Yoshiko Sai -- Taiji no Yume（胎児の夢）

Apple Music link

(excerpt only)

Yoshiko Sai's（佐井好子）"Taiji no Yume" (Infant's Dream) is quite the ride. The title track for the singer/poet's 3rd album in September 1977, it starts off as a lonely pianist's dreamy jazz riffing with Sai softly scatting away. Then a little over a minute into the song, it starts accelerating with a Latin guitar as an engine before the strings launch it into the heavens. From there, "Taiji no Yume" retains that Latin feeling but it also takes on the atmosphere of something grander and more operatic, perhaps fit for a movie soundtrack, thanks to the arrangement and Sai's vocals. I'm not quite sure if it would be too frivolous to designate this as a mere pop song which is why I categorized it as a New Music tune.

As we get into the latter half of this 9-minute-and-change epic, the rocket carrying "Taiji no Yume" seems to come straight down like a screaming missile and then even make a crash landing with both piano and then Latin guitar competing with each other on which can create the most sonic ruckus for close to a minute and a half. Finally, in the last several seconds, things go completely slow and spacey...I was expecting the Starchild from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to appear. As I said at the top, "Taiji no Yume" is quite the ride by Sai who wrote and composed it according to her website.

Initially, I'd thought that the song was a track from Sai's debut album "Mangekyo"（萬花鏡...Kaleidoscope） back in 1975, and "Taiji no Yume" could have fit that dramatic cover with the singer standing in the middle of those grassy hills. However, it had its own album which you can see here. It's got that weird and mystical design, and I think that the child in the glass vase minded by the cat (feel free to psychoanalyze) may actually be Sai herself.

One of the commenters for the YouTube video with "Taiji no Yume" noted that the title may refer to a concept from a mystery novel titled "Dogra Magra"（ドグラ・マグラ）written by Kyusaku Yumeno（夢野久作）, an author who had a flair for the surreal and avant-garde. The trailer for the 1988 movie adaptation is above and the plot involves a young man who wakes up in an asylum with his memory gone and the revelation that he killed his wife on their wedding day. There might be something akin to some of David Cronenberg's early movies there.

Yoshiko Sai -- Kaasama e （母さまへ）

As I've said a number of times before, if I had to opt for a favourite sub-genre within Japanese popular music over the past few decades, it would be City Pop. Jazz is also music that I came to like while I was living in Japan during those 17 years, and like J-Pop/kayo kyoku, it's also pretty broad with a number of different sub-genres. Choosing for a particular sub-genre I like in jazz, I guess I would have to go with what I believe was called Cool Jazz in the 1950s, so pianist Bill Evans, Chet Baker and basically anyone with a trio, quartet or quintet who performed those laidback pieces in a smoky nightclub way back when.

Not too long ago, I encountered this YouTube video with a singer by the name of Yoshiko Sai（佐井好子）. The Nara-born singer and composer initially had a singing career between 1975 and 1979 beginning with her debut album, "Mangenkyo"（萬花鏡...Kaleidoscope）and her first single, "Hatachi ni Nareba"（二十才になれば...When I Become 20）. She then took a very long break before starting things up again in 2001.

Her final album before stopping in 1979 was "Chou no Sumu Heya"（蝶のすむ部屋...A Butterfly's Room）from 1978 and the song above is from that release, "Kaasama e" (To Mother). To me, Sai's voice and the instruments gave off that feeling of listening to the song in that smoky nightclub with Sai herself being that lady with the ready torch song.

Also listening to excerpts from "Mangekyo", I don't think Sai is by definition a jazz singer (perhaps more along the lines of folk/New Music) but with "Kaasama e", she illustrated that she did have some chops for intimate jazz.