Carioca -- Dream Away

 

I've got the fan on in my room, my feet are slightly achy and I'm feeling a bit tired for a fellow in his 60s with his aging bones. One reason for this: I went downtown earlier this morning to see what was up with the annual August Fan Expo which started officially last night and will be continuing until Sunday evening. I hadn't been there in over a decade so it was something to see that the anime section has ballooned over the past ten years and the number of visitors has done the same thing. 

Anyways, I wanted to start with something peaceful and I remember yesterday putting up Early Byrds' "Ocean Song" and then Naomi Sugimura's（杉村尚美）"Tasogare ni Last Scene"（黄昏にラストシーン）with their jazz-fusion and bossa nova respectively. Well, I got a song there that combines the two genres. It's called "Dream Away" and it's available on the November 1978 record "Sunny Place Carnival" by the band Samba Carioca (although the debut album has a misspelling on the cover). "Dream Away" is the aural salve to heal me of my aches and pains...well, some of them anyways.

The band got its start in 1975 when they were backing singer-songwriter Kiyoshi Hasegawa（長谷川きよし）at the Shimo-Kitazawa and Shinjuku branches of the Loft live houses as they played monthly in their Sunday Samba Sessions. In the beginning, there were flutist Nozomu Nakatani（中谷望）, bassist Toru Hirano（平野融）and percussionist Yuuji Yoshikawa（吉川祐二）before drummer Antonio Ishida（アントニオ石田）and guitarist Masami Sato（佐藤正美）joined. In 1977, Hasegawa broke up the band but they almost immediately reintegrated, taking on the name of Samba Carioca（サンバ・カリオカ）, a unit that would focus on samba and bossa nova. They would continue releasing several albums up to 1984 during which they reduced their name to just Carioca.