Japan’s love for jazz has no stronger evidence than the constant sound of jazz being played all over the country. In elevators, convenience stores, restaurants, lobbies and public spaces of all kinds, jazz is the soundtrack for Japan’s daily life. Japan’s large cities, like Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe, keep up an unending public hum of all kinds of noise, sounds, music and announcements from what must be the world’s largest concentration of public speakers. Yet, when sophistication is needed, the speakers play jazz.
Kazuki Takami is A&R and Label Manager at one of Japan’s best record labels East Works Entertainment. EWE has recorded and promoted some of the very best of Japanese jazz since its inception in 1995. They have developed five distinct labels in that time, spreading out into Latin music, electronic jazz and other inspired music that does not fit easily into simple categories. They focus primarily on Japanese musicians, but include artists from many other countries as well. Their list of straight-ahead jazz is the envy of most other Japan-based major-label companies. EWE has always kept its independent spirit, even as jazz has become both big business and an almost unrecognized art form. The musicians who sign with EWE are the ones most interested in pushing the music forward in unique and engaging ways. In this interview, Takami gives his independent and insiders’ view of jazz and where it might be headed in the future. If anyone would have an informed opinion on where Japanese jazz might be headed and why, it is Takami.
As you know, a terrible earthquake hit Japan on Friday afternoon, March 11, 2011. The devastation of certain areas of Japan was unimaginably terrible. Those of you who can access the video footage know how shocking the situation is.
Tokyo, where I live, is reasonably normal, though everything has slowed down. But, that may not last long, since more earthquakes are predicted for the next week. Those of us who live in Japan have been watching the footage and simply cannot believe how destructive, tragic and confusing the earthquake has been.
Mike Zwerin “Swing Under the Nazis, Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom”
Written by Administrator
(Cooper Square Press 2000)
Sadly, Mike Zwerin passed away last year, but this rambling, thought-provoking book by the Paris-based writer and musician who wrote for the Village Voice and International Herald Tribune for decades, stands as a fascinating piece of work with a unique take on jazz’s place in society, under the worst of times. Zwerin gets right to one of the key aspects of jazz--freedom. Researched and more or less written in the 1980s, Zwerin went around Europe playing in festivals, he was also a musician, or reporting. As he did, he met up with former Nazis and musicians who played during World War II, interviewed them, or just talked, and recorded what he found.
The result is a series of stunning anecdotes. He tells them in a jazz style that sounds like band chat between sets in the backroom of a jazz club. That’s a good thing! His stories and conversations feel real and true, and do not mince words, but get right to it. The Nazis brutally suppressed jazz, just as they committee their atrocious crimes against humanity. Zwerin suggests why that was necessary—jazz is about freedom, emotion and equality (as long as you play well), while Nazism about is about power, death and hierarchy. The startling oppositions that emerge in this book show just why those two could not exist together.
After the earthquake and tsunami on Friday, March 11, from the middle to the north of the main island, Honshu, life in Japan has changed for everyone. Nearly 500,000 people are living in evacuation facilities and the count of the dead and missing has just gone over 20,000. Those figures are estimates, since it is too difficult to get near many places because of the damage from the tsunami. Many foreigners have already fled the country.
Sadly, Mike Zwerin passed away last year, but this rambling, thought-provoking book by the Paris-based writer and musician who wrote for the Village Voice and International Herald Tribune for decades, stands as a fascinating piece of work with a unique take on jazz’s place in society, under the worst of times. Zwerin gets right to one of the key aspects of jazz--freedom. Researched and more or less written in the 1980s, Zwerin went around Europe playing in festivals, he was also a musician, or reporting. As he did, he met up with former Nazis and musicians who played during World War II, interviewed them, or just talked, and recorded what he found.