A couple of days ago, Noelle put up an article regarding Hachiro Kasuga's（春日八郎）1960 "Kiso wa Koishiya" (木曽は恋しや), his take on an adapted Nagano Prefecture folk song with some enriched mambo-ness. Outside of the article, she and I were also chatting about The Preeminent Enka Singer's album "Boku no Atarashii Yatsu no Uta"（ぼくの新しい8つの歌...My Eight New Songs） which I believe was also released in the same year.
One of the tracks on that album was "Mister Ame" (Mister Rain). Now, from my supposed knowledge of kayo kyoku, usually when I see something like rain or snow or autumn in a title, my first assumption is that the song is going to be a rather melancholy affair on the topic of love lost. And sure enough, Hiroshi Yokoi's（(横井弘）lyrics talk about having and then losing that significant other. But Seiichi Sakurada's（桜田誠一）music isn't morose at all; it might be a short song at barely 2 1/2 minutes long, but it has its share of Latin joie de vivre almost as if the bullfights were about to begin. Perhaps a breakup is in progress but the mood seems more celebratory than mournful.
Would "Mister Ame" be considered to be an enka song or a straight kayo kyoku with mambo ambitions? Considering the history of enka and the fact that enka really wasn't officially enka until the early 1970s with a lot of retrofitting of past songs including those of Kasuga, we can pretty much throw this into discussion over some sake.
Hi, J-Canuck, and thanks for adding this rather obscure number by Hachi.
ReplyDeleteJust from the melody alone and the first line of each stanza, "Mister Ame" sounds like a humourous and light-hearted ditty indeed.
I hesitate to call this enka and I would personally go with latin kayo... But there was this short-lived thing called "Rock Enka" floating about in the mid-1960s, and I have a feeling that if "Mister Ame" were released around 1965-66, it would've been a "Rock Enka"... 1965-69 was almost like the Wild Wild West for budding enka genre, I feel, because the music industry was quite literally slapping the enka label on a wide variety of stuff... It's the most headache-inducing era for me.
On that note, about Hachi's title: I had a discussion with my advisor somewhat recently, and he noted that Hachi's title of "Enka no Daiichi Ninsha" would translate more appropriately to something like "The Preeminent/Most Important Enka Singer" as opposed to "The First" in terms of nuance. Thankfully, it doesn't really change the content and direction of my research, but I'm thinking of at least re-wording it in some of the previous stuff I've done.
Hello, Noelle.
DeleteYes, I have to admit that I was juggling the Labels in my head for a while regarding whether I should omit or keep "enka" in there or not. Rock Enka is a new one to me; in that case, a few of Yukio Hashi's singles would also be considered so.
Agreed on what "Enka no Dai-ichi Ninsha" really means. I'll have to gradually make any corrections to any articles which have used "The First Singer of Enka" label.