When it especially comes to Japan, one of summer's most famous sounds there is the distinctive buzzing or wailing of the cicada. Known in Japanese as semi（蝉）, the cicada and its noise are as much a part of the hot season as festivals and firecrackers. Walking through the hot and humid air each day while living and working in the Tokyo area, I would hear that near-deafening sound in August and knew that the dog days of summer were here.
My first experience with the critters was during my first visit to Japan in 1972 while I was on my grandfather's farm. One of his old friends placed a cicada nymph in its final moult to adulthood on my shirt and I stood there amazed as its brown armour cracked open to reveal a ghostly white adult slowly squeezing out. After several minutes, it gained its familiar darker colours and triangular shape while still clinging onto my shirt before it literally buzzed off.
Before you all begin worrying that KKP has become the Discovery Channel, I've only put that reminiscing about cicadas above so that I can introduce eclectic singer-songwriter Maharajan's（マハラージャン） latest, "Semi Dance Floor" (Cicada Dance Floor). It had originally been introduced as a digital single in May 2022 but it got upgraded to EP status and released again just last month.
Written, composed and arranged by Maharajan, "Semi Dance Floor" is another one of his characteristic funky pop tunes, and it seems to tell a story of a cicada which headed to the bright lights of Roppongi rather than the sedate coolness of the forest. I figure that it wanted to spend its last days dancing the night away rather than finding a mate and starting the circle of life once more. The music video for "Semi Dance Floor" is something that I've come to expect from Maharajan with those three guys reminding me of the three "wombats" that were Scott Lang's good buddies from "Ant-Man".
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