When I Started Listening to Jazz: Yosuke Yamashita and Akira Sakata
Looking back, I became interested in jazz through two routes, and subsequently became obsessed with it.
One was film music, which I had loved since I was in elementary school.
Film music is a melting pot of all genres of music.
Even a single composer, or even within a single film, handles various genres of music.
Elmer Bernstein.
"The Great Escape," "The Magnificent Seven," and "The Man with the Golden Arm"—jazz!
Bernard Herrmann.
"Marnie," "The Trouble with Harry," various Hitchcock films, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," "Fahrenheit 451," various sci-fi and adventure films.
"Taxi Driver"—jazz!
Henry Mancini.
"Breakfast at Tiffany's"; "Moon River" is a jazz standard.
"The Pink Panther"—jazz!
"Charade"—jazz!!
It's a TV show, but "Peter Gunn"—jazz!!!
It is overflowing with jazz.
Incidentally, I also became interested in contemporary music through the direction of Toru Takemitsu (though I didn't delve deep, I am still interested even now).
That said, while this film music is called jazz, it is pop.
It's not that they take endless solos with ad-libs or that the development changes with every performance (though I'm sure it was played in such a format at live shows).
Eventually, I learned that there was a period when various jazz musicians, starting with Miles Davis and the MJQ, entered the world of film.
The second route through which I began to take an interest in jazz was Yasutaka Tsutsui.
I naturally became interested in a musician named Yosuke Yamashita, who frequently appeared in Yasutaka Tsutsui's essays.
The first one I bought was
"Umbrella Dance."
The jacket illustration of a cat holding an umbrella and descending from the sky is cute.
When I dropped the needle (since it's a record), a pleasant theme flowed out.
"It's surprisingly easy to listen to."
From the moment I thought that, chaos began.
The chaos continues endlessly, but from within it, signs clearly craving the theme appear.
However, that is drowned out by "not yet, not yet, not yet," and other signs appear, but it also becomes vague due to the chaos that it is too early.
Such exchanges are repeated, and when frustration reaches its peak, the theme rises and it ends.
What is this?
It is professional wrestling.
At the time, Antonio Inoki and Tiger Jeet Singh were in the midst of a bloody feud, and I was a casual pro-wrestling fan who was obsessed with works like Tomomi Muramatsu's "I Am a Pro-Wrestling Ally."
Around that time, the Yosuke Yamashita Trio had changed from
Seiichi Nakamura (Ts)
Takeo Moriyama (Ds)
to
Akira Sakata (As)
Shota Koyama (Ds)
Akira Sakata has the air of a veteran craftsman who is often found at construction sites—not a leader, but someone with presence who gives precise reprimands with few words.
After that, I got hooked on Akira Sakata.
Especially the Akira Sakata Trio.
Hiroshi Yoshino (B)
Nobuo Fujii (Ds)
I feel like the Akira Sakata Trio's performances often started by throwing you into chaos and then having the theme emerge at the end.
And the songs are very good.
They are tough, yet full of pathos, and even shy.
A sensibility that connects Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" to "Akatombo" (Red Dragonfly).
A fortunate union of gospel blues spirituality and animistic spirituality.
When I went to see Hiroshi Yoshino's live performance at Shinjuku Pit Inn, his repertoire ranged from Henry Mancini to Toru Takemitsu.
(Did he also play Piazzolla? My memory is uncertain.)
Looking at Akira Sakata's recent activities,
"Sunflower" by Henry Mancini
"What the Dead Man Left Behind" by Toru Takemitsu
Ah!