Michael Pronko - The Japan Times

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Michael Pronko

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Michael Pronko

Michael Pronko writes essays for ST Shukan. He also writes for his own website Jazz in Japan, as well as for Newsweek Japan and Artscape Japan. He has published three books of essays about Tokyo and teaches American literature, culture and film at Meiji Gakuin University.

For Michael Pronko's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Music

Sep 15, 2006

Debashish Battacharya "Calcutta Slide Guitar"

One of the world's most amazing guitarists, Debashish Battacharya plays Indian raga on his trinity of self-constructed Chaturangui slide guitar, 14-string Gandharvi and tiny ukulelelike Anandi. He has built 19 others, but his third release in a trilogy of recordings is a dazzling set of ragas all played on these three instruments.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Sep 15, 2006

Big-band education

On the sidewalk, in the parking lot and on the entrance stairs outside Fuchu Mori Art Theater Hall in western Tokyo last month, throngs of university students were fingering melody lines in the air, scrunching their faces trying to remember chord changes and counting out tempos in whispered voices.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Sep 8, 2006

When and where: Saitama is really part of Tokyo, except when you get far enough out and places like Inariyama Park in Sayama feel a bit like Woodstock. That's even more the case on Sept. 9 and 10 (noon to 8:30 p.m.), when more than 20 bands perform at the Hyde Park Music Festival.

CULTURE / Music

Sep 1, 2006

Walter Trout and Friends "Full Circle"

Inviting special guests onto albums is almost obligatory these days, but on his new one, "Full Circle," bluesman Walter Trout wants sizzling guitar duels rather than promo plugs. With string bending friends like John Mayall and Joe Bonamassa, the gutbucket blues explodes with dazzling licks and impassioned vocals.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Aug 25, 2006

Hot slabs of jazz

While summer rock festivals are as numerous as fireworks, outdoor jazz concerts have recently become as rare as a non-humid day. Just five years ago, Japan had so many jazz festivals all over the country that musicians had trouble making the tightly scheduled gigs. Then, sadly, economics caught up, distance and weather took their toll, and most jazz fests stopped what had always been, basically, a labor of love.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Jul 21, 2006

Trinidad's famed carnival had two rival Calypsonians: Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow. These two singer/songwriter/tricksters vied every year for the honor of Calypso Monarch and "Road March," the most played song during carnival.

CULTURE / Music

Jul 7, 2006

Tokyo Summer Festival, 2006: "Songs of the Earth/Music in the Streets"

When & Where: The 22nd Tokyo Summer Festival, Songs of the Earth/Music in the Streets, with a concert or event nearly every evening till Aug. 5. Venues range from the acoustic perfection of Opera City and Kioi Hall to the picnicking and promenading vibe of Yoyogi Park.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 30, 2006

Indigenous "Chasing the Sun"

Guitarist Mato Nanji took his licks from blues-rock saint Stevie Ray Vaughn, who in turn took his from Jimi Hendrix who in turn . . . well, you get the picture. A listen to "Chasing the Sun" and the way he makes them come alive will make you glad Mato did cop those licks after all. Indigenous' brand of hard-rocking blues isn't about newness, anyway; it's about energy and authenticity. The quartet, comprising Nakota Sioux brothers Mato and Pte (on bass), sister Wanbdi (on drums) and cousin Horse, add a few keyboards and extra drums this time out. The sound, though, is still raw and live, with a visceral punch. The songs, except for the rollicking "Number Nine Train" and a pensive take on Dylan's "Born In Time," are down-to-earth originals by Mato.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Jun 30, 2006

Playing to projected light

A member of Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1958, Marshall Allen was there at the inception of the avant-garde jazz scene in the 1960s. Sun Ra, who died in 1993 -- or was transported to another planet, as the eccentric artist always insisted would happen -- led one of the most experimental, and controversial jazz orchestras of that, or any, time. Allen played saxophone, and any other instrument Sun Ra encouraged him to, and later took over leadership of the Arkestra and Sun Ra film and music archives. He has continued to innovate and collaborate well into his 80s.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 23, 2006

Thomas Mapfumo "Rise Up"

Recorded in exile from his homeland Zimbabwe, Thomas Mapfumo's latest recording "Rise Up" is one of his best. With a 14-piece band of traditional and modern African musicians recording at a studio in Oregon, his voice and music sound as vibrant -- and angry -- as on his groundbreaking African recordings from the 1980s.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 16, 2006

Pat Martino "Remember"

