I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Showing posts with label Anata no Melody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anata no Melody. Show all posts
Happy Saturday! Nice to see some sun out there although it's pretty cold, too. According to my student, it's snowing in Tokyo and it looks like they might get as much as 5 centimetres of the white stuff...which would probably be regarded as a Red Alert over there. Here...more like mid-February.
Anyways, I would like to start off the Saturday round of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with something shibui. Once again, going from the "Anata no Melody" work list, I found another song that originated and was showcased because of the program. This time, it's a Mood Kayo number called "Morioka Blues" performed by the vivacious Mina Aoe（青江三奈）. The song became her 49th single from September 1979.
Written and composed by Yoshikatsu Tsunokake（つのかけ芳克）, I think the amateur songwriter did a great job in creating this tune which fits hand-in-glove with the Aoe aesthetic. The trumpet, the strings and the languid guitar are perfect for this tribute to the city in Iwate Prefecture up in the northern part of the nation. Listening to her again, it's too bad that she left this world so prematurely almost 20 years ago. And looking at the video above, "Morioka Blues" was good enough to get her another appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen.
If you're in the mood and have a tumbler of the good stuff in your hand, why don't you try some karaoke of "Morioka Blues"?
Time to go back into the kayo time vaults, and inspired by the old NHK music show "Anata no Melody"（あなたのメロディー）that I had written about a couple of days ago, I've come up with another old chestnut.
Dark Ducks（ダークダックス）is another one of those Japanese vocal groups from the old days whose work reminds me a lot of the similar quartets or quintets from the United States at the time such as The Ames Brothers and The Mills Brothers. Certainly, their "Anna Ko ga Ii na"(That's My Kind Of Girl) takes on a hail-fellow-well-met feeling of a kayo march about swooning over that neighbourhood daughter.
As I said, this was a song that was created by an amateur songwriter back in 1969 by the name of Kataji Mizumoto（水本方治...I hope that's the right reading for the first name） for "Anata no Melody", and apparently it became so successful after its release in November of that year that Dark Ducks got to perform "Anna Ko ga Ii na" a little over a month later at the Kohaku Utagassen. That must have been quite the (duck) feather in Mizumoto's cap when the announcement was made. However, I'm not sure whether Mizumoto created any other kayo for anyone else.
Generally speaking, my basic knowledge of Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）is restricted to that big hit of hers from 1981, "Machibuse"（まちぶせ）as written and composed by Yumi Arai（荒井由実）. So it's always nice when I discover some other good tunes by her.
I've just written about the NHK series "Anata no Melody"（あなたのメロディー）, a show that had a long run of 25 years which showcased the works of amateur songwriters being performed by some of the professionals. It was because of this song for this article that I found out about "Anata no Melody". Released as her 16th single in February 1983, "Purple Mystery" is this Latin-tinged pop tune that actually became one of the top songs from the show for that year. Reminiscent of some similar City Pop tunes from the 1970s, it's also remarkable for the fact that the songwriter behind this one, Susumu Kawagoshi/Kawagoe（川越進）, was just a high school student when he submitted this contribution.
One wonders if Susumu had been hanging around neighbourhoods such as Roppongi or Akasaka when he wrote and composed "Purple Mystery". Well, perhaps he shouldn't have but it's still a very nicely created slice of J-urban contemporary. Incidentally, a part of the lyrics were changed and the arrangement was handled by Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, according to the liner notes in a BEST compilation CD-BOX by Ishikawa.
I've mentioned this in the past, but my browsings through YouTube have often come up with all things revelatory and wonderful. Just yesterday, I was curious about this one Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）song and through that, I discovered this long-gone but long-running NHK show called "Anata no Melody" (Your Melody).
"Anata no Melody", which ran between 1963 and 1985, had a format similar to that of the currently very long-lived "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）. However, unlike the latter's format in which amateur singers are selected from a certain region to sing their favouritekayo kyoku/J-Pop songs in front of everyone, "Anata no Melody" had amateur songwriters providing their works to the program so that professional singers could perform them on stage. And like "Nodo Jiman", they could win championships for that show, then on a monthly and finally annual level during which the top three songs of the year are selected.
