"uewo muite arukou" modern style

Sakaki Rides a Dolphin in the New Savanna

Hey kids! I've set up a new blog, just around the corner. It's called New Savanna. And it's got photos and writing AND, a longish piece about a dolphin ride that I couldn't post at That Other Place. It's got about 10 seconds or so in Azumanga Daioh, one of the cutest anime series ever (for tweeners, I suppose).

Japanese Jingle Bell Santa People

AKA Sparkychan's Boogie Woogie:

Happy Birthday to Me!

The Full Metal Alchemist's birthday gift to me was the fan-subbed live-action version of the hit anime Nodame Cantabile. (Think Bad News Bears meets classical music. It's one of those funny-but-moving J-dramas I've already written about here.)

Just for you all, here are some opening and closing songs from the anime:



And here's the anime-style ending song from the special episode that takes place after the series we watched ends.



For the series itself, though, I recommend veoh.com--the episodes only get chopped down into 2- or 3-clip sequences.

Oh, and by the way, it's inspired a dance for all the kids out there:

Japanese Tunisia

Tomonao Hara plays "A Night in Tunisia":

Constructivist Family Sing-along: My Grandfather's Clock

Actually never heard of this until the Full Metal Archivist got curious about the English lyrics to the song she was teaching onechan in Japanese. Thought I'd include some things I found along the way, just to show that I can at times be more than a one-note blogger during the golf season! (But how about that Paula Creamer making 4 birdies on her last 5 holes to overtake Jeong Jang at the Fields Open? Wow!)

First the Johnny Cash version:



Interesting how the grandfather basically calls for...robots near the 1876 song's end, eh?

Then some Vanilla Mood:



Next, the daikon slide whistle:



And finally, the MTV generation learns Japanese:



No, wait--let's not forget the NHK generation!



In Japan, the song is all about the loyalty of the clock (kinda like that song about the dog), whereas in America the same general idea gets expressed more negatively. Any historians have a bead on the cultural politics of the song as a post-slavery lament? Or have a sense of its transmission lines to Meiji Japan and just how and when it got transformed in translation?

Rahsaan Roland Kirk KILLS!

Most charismatic performer I've ever seen. Here he is playing three horns at once, in a tuxedo:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22m1n_pedal-up-by-rahsaan-roland-kirk_music

Home Movies Meets WAAGNFNP?

You decide!



In honor of Oaktown Girl's second Mostly Harmless post!

Wise Guy Christmas Medley

Crank up the volume and enjoy:

Japanese Jazz Guitarist

& vocalist . . . a bit older than onechan:



Now a little bossa nova:

Kids Rock

In the second half he plays the blues:



A little country blues:



Connie faces the judges with "Over the Rainbow" – get out the facial tissue:



A little piano for you:

Swing Time

Here's a cartoon called "Swing":



And here's Uncle Bill playing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot":

Fast Fingers Friday

John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia play Chic Corea's "Spain."

Yo! IBM: 21st C = von Neumann * Armstrong^2

I wrote this a decade ago. IBM is no longer on the ropes, as it was at that time. But it hasn't regained its past glory either. That is gone, no doubt forever. And whatever happened to Borland International?

---

Why is America the software center of the Universe?
Because it is also the Rap-Rock-Funk-Soul-Jazz-Blues
center of the Universe. What does that have to do
with the If-Then-Else imperatives of byte busting?
Technology is not just technique. It is style and
attitude. You can't write great software if your
soul was nurtured on the mechanical clockwork and
internal combustion rhythms of the Machine Age.
You must free yourself from the linear flow of
mechanical time and learn to improvise order from
the creative chaos lurking in the multiple
intersecting flows of the digital domain.
Roll over Beethoven, it's Jimi Hendrix time.

---

Cases in point: Steve Wozniak took time out
from Apple to produce rock and roll concerts.
Microsoft was co-founded by a guitar-playing
Jimi Hendrix fan, Paul Allen. Borland International
is the brainchild of barbarian jazz saxophonist
Philippe Kahn. Xerox and Apple guru Alan GUI
Kay worked his way through graduate school as
a jazz musician. Lotus founder Mitch Kapor
has taken to riding