I have a confession to make: I didn’t quite “get” Criola’s Winter Songbook, for a long time. Looking back, though, this season, I’ve been blessed with many things in life and one of them has been running this blog. Never have I been so inspired, influenced, and devoted to maintain this running conversation with people I wager I’ll never get to thank in real life. Thanking them for reading this post (which might not be the most evergreen of them all). Thanking them for going along with my whims and writing (I know a lot of you might not have been feeling that time I posted Dutch tribal music, from Paleis Van Boem). Thanking them, most of all, for sharing their own, prized music, either via the FOND/SOUND Facebook group, via DM, or via an email message.
Although, we may not always end up enjoying the music as much as the other, every little bit of sharing has been noted and duly appreciated. Know that I’m grateful for sharing the same rabbit holes you’ve been to. Every bit of wisdom helps. Now, in this case, I have to thank long time reader, Andrea from Italy (or Mr. Merlini, as I like to imagine him) for sharing something that took a while to reveal itself to me. A collection of quite meaningful wintertime and holiday music by a young crew of Tokyo musicians who you wouldn’t think had this in them.
Criola was a short-lived, quasi-supergroup of young artists drawn from the worlds of Japanese reggae who wanted to try their hands at creating unique blend electroacoustic samba and forward-thinking Dub Pop. Not much information exists out there about this group, but what I can surmise about them online, is they were led by keyboardist/melodica extraordinaire Pianica Maeda who convinced others from J-Reggae bands like Tomato and Piranhans, plus some from the iconic Mute Beat collective and the Nutmeg scene (like Pianica himself), to contribute to their very whimsical take on the holidays. On Winter Songbook, their debut, they drew on classic American holiday standards and those from the Vince Guaraldi playbook as inspiration to either do their own esoteric take on what they mean or simply take the original and transform it altogether.
Not quite lo-fi, even though invested a lot of indie-esque motifs, Winter Songbook sounds like a very intimate session of musicians trying to tastefully tone down the techno-pop Japan is known for, in a way they can draw more of island feelings they had sampled through other genres into music that’s decidedly warm (in a frosty way). Imagine a continuation/evolution of what began in Yen Records’ own We Wish You A Merry Christmas. Jazz overtones mingle with askew bossa nova, dub techniques pop up in the most joyful, if not, tiniest edges, and for a decidedly lightweight affair, some of the originals capture a distinct melancholy that had started to crop up in a lot of early ‘90s Japanese music.
If I could find simpatico albums to compare it to, it would be to Takami Hasegawa’s and Subliminal Calm’s close knit J-Pop that swung from bright exuberance to frank admission. Emerson Kitamura covered that simpatico territory in his California Soul. Lately, I pump myself up listening to their take on “Frosty The Snowman”, completing its transformation into a joyful electro-samba. Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song”, as popularized by Nat King Cole, sounds positively wistful in its melodica form, on Criola’s spare version.
That closeness is what’s been sticking with me lately. On their reimagining of a soul Christmas classic, Carla Thomas’s “Gee Whiz It’s Christmas”, with comforting strains of country music, they stocking it deep with a bittersweetness, right on the good side of sweet. Gentle drum machine rhythms pitter-patter through an original “クリスマスソング” which might be know as their “anti-Christmas Song” but actually warrants its slowly unfurling pace turning into a quite lovely duet, reneging on its original ploy. “Tannenbaum”, which will also close out the album in its instrumental form, is another wonderful smokey original, a Christmas ballad drawing on the melancholia of Vince Guaraldi’s own reimagining, for the Charlie Brown classic, and rethinking it is a dance for two — one acoustic guitar and a voice.
“猫になった冬の朝” a fantastic Christmas electro-samba, explodes from its minimal electronic arrangements and takes you on a carnival that recalls Elis Regina’s own masterful work with Tom Jobim.
I’ll end it on my personal favorite, an original, “Go Away Little Boy”. A lullaby-like song, like the best Christmas songs, hints better at the reason for the season. Taking deep, deep inspiration from Marlene Shaw’s rare groove masterpiece reimagining of a classic (originally written as “Go Away Little Girl” by Goffin and King), they use a justly arranged minimal electro-dub as a way to stress the importance of looking beyond gifts, and vapid sentimentality, for something far deeper that bring us together, this time of the year.
Musically, sublime, I vaguely got it then. Back then, my spirit wasn’t in the right place for this, new Christmas classic. Now, in a better place, I get it all. “Together we can make it”, who knows? Maybe, it can be Christmas every day…