You don’t always know where the muse takes you but sometimes you get some semblance of its thoughts. Looking back at my latest mix for LYL Radio I had felt there were huge tell-tale signs pointing me what I needed to discover. What was the Brazilian-Japanese connection?
Scouring through my deep collection of music I’d always come back to how much of Japanese music had that familiar sound of Brazilian music. Outside of its homeland, I’d wager it was the culture that consumed it, performed it, and experimented with it, the most. As I dug deeper into history I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few things.
Outside of Japan, the world’s largest Japanese diaspora belongs to Brazil. No one, I imagine, on the ship the Kasato Maru, over a century ago, would have thought their small community numbering in the hundreds would land in Rio De Janeiro and grow to a sizable minority numbering in the millions. Where they once came to work as agricultural works on the coffee plantations of Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, solely, somehow, Brazil would be where their connection became the most tenable.
In spite of many injustices waged on their communities — forced assimilation, conscription, and mistrust bred by distrust of their (once) totalitarian homeland — somehow, the Japanese community moved beyond their initial missteps integrating into Brazilian society and have found a way to live as an important piece of the greater Brazilian culture. Rather than divide their loyalties (as many presumed) they shared openly, in places like Sao Paolo and Paraná, genuine examples of their culture as it evolves in time, through two countries.
Kicking off this mix is Lisa Ono, perhaps the most famous/influential musician to come from the Brazilian-Japanese diaspora. Her roots lay in Sao Paolo, but for the majority of her life both Tokyo and her birthplace figured in her life. It was her father, who serving as Baden Powell’s agent, turned her on to MPB music and the rest as they say was history. By 1989 she was released some of the first entirely Japanese-created recordings of original Brazilian-influenced music. Hers would be one driven by all strains of bossanova. However, she wasn’t the only one.
Before Lisa Ono other young musicians, like many you’ll discover in this mix, had grown up jetting off to their local record shop trying to score the latest haul from Brazil. Thanks to that diaspora, they were able to discover the sambas of Jorge Ben Jor, the moody jazz-pop of Caetano, and the heart-tugging psych of Milton Nascimento.
Unlike Lisa, these other cats — Kazuhiko Katoh, Gontiti, and Katsutoshi Morizono — weren’t able to add that mystifying Portuguese phrasing to their ideas, but what they could add was to take something heard in some far-off locale and adapt it to their experience. Finding simpatico brethren who liked to steep themselves in nostalgia, in saudades, they could hit different notes of natsukashii, affirming their own tropical connection linked together through a shared world, separated by an ocean. You see, part of that Brazilian experience was somehow theirs, too.
Light and Color (Brazilian-Japanese Special)
Tracklist:
Canto Para Nana – Lisa Ono
Aliento Verde – Carioca
Blue Flame – Gontiti
Gardenia – Kazuhiko Katoh
Saravah! – Yukihiro Takahashi
Passarada – Hiroko Kokubu
Simpatia – Atlas
The Blue Heaven – Katsutoshi Morizono
白い波 (White Wave) – The Milky Way
Te Quero Tanto (I Love You, So) – Sonia Rosa
How Insensitive (Insensatez) – Ichiko Hashimoto
Looking Around You – Ryo Kawasaki
Doll House – Yuki Saito
Good Girl – Akiko Yano
Don’t Smoke In Bed – Takami Hasegawa