The blues-heavy hard-bop jazz of the 1950s and '60s has always held a fascination for jazz lovers. Guitarist Pat Martino's "Remember" is a hard-swinging tribute to that era and to Wes Montgomery, whose irresistible style made complex jazz patterns listenable and very hip. Martino, who debuted on the Philadelphia scene soon after Montgomery became jazz's most influential guitarist, knows how to dig into blues and bop to emerge full of ideas, as on the double-time bop of "Four on Six" or the rumbling earthiness of "Twisted Blues." Martino wisely chose pianist David Kikoski and bassist John Pattitucci, who both play with an original, hard-bop conviction. Martino's technique, which he had to reconstitute after an aneurysm in the '80s left him with no memory of how to play, shows a real debt to Montgomery's legacy here. Famously, he relearned his own fretwork by relistening to his own recordings from the '60s. Clearly, though, Martino must also have been listening to Montgomery for a little jazz rehab.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 9, 2006

Marshall Allen and James Harrar

The works of Sun Ra band member (and now leader) Marshall Allen and alternative filmmaker James Harrar don't fit neatly into simple genres like "jazz" or "film," but as collaborators, they ably create their own passionate hybrid.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 2, 2006

Duduka Da Fonseca Quintet "Samba Jazz in Black & White"

One of Brazil's best musical exports, drummer Duduka Da Fonseca has played on 200-some recording sessions with Tom Jobim and the Brazilian jazz group Trio da Paz. With one foot planted firmly in both jazz and Brazilian music, "Samba Jazz" is Da Fonseca's second album as leader.

CULTURE / Music

May 26, 2006

Tab Benoit et al "Voice of the Wetlands"

Perhaps the only good to come out of the Hurricane Katrina disaster has been the many excellent New Orleans music compilations, whose profits are going to those dispossessed by the storm and the ensuing chaos. The most political and most passionate of these is Tab Benoit and company's "Voice of the Wetlands."

CULTURE / Music

May 19, 2006

The Gary Burton Quartet Revisited

Jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton sounds like three musicians at once. In his hands, the vibes, which he plays with four mallets, have an astonishing range, reverberating like church bells, thumping like piano chords or coursing through melody lines as fast as a sax. His technique remains the high watermark for the instrument, fitting as snugly into the many quartets and quintets he's led since the 1960s as into the duet format he cultivated with, among others, jazz icon Chick Corea.

CULTURE / Music

May 12, 2006

Omer Avital/Marlon Browden "The Omer Avital Marlon Browden Project"

Both bassist Omer Avital and drummer Marlon Browden are regulars at the New York club Small's, a hive of jazz creativity for young musicians. But on this album, the two travel to Avital's native Israel for a live recording of their funky, electric "project."

CULTURE / Music

May 5, 2006

New York-Tokyo Connection

Since Dave Pietro first came to Japan with the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra as lead alto saxophonist in 1994, he has toured Japan almost every year. First he returned with Akiyoshi's Orchestra. Then, with old friend, pianist and Tokyo resident Jonathan Katz, he formed the New York Tokyo Connection. These two, together with two of the best players in Tokyo, bassist Daiki Yasukagawa and drummer Yoshihito Eto, have taken their hard-driving, no-nonsense sound to packed clubs around Japan each year since. The quartet will tour Japan for two weeks in May.

CULTURE / Music

Apr 21, 2006

Frank Macchia "Mo' Animals"

All too often, concept albums can seem forced. Music initiated from simple images or feelings tends to work better than music built around grand unified concepts. But, on Frank Macchia's "Mo' Animals," the combination of images, feelings and concepts feel more organic. What's more, these 10 tunes, each based on a species, swing hard, and then some.

CULTURE / Music

Apr 14, 2006

Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys

Once upon a time, songs filled with earthy humor, sexual innuendo and a deep love of pretty melody were the norm. Singer and ukelele player Janet Klein collects such long-lost gems from the 1910s, '20s and '30s and revives them with a passion. Far from sounding like a musical antiquity, though, she sings and plays with the period's original spirit of wide-open fun, and an impeccable sense of musicianship.

CULTURE / Music

Mar 31, 2006

Cheikh Lo "Lamp Fall"

"Lamp Fall," the new CD from Senegalese singer, drummer, guitarist and composer Cheikh Lo, leads off more laid back than his last release "Bambay Gueej." Starting with calm intimacy, the album ultimately bursts into passionate vocals and soaring rhythms. Lo's spirituality -- he's a member of a mysterious African religious brotherhood that sports patchwork clothes and uncut dreadlocks -- expresses itself in brilliant music at its own measured pace. But it definitely happens.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

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