Try to imagine post WWII Japan. Now imagine
post WWII Hawaii with its huge population of Americans of Japanese
Ancestry and their immigrant parents. Also imagine the huge population
of American servicemen and women either stationed in Japan or Hawaii or
passing through.
In the years immediately following WWII
recorded music from Japan was extremely hard to come by. Sometime in the
late 1950’s George Ching began bringing Japanese bands to Hawaii. The
post WWII climate had cooled down and it seemed all right for
Japanese-Americans in Hawaii to try and get back in touch with their
cultural roots. There was also a huge population of American service
personnel passing through Hawaii who wanted to bring home with them a
musical souvenir of the exotic cultures they had visited in the Pacific.
The music of Japan’s All-Star Orchestra
helped them all to do just that. This album, Japan Goes Latin (LP 3457)
along with three other 49th State Hawaii Records albums:
Festival Time In Japan (LP 3454), New Sounds of Japan (LP 3456), and
Japan Calling (LP 3458) were all recorded
by Tokyo’s All-Star Orchestra.
The late George Ching told us that the
All-Star Orchestra was composed of famous Japanese session players from
the Ginza - Tokyo’s entertainment hub. Every effort was made to try to
identify these musicians. Unfortunately, we could not.
Enjoy this fabulous ethnic
instrumental romp through 1950s Japan!
To follow please find the original incredible liner notes:
Japan Goes Latin
The waves of the Pacific Ocean have
for thousands of years washed the shores of the Americas on one side and
the Pacific rim of the Asian continent on the other. Long before the
Americas were discovered some five hundred years ago, advanced cultures
and civilizations
flourished there and in Asia.
But the hundreds of miles of ocean that
separated them kept the two cultures distinctly different. The waves of
the Pacific washed back and forth, but could not bring the two cultures
to intermingle. Emigrants braved the unknown and emigrated in both
directions, but these remained immigrants in the various countries in
which their adventurous hearts chose to settle, or where relentless
circumstances put them; and maintained their own national colonies and
he customs and cultures of their countries of origin.
The Spanish planted their influence, mainly
in the Philippines, as did elsewhere the English, the Dutch, the French,
the German, the Portuguese, etc. The people of Asia migrated to the
Americas in small numbers at first, but in increasing tempo as the years
passed and the forerunners prospered in their new homes. Japan has sent
hundreds of thousand of immigrants to the countries of South America to
colonize and help develop new areas with hard work, ingenuity and
stamina.
It had to happen sooner or later, the
intermingling of the cultures, the music, the customs, the fashions, and
the language. The Second World War of modern times opened the
floodgates. It seemed that the walls of each national compartment
started the crumbling process at about the same time. The ease of
communication between peoples increased only recently, and the oxen and
the horse and carriage age was propelled into the jet age, overnight
almost, for the Asian peoples.
The universal language of music would have
to be one of the first influences felt by the intermingling of peoples
and their cultures. The music and dances of Latin America were very
remote to the Asian peoples up to a couple of decades ago. So were the
music and culture of the peoples that border the Eastern rim of the
Pacific Ocean comparatively unknown to the people of the Western
Hemisphere.
That all changed in a few short years. The
Oriental influence of the Far East is now extant in the West, and the
Western influence is seen in so many areas of the East. Oriental music
now sounds intriguing, exotic, melancholy and soothing to many people of
the West. The East has taken to the music of the West, including jazz,
rhythm and blues, etc. The music of Latin America is heard everywhere
in the Far East, and the people have taken to the Latin dances with
intense application. Everywhere they dance the cha-cha-cha, the rhumba,
the tango, etc.
Recorded in full fidelity sound, these songs
will soon be haunting your memory, as snatches keep coming to mind
unconsciously. Listen or dance to these beautiful melodies of the Far
East.
PLAYLIST
Miyo No
Yuma
Hoshino
Nagara Ni
Kimi Koishi
Shanghai No
Hana Uri Musume
Namida No
Watari Dori
The Pearls
of Mindano, Philippines
White
Lotus, Thailand
Sweetheart
Hung Tsai, North China
Cho Yin
Ching Ko, China
Loong Gha
Lok, China
