Finally someone figured out the name of the genre of music I was looking for- it’s enka<\/i> ( \u00e6\u00bc\u201d\u00e6\u00ad\u0152 ) – the sort of lounge-y Japanese music you used to hear in sushi bars.<\/p>\n
\nI have an 8-track of this stuff from my grandparents, and I’m trying to find who has the rest of their collection… also I’m betting some of the local Japanese churches will have some more (lots of old Japanese people in the bay area).<\/p>\n
\nThis genre is so goofy that the GameBoy game “Wario Ware” spoofed it in one of the levels- the decor is 1970’s samurai TV show, a genre of show about as hackneyed as the cop show here, and a enka<\/i> theme plays which is indestinguishable from the real thing.<\/p>\n
\nKAZUE: people loved it when Karaoke Box started
\nFrom Barbara’s Enka Site<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\nKAZUE: used to be Karaoke is just the thing people do at bar subby bar you know
\nKAZUE: and almost only Enka
\nBRIAN: what is Enka
\nBRIAN: is that a genre of music
\nKAZUE: it’s hard to explain….type of music only old people listen to
\nBRIAN: aha!
\nBRIAN: I think I have some of that
\nKAZUE: like country song in US?
\nBRIAN: I have been looking for the name of the genre
\nBRIAN: like the lady singers all wear kimono
\nKAZUE: yes
\nKAZUE: all sounds same though
\nBRIAN: I know!
\nBRIAN: I was thinking “hell, I could write these things myself!”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n We Western music lovers might imagine it this way… Team up a songwriter who writes old-fashioned Gypsy music with a romantic lyricist of an American blues or country music background. Then translate the lyrics into poetic but old-fashioned Japanese and arrange the music for a band made of half Japanese musicians and half European classical musicians, plus a harmonica and electric guitar. Then find a Japanese woman to sing the song in full kimono, but choreograph her performance as if it were an operatic aria. That would give you something close to Enka music…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finally someone figured out the name of the genre of music I was looking for- it’s enka ( \u00e6\u00bc\u201d\u00e6\u00ad\u0152 ) – the sort of lounge-y Japanese music you used to hear in sushi bars. I have an 8-track of this stuff from my grandparents, and I’m trying to find who has the rest of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}