Japanese Jazz Is The New Nigerian Funk

Reissues and compilations, and now a book!

Yes, I am sending you an email on Election Day in the US. But maybe you need a distraction. I sure do. So I’m sorry, or you’re welcome.

Remember about 20 years ago when everyone started listening to Nigerian funk and rock bands from the Seventies? It all started — for me, anyway — with the 2008 compilation Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6, released on the Soundway label in 2008. That was followed by a second volume, and some more tightly themed compilations: Nigeria Afrobeat Special, Nigeria Rock Special, and Nigeria Disco Funk Special.

Then other labels started getting into the act. Strut put out three volumes of the Nigeria 70 series; the two volumes of African Scream Contest (on Analog Africa) and Ghana Special (on Soundway) expanded beyond Nigeria; The World Ends (also on Soundway) focused on the more psychedelic rock side; Honest Jons put together Lagos All Routes and Lagos Chop Up; Afrodisiac put out The Danque!; Luaka Bop offered Love’s A Real Thing (The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa); and individual bands and artists like the Funkees and Sir Victor Uwaifo got their own best-ofs. Some of those came out before Nigeria Special, but I didn’t hear them until afterward, when I was absolutely awash in this stuff. For several years, it was my hot weather music of choice.

At some point, though, the well must have run dry, or the sales figures no longer compelled further investigation, because the flood of African funk compilations slowed to a trickle, and then stopped. The last ones I remember hearing were the two volumes of Wake Up You! on Now-Again, in 2016. But now there’s a new thing — Japanese jazz.

For me, it all started with the compilation J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1984, released in 2018 on the BBE (Barely Breaking Even) label. The track listing varied depending on which version you bought: the CD had nine tracks, the digital version 10, and the triple LP 12. But all the music was great, running the gamut from overtly McCoy Tyner-influenced piano trio work to pieces that introduced traditional Japanese instruments into a hard bop context. Notably, this was not the fire-breathing free jazz that I’ve talked about before. This was modern (mostly) acoustic jazz being played by musicians every bit as skilled and inventive as their American peers.

The booklets in the J Jazz compilations are fantastic, delving into the history of the Japanese jazz scene as a whole and then providing bios and information about each artist, album and track included. A lot of the music they showcase, particularly on the first three volumes, comes from rare or private press albums, and as the series has gone on the sound has run the gamut from raw blowouts to funky fusion jams. The fourth volume, released in 2023, takes a slight detour, sticking to releases from the Nippon Columbia label and including a rare appearance by Herbie Hancock, playing Fender Rhodes on a track led by bassist Takashi Mizuhashi.

Recently, BBE published a lavish coffee-table book companion to the compilations. J Jazz — Free and Modern Jazz Albums From Japan 1954-1988 is over 300 pages and includes essays, profiles of artists and labels, and write-ups on more than 500 records. (I have not seen the book myself, but what I’ve read about it makes it sound pretty amazing, and if I had $180, which is what it would cost shipped from the UK, I’d definitely consider buying one.)

It’s a fairly common belief that the 1950s and 1960s were the golden era for mainstream jazz, that the albums released on Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Columbia, and other labels during those two decades (ending more or less with the rise of electric instruments and fusion) are the best stuff, period. And while the best of that music is incredible, the Seventies are frequently underrated by critics and fans alike. Plenty of players kept the flame of acoustic jazz burning in those years: McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson and Harold Land, and more. The output of the Xanadu, Milestone, and CTI and Kudu labels alone make a convincing argument for the glories of Seventies jazz. And the music included on the J Jazz compilations has the same sophistication and compositional brilliance found on the best American releases of the era. This is not an imitative music; it is pure jazz, played with real love and skill.

Other labels have seen what BBE’s been doing, and have gotten into the Japanese jazz reissue business themselves. The Jazzman label devoted the eighth volume in their long-running Spiritual Jazz compilation series to artists from Japan; it’s available as a double CD or two separate double LPs.

The LP-only Japanese Jazz Spectacle series, put together by the Universounds record store in Tokyo (store owner Yusuke Ogawa selected the tracks), focuses in its first volume on Nippon Columbia releases while having no tracks in common with J Jazz Vol. 4. The second explores the catalog of King Records (not James Brown’s early label, but a Japanese outfit with the same name). They’ve also put out a compilation, WaJazz Legends: Jiro Inagaki, devoted entirely to the work of a saxophonist who made some really hard-driving big band soul jazz in the Sixties and Seventies.

A particularly good compilation came out earlier this year: East Wind: Revolutionary Japanese Jazz in the 1970s, on Universal Japan. It’s a 2CD set (no digital version), two and a half hours of music in all, and as its title suggests, it pulls entirely from the output of the East Wind label, featuring some truly amazing music by pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, trumpeter Terumasa Hino, saxophonist Kohsuke Mine, and others. It runs the gamut from sprawling piano trio blowouts to hard jazz-funk reminiscent of early ’70s Miles Davis to flute-driven spiritual jazz and beyond.

It’s also worth noting that BBE has been reissuing entire albums of Japanese jazz, after including a track on one J Jazz compilation or another. Tatsuya Nakamura’s Locus, the Masao Nakajima Quartet’s Kemo Sabe, the Koichi Matzukase Trio featuring Ryojiro Furusawa’s At the Room 427, Kohsuke Mine’s First; the Shintaro Quintet’s Evolution, Miyasaka + 5’s Animals Garden, Makoto Terashita Meets Harold Land’s Topology, Takeo Moriyama’s East Plants, and the Tohru Aizawa Quartet’s Tachibana are all great and worth your time. Other labels have released the George Otsuka Quintet’s Loving You George and Sea Breeze, and Masahiko Togashi’s Story Of Wind Behind Left and Speed and Space, among others. I also recently shelled out for a CD reissue of trumpeter Terumasa Hino’s Hi-Nology, a slab of red-hot Bitches Brew-style jazz-funk which has one of the coolest album covers I’ve ever seen:

So if you’re looking for a new musical obsession, Japanese jazz could very well be your new Nigerian funk. The range of material available is stunning, and while I may love some records more than others, I have yet to hear anything I actively dislike. I know I’m going to be listening to this stuff for years to come.

That’s it for now. See you on Friday, when I will ask you to buy some records from me.