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 Sachiko Kanenobu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sachiko Kanenobu. Show all posts
A couple of years ago, I mentioned about folk singer-songwriter Sachiko Kanenobu（金延幸子）and her "Aoi Sakana"（青い魚）which was a track on the Osakan's first album"Misora"（み空...Beautiful Sky） from September 1972.
In the post for that song, I also stated that most of the members from the band Happy End（はっぴいえんど）helped out on the production of "Misora". Well, this is Eiichi Ohtaki's（大滝詠一）contribution through his composing talents while Kanenobu provided the lyrics. The introspective "Sora wa Fukigen"(Moody Sky) is a quiet and somewhat hopeful song sung beautifully by Kanenobu as a woman does the everyday while trying to forget a romance that has just ended. As with "Aoi Sakana", "Sora wa Fukigen" has that "smell-the-roses" feeling.
The Niagara Girl Pop sound has been passed down from Celia Paul in the 1970s through Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）in the 1980s and then to Marina Watanabe（渡辺満里奈）in the 1990s. "Anata kara Tooku e" is a bossa nova cover of a track on Sachiko Kanenobu's（金延幸子）evergreen "Misora"（み空）that was produced by Ohtaki for the first time, and Marina's cute vocals gently cradle the dazzling Niagara sound. Akira Inoue's（大滝詠一）flowing strings are also splendid.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
I actually found out about this song from the "Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100" section of the 2020 edition of "Japanese City Pop" as curated by Yutaka Kimura, so this will be getting handled for next Friday's Yutaka Kimura Speaks session.
"Anata kara Tooku e"(From You to Beyond) apparently was selected to also go into Sony Music's own City Pop compilation, but I think that there's more going melodically here than just some 1990s City Pop. As sung by tarento and former 1980s aidoruMarina Watanabe（渡辺満里奈）for a track on her 9th original album"Ring-a-Bell" from March 1996, I can hear the mellow bossa nova in there but there's some pretty old-style sophisticated pop as well thanks to Akira Inoue's（井上鑑）strings arrangement, so I'm starting to think Shibuya-kei, too, especially with some of the keyboard work. There's also a fellow by the name of Tarao Bannai（多羅尾伴内）who was in on the overall arrangement and, for that matter, the production of the album itself. It turns out that it's Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）.
Watanabe's song was actually a cover of the original as written, composed and performed by folk singer Sachiko Kanenobu（金延幸子）. I first wrote about her almost a couple of years ago when I covered her "Aoi Sakana"（青い魚）from her first album, "Misora"（み空...Beautiful Sky） released in September 1972. Arranged by Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, the original version of "Anata kara Tooku e" which also resides on "Misora" has a folk/pop feeling which reminded me of the works of Carole King. The lyrics relate the tale of a woman who's struggling a bit as her significant other is no longer beside her in bed.
Now and again, I've mentioned that one of my favourite Japanese singers, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, greatly admired Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Recently, I've discovered a singer-songwriter who was once called the Japanese Joni Mitchell.
Sachiko Kanenobu（金延幸子）is a folk singer from Osaka who started her career around 1968 when she participated in an annual folk camp at Houshaku Temple in Kyoto and from that experience, she became part of a band called Folk Campus. Another member of that unit was Kyozo Nishioka（西岡恭蔵）. The following year, Kanenobu then joined another folk group called Gu（愚 ...Folly） which also included Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）.
From 1972, she went solo and her first album, "Misora"（み空...Beautiful Sky）, was released in September. Some of the tracks on "Misora" were produced by Happy End'sHaruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, and members of that band also helped out in the production of the album such as the late singer-songwriter Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）who contributed one song and guitarist Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）who played on one of the tracks.
Indeed that one track is "Aoi Sakana" (Blue Fish) which also had Hosono arranging and playing bass while Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）was on drums, and Kanenobu was on guitar and (beautiful and slightly haunting) vocals. The splendid melody by the singer is as comfortable as a pair of beloved slippers right from Note One although her lyrics describe a melancholy reality of nature including the titular fish and their environment being lost forever, presumably due to industrialization. There is no mention of a keyboardist in the "liner notes" provided on the J-Wiki article for "Misora", but the playing there adds that extra feeling of poignancy. "Aoi Sakana" feels like that "smell-the-roses" type of song.
On the English Wikipedia article for "Misora", there has been a lot of acclaim given to the album even outside of Japan, and that includes famed sci-fi author Philip K. Dick who was a friend of music journalist Paul Williams. Williams married Kanenobu in the year that "Misora" was released although they would later divorce.
It was just one single and "Misora" released by Kanenobu during the 1970s after which it wouldn't be until the 1990s that she released albums and one more single again.
