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.
The first time I wrote about the late great jazz fusion guitarist and composerRyo Kawasaki（川崎燎）was back in 2020 when I posted an article on his "Raisins" from his 1976 album"Juice", and from listening to the song, I got the impression that he really liked the rock and funk side of fusion.
Well, a couple of years later, Kawasaki and American jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen collaborated on their own album of duets titled "Trinkets and Things". Brackeen composed all of the seven tracks except for the first track which was also the title track. Kawasaki handled this one and "Trinkets and Things" goes into a more tropical and jazzier direction which flows through the beaches and Tiki bars with much aplomb. Although it's mostly an instrumental, there are a couple of parts where a female singer provides some accomplished vocalese but for the life of me, I couldn't track down who she was.
Wow! What a difference 6 years make. I did know that the late jazz fusion guitarist Ryo Kawasaki（川崎燎）was the same fellow who came up with the Kawasaki Synthesizer when I was looking some of his biography up, so that the electronica had always been within him, but back in 1976 with his "Raisins" in his "Juice" LP, it was all about the fusion.
However in 1982, he came out with the album "RYO: Aranjuez Kyousoukyoku"（アランフェス協奏曲...Ryo: Featuring "Concierto De Aranjuez" ）and one of the tracks there is "Hawaiian Caravan", and nope, it's not a relaxing AOR or fusion number with honey-toned saxes or soft guitars. I was rather taken aback when I first listened to this one because I was almost immediately greeted with this truly robotic synthesizer that was closer to Kraftwerk than Casiopea. In fact, I'd say that "Hawaiian Caravan" would have been another potential theme song for the "Sprockets" segment on "Saturday Night Live". And yep, the actual theme for "Sprockets" was an altered take on a Kraftwerk tune.
Still, as "Hawaiian Caravan" moves along, Kawasaki's guitar slowly breaks through the techno layer with its own mysterious and exploratory melody. I don't particularly want to stroll along Waikiki Beach as I listen to this one; this is more like going through an electronics convention in downtown Honolulu.
Some of us of a certain age might suddenly get that "Pepperidge Farm Remembers" sensation on reading the following.
I certainly remember when my father got us our first computer, the Vic-20 by Commodore in the beginning of the 1980s. Oh, the excitement of getting 3,583 bytes of power in a keyboard and loading up our favourite video arcade games through a dedicated Commodore tape recorder! But even then, my brother and I were probably very jealous of other friends who upgraded to the Commodore 64.
The games were more advanced and there was one interesting software tool called the Kawasaki Synthesizer which used discs to upload the program, and then the musically-minded among us could have its way with sound and images and fury...such as boogeying aliens from outer space! I never got the Kawasaki Synthesizer but I did get a Casio keyboard later on...which is still sitting somewhere fossilized in one of our closets.
Now, the fellow who came up with this tool didn't start out as a computer-programming geek. Actually, he was jazz fusion guitarist and composerRyo Kawasaki（川崎燎）originally from Tokyo, and he came up with a ton of albums since the early 1970s. In fact, his Wikipedia file states that he was one of the pioneers of fusion.
One of those albums was his 1976 effort "Juice" and the lead track is "Raisins". It begins life sounding like another one of those really funky themes for a gritty New York-set movie. I'd say that I can almost feel those platform shoes hitting the hot pavement on a July day in the decade of disco when I listen to "Raisins". As the song goes along, though, the fusion and rock begin to percolate through as the jam session also comes into play. The YouTube page has a list of the musicians who were involved in the making of "Juice".
Looking through his Wikipedia profile, it looks like he lived quite the life in music and computers, and as for the latter pursuit, he spent all of the 1980s there in between his times as a musician. Kawasaki in his later years also worked with a number of Estonian musicians and contributed his expertise in that part of the world. I wouldn't mind getting to know more of his creations but unfortunately, I've read that he passed away only a few months ago in April at the age of 73 in his home in Estonia.
