Kazumasa Akiyama -- I Believe in You

 

It was over nine years ago when I first wrote about jazz guitarist Kazumasa Akiyama（秋山一将）and his strutworthy title track from his 1978 "Dig My Style". Well, apologies on nearly a decade passing before putting up the second article.

Anyways, from that same album, I present you with "I Believe in You" which has got a lot more coffee and Red Bull coursing through Akiyama's veins. Instead of merely strutting down a Shinjuku street, this nearly 8-minute track is a spirited ride on the Tokyo highways with plenty of warp-speed guitar playing and thrumming bass. Must have been a fun time in one of the biggest metropolises on Earth at the time.

Kazumasa Akiyama -- Dig My Style

Discovered another new and fun musician tonight. He's called Kazumasa Akiyama（秋山一将）and he's a jazz guitarist who started with 2 albums in the 1970s: "Dig My Style" (1978) and "Beyond the Door" (1979).

The title track from "Dig My Style" is an enjoyable slice of light funk n' fusion with Akiyama himself providing the vocals (pretty nice English there). It would be nice to strut down the main street of either Shinjuku or Roppongi to this one. I'm not sure who Akiyama modeled himself on but his guitar sounds somewhat like George Benson near the end.

Akiyama doesn't have a J-Wiki entry but he has his own website. From there, I found out he was born in 1955 and starting learning the guitar by himself at the age of 10. He listened to a lot of the Beatles and Ray Charles and then started getting into jazz. After several years of performing in various groups with artists such as jazz drummer Motohiko Hino（日野元彦）and singer Yasuko Agawa（阿川泰子）, he released a couple of more albums in the 2000s: "Quiet Storm" (2005) and "Dr. Rain" (2008).

I was looking at the cast of musicians for "Dig My Style", and it turns out one of the backup singers was Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）who has already been mentioned for that other new and fun group I wrote about last night.