Jazz and Japanese Culture
Japanese jazz has frequently been criticized as derivative, or even as an unworthy imitation of U.S. jazz, both by American and Japanese commentators. In response to the belittling attitude of their audience, Japanese jazz artists began adding a "national flavor" to their work in the 1960s. Expatriate Toshiko Akiyoshi drew on Japanese culture in compositions for the big band she co-led with her husband and long-term collaborator Lew Tabackin. On Kogun (1974) they first utilized traditional instruments, such as the tsuzumi, and Long Yellow Road (1975) features an adaptation of a melody from the Japanese tradition of court music ("Children in the Temple Ground"). Inspired by the analogies Akiyoshi presented to him between jazz music and Zen Buddhism, jazz writer William Minor has suggested that a Zen aesthetic can be perceived in the music of Masahiko Satoh and other Japanese jazz artists.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Jazz
Famous quotes containing the words jazz, japanese and/or culture:
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“The Japanese do not fear God. They only fear bombs.”
—Jerome Cady, U.S. screenwriter. Lewis Milestone. Yin Chu Ling, The Purple Heart (1944)
“We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)