How do you make folk music relevant in these postmodern times? Traditional music is under threat everywhere you look, as are minority languages, arts and crafts and the habitat and environment that helped create them.
In Japan, folk music is called minyo, and when I was living there some 25 years ago, my Japanese friends could all sing a typical minyo song from their hometown (karaoke was very big then and people would get all misty-eyed singing their hometown minyo song). I'm not sure if that is still the case because some of the performers have died and a new generation has not replaced them.
Minyo is a popular music for locals, for people working or fishing (a World Beat favourite is the fisherman's song, Soran Bushi) and for dancing at summer matsuri festivals. Pentatonic, like much folk music globally, and featuring minor keys that give the singing a sad feel at times, minyo also features amazing vibrato from the singer (called kobushi).
In 2012, the folks at Jim Thompson set up a competition for schoolkids and college students to encourage young people to learn molam glawn (the traditional poetic style such as that performed by National Artist Chaweewan Damnoen) and the programme was well received. Some of the young performers have gone on to perform professionally.
Now that's one way to encourage interest in folk music, but another way is to take the folk music and try to make it relevant to today's audiences, and that is where my favourite new band from Japan steps in, Minyo Crusaders, who have just released their debut album, Echoes Of Japan, on the Mais Um label.
This exciting, surprising and groove-laden album is a treat. The band has sought out old minyo songs from 78rpm vinyl and from YouTube and then brought in musicians known for performing in Afrobeat, Cumbia, reggae and Latin bands (Japan has a lively local Latin and African music scene), and the result is fascinating. The opening track, a scratchy Cumbia called Kushimoto Bushi, features great falsetto vocals and killer brass. It works so well.
Latin rhythms have long been part of Japanese popular music, and there is a local Japanese Latin rhythm called the dodoompa, which was incorporated into the world-music mix of Shang Shang Typhoon, a band that would blend minyo (often from Okinawa) and matsuri music with Latin and reggae rhythms when it was popular during the 1990s. But the band that Minyo Crusaders reminds me of is the musical anarchy of Tademaru Sakuragawa & Spiritual Unity, who performed kawachi-ondo and goshu-ondo (narrative summer matsuri music from Osaka). Both bands have an infectious punk spirit and mad enthusiasm.
In the opening track, you can hear snatches of kawachi-ondo in the call-and-response vocals, and the distorted percussion sounds like the Mexican band Los de Abajo. But the band also uses Caribbean rhythms and even Afrobeat and Ethio-jazz. Otemoyan is a perky reggae groove with soaring female vocals, while Toichin Bushi features choppy guitars and dreamy Afro-funk keyboards. Other songs, such as Yasugi Bushi, sound like enka (Japan's equivalent to Thailand's pleng luk thung) with touches of Suntharaporn thrown in for good measure.
The album finishes with an a cappella minyo song, Sumo Junko, a sad, soulful traditional minyo song that gives the listener an idea of how the song might have been sung years ago when minyo was performed regularly in local communities.
There is so much inventiveness on this album and Minyo Crusaders are destined for greatness; expect to see them at international festivals. The group shows fusion bands in Asia the way forward. Thai molam bands recycling Santana's guitar riffs or some EDM over and over might consider how this band creates minyo for the 21st century (the secret is that they know how to play popular styles like reggae, Cumbia and Ethio-jazz, and not the easy-listening versions that you find in Thailand).
Someone please book this band to perform in Thailand -- I'll be first in line for tickets.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