The stunning thing which sparked me to write about this show is that a number of famous tunes have sprung up because of it! For instance, Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）classic "Yosaku"（与作）was birthed on "Anata no Melody" from the efforts of religious scholar and critic Kiminori Nanasawa（七澤公典）. Back in my original article for the song in 2012, I hadn't yet gotten into the habit of also mentioning the songwriters but I am doing so now. Furthermore, I certainly hadn't known about its connection with "Anata no Melody".
Another song that I have covered also got its start from this program. The technopop earworm "Computer Obaachan"（コンピューターおばあちゃん）was also created here. A number of the songs that gained fame got officially recorded and became part of other NHK programs and specials including "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）and even the Kohaku Utagassen.
"Anata no Melody" also had a panel of judges which included some famous songwriters such as Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）, Yoko Yamaguchi（山口洋子）and Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）. The above video has Hatsumi Shibata（しばたはつみ）performing one of the big winners of 1975, the country swing of "Hyena Dixie Blues"（ハイエナデキシーブルース）by Ichiro Tomita（とみたいちろう）. The uploader mentions this as well so I will do the same; the picture kinda deteriorates near the end.
(Unfortunately the video has been taken down.)
This final video is from a 1983 episode featuring the vocal group Circus（サーカス）performing "Aru Hi Shonen wa"（ある日少年は...One Day, A Boy）, a song created by Ei Ohta（太田栄）. Hopefully, that is the right pronunciation of the name.
It's kinda too bad that "Anata no Melody" died out over 30 years ago. Perhaps it's a show that can be revived, though. I'm certainly impressed enough with the existence of the original program to put it in as its own category.
I realize that I've been getting a bit heavy on the technopop over the past few days, but after coming across this adorable piece of techno kayo, I just had to get it onto the blog.
"Computer Obaachan" (Computer Grandmother) is this song written and composed by Ryoichi Ito（伊藤良一...I hope I've pronounced that correctly） and arranged by Yellow Magic Orchestra'sRyuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）that was placed onto the NHK children's segment, "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた...Songs For Everybody） back in late 1981. I think at the time, a lot of pop music was going a bit YMO-happy so why not a kid's song? In any case, the NHK Jido Gassho Dan（NHK東京児童合唱団...NHK Tokyo Children's Choir） as led by moppet Shuuko Sakai（酒井司優子）took care of this catchy technopop ode to a grandmother so cool and smart that she is just like a living computer to her adoring grandkid. The song proved so popular that it kept coming back onto the segment off and on over and over again from 1981 to 2009. The music behind the choir was two-thirds of YMO with Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on the drums.
However, it was originally performed in the same year by a short-lived technopop band, Cosmic Invention (1979-1982). The original arrangement was by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）which sounded a little sluggish to me when it was performed by this group that was nicknamed YMO Junior. The reason for that lay in the fact that the members were all either elementary or junior high school students.
Over a quarter of a century later, technorock band Polysics provided their own fun cover of "Computer Obaachan" via a 2007 compilation album titled "Rock For Baby".
Then in 2011, Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）gave a groovier version via the album "Miku Hatsune Sings New Wave". I have to say that in each of the versions, it's the "Yay, yay, yay" and "Whoa, whoa, whoa" that keep it fun for me.
Roppongi Hills
February 5th 2019: I found out a bit of history concerning this classic.
Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, who first debuted in 1962, is THE rock for Japanese music, and pretty much has been since the passing of legendary singer Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）back in 1989. In a society where age is still king, he's seen as the current holder of the kayo kyoku mantle. Except for one year in the mid-80s (yakuza trouble), he's always shown up on the Kohaku Utagassen for decades, and until recently, he was the anchorman of the show, appearing as the very final performer, dressed up in a classy yukata while paper snowflakes literally threatened to consume him. As has been mentioned on Barbara's Enka Site and J-Wikipedia, part of his longevity can be attributed to his general appearance as an everyday hard-working salt-of-the-earth fellow that a lot of Japanese can relate to.
His songs have often reflected the toil and tribulations of the working class. For me, the stereotypical Sabu-chan song is "Yosaku" which was first released in 1978. The title refers to a man and his wife laboring away. Almost half of the spare lyrics is onomatopoeic (hei, hei, ho....ton, ton, ton) as Yosaku cuts away at the tree. The first few bars by the shakuhachi are instantly recognizable, and the brass has that forceful manly thrust.
"Yosaku" is one of Sabu-chan's most famous songs but when it was first released, it went no higher than No. 25 on the Oricon weeklies.
February 5th 2019: I found out a bit of history concerning this classic.
