Billy BanBan -- Shiroi Buranko（白いブランコ）

Wikimedia Commons

 

Since I was a child, my family had often used the Japanese term "buranko" for a swing. But considering that it was written in katakana and it sounded like something non-Japanese such as "bronco", I wondered about its origins. Apparently, one theory states that "buranko" originated from the Portuguese word for "swing", "balanço", which sounds pretty solid to me. 

Anyways, I heard "Shiroi Buranko" (White Swing) for the first time on "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）the other day. Interested, I then turned to YouTube for the original version by the folk brother duo Billy BanBan（ビリーバンバン）. It turned out to be the veteran group's debut single from January 1969 and there's nothing like a lone piercing trumpet to bring back the kayo nostalgia, and this is what "Shiroi Buranko" is all about: reminiscing about past times including enjoying a swing on the swing.

Written by Nahomi Kodaira（小平なほみ）and composed by one of the brothers from Billy BanBan, Susumu Sugawara（菅原進）, as his very first composition, the languid rhythm and the brothers' singing make it really easy to sigh wistfully and remember the past. According to the J-Wiki writeup on "Shiroi Buranko", the song was created in 1966 and inspired by Susumu when he was sitting on a swing at singer-songwriter Kuranosuke Hamaguchi's（浜口庫之助）house in Daikanyama, Tokyo while he was a student at Hamaguchi's music college. 

Once the song was released, it eventually sold 150,000 records and became a hit. It would also spark the boom in sibling-based folk duos for a while.