he was probably OK surrounded by a group of supporters to help guide him back into civilization. In the last quarter of the song, I'm assuming that it's Tabackin on the flute illustrating the soldier's processing of what he's seen, heard, felt and smelled of late 20th-century society before there's a melding of the intro's traditional and the jazz.