Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

radi0gnome wrote:

I just found the following quote in an Asian music history book:

Later, in the 1950s, tango and other kinds of Latin music, especially Cuban music, became very
popular in Japan. A distinctively Japanese form of tango called dodompa also developed.

A little googling found these examples, kind of a cute, naive interpretation of Western pop. I'm not sure why they call it tango though: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse … =501095100

Actually it was even before that. I heard and also have in my collection stuff from Japan, Manchukuo(Occupied Manchuria) and Shanghai all before or and during the war. When I first got into the stuff I was very surprised to see Latin music and also Jazz/Cabaret music  was as good as any other place.

If you want I can dress you a list of stuff to listen.

Gishin wrote:

Actually it was even before that. I heard and also have in my collection stuff from Japan, Manchukuo(Occupied Manchuria) and Shanghai all before or and during the war. When I first got into the stuff I was very surprised to see Latin music and also Jazz/Cabaret music  was as good as any other place.

If you want I can dress you a list of stuff to listen.

That would be awesome, Gishin, to listen to some more stuff. I stumbled into the dodompa experimenting with traditional Venezuelan tango music on shakuhachi and was hoping for something less pop-ish. Some of the Venezuelan and Mexican waltzes sound absolutely beautiful on shakuhachi, IMO making a better melody instrument for it than the traditional (tango) violin. The bandoneon is still the more popular and better lead melody instrument for the music, but at least I don't feel like I'm trying to fit a square peg in a round hole like when playing music from other other genres that didn't evolve with shakuhachi in mind.   

I remember a dance workshop with a top pro salsa dancer where he told us that the very best salsa band he ever heard was Japanese. That was after the house band (American swing musicians) played the Flintstones theme with a salsa rhythm and he made them stop and told them to have some respect for the music.     

P.S. And before anyone (you know who you are) make a comment about ignorance and that Venezuelan vals is not Argentinian tango, I know, but vals is played at milongas (that's what they call tango dances, there's a whole 'nother story about why tango dances are called milongas which is another non-tango style of music) and danced to very similarly even though the music is very different.