On 9/26, a concert by Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes took place at Super Deluxe (Roppongi). I caught the second set, which kicked off at 22:30. The venue was packed, but I heard that even more people came to see the first set (19:30) in spite of the pouring rain, which shows everybody’s great expectations from Shimizu’s first concert in a while. But the number of visitors is not all that expresses the importance of this concert. In my opinion, it was an epoch-making event.
Noteworthy was epecially the composition of the program and the single pieces. About half of the evening was dedicated to Shimizu’s renditions of J.S. Bach’s "Cello Suites", and the rest was made up of Ethiopian traditional songs and Shimizu’s original compositions exploring the pentatonic scale (=five notes per octave). While every fan of Shimizu Yasuaki is already familiar with the "Cello Suites", Bach’s outstanding compositions dating from a time when the saxophone was yet to be invented, which Shimizu brilliantly reworked into his own repertory. The next target the musician aimed at was at the very opposite end: pentatonic music.
Many forms of ethnic music are based on the pentatonic scale. The scale has been used in Scottish and other European folk ballads, as well as in blues (here with an added blue note), however it is generally considered a typical characteristic of Asian, Middle Eastern and African music. Japanese enka (popular folk songs) are following a main theme based on the major key solfege scale minus the "Fa" and "Si" notes, resulting in "Do-Re-Mi-Sol-La", and a minor key scale reduced to "La-Si-Do-Mi-Fa". Okinawan ballads and Balinese gamelan music eliminate "Re" and Ra", and other versions of the pentatonic scale are being used in India and Islamic countries.
At Super Deluxe, I heard comments like "that’s like enka" or "sounds like Misora Hibari" (one of the queens of the Japanese pop song), and that’s not really surprising. A large part of Shimizu’s pentatonic pieces were based on the Ethiopian music you might have heard in the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s "Broken Flowers", which is very similar to enka. As expected, Shimizu served a mixture of well-calculated rhythms and syncopations, and complexely refined melodies, which sounded absolutely original and far aloof of enka whatsoever. The young Saxophonettes members met the high technical requirements imposed by their leader, which suggests that, as a result of long and intense rehearsals, the players managed to perfectly internalize the pentatonic scale (and Bach’s music).
The good thing about "world music" — a term that’s being seldomly used these days — is that it allays, as if to reprove, the historical and geopolitical supremacy of the 7-tone scale, and, if you like, introduce some kind of cultural relativism to music. The Japanese pentatonic scale, for example, did in fact injure local styles and destroyed original musical ecosystems in colonies etc., basically since the beginning of the modern age, the European and American "7-tone imperialism" expanded its turf across many countries around the world. Inside this "empire", styles like enka, (Korean) pansori or klezmer are being considered heretical, and classified in an unilateral and unfounded way as domestic and non-universal.
Shimizu Yasuaki himself once told me, "Some ten-odd years ago I was planning to write a new song for Kitajima Saburo (another enka top star)". Unfortunately, the plan was apparently shelved, but once we get away from the nearsighted and dogmatic idea of "domestic" ethnic music, we will certainly be able to acquire greater musical freedom. In order to achieve this, we could employ the momentum of the "superordinate concept" of the pentatonic scale, and I guess that’s part of Shimizu’s ruse de guerre. When understanding Ethiopian music, enka, and other traditional music as styles belonging to the broader concept of the pentatonic scale, all groundless preoccupations will probably vaporize.
The Saxophonettes alternately played pieces by Bach and pentatonic music, taking the audience on a tour around clean-cut ecclesiastical architecture (a possible image of 7-tone music) and bustling markets (5-tone music) in alternating shifts. Another comparison that seems suitable would be emptying glasses of champaign and Awamori one after another, including the intoxicating effect. At some point during the performance, dancer Yasumoto Masako appeared and improvised a dance to Shimizu’s solo, to which the musician responded with his saxophone. This was another part of the show that seemed to bear sprouting seeds of something new. Yasumoto Masako has her own distinguished musical taste, and she did in fact use Ethiopian music for her performance in the past. Several concerts of the Saxophonettes are planned for next year, and chances are we're going to witness a deepening collaboration between Shimizu and Yasumoto. Definitely an exciting new flavour in the Tokyo nightlife.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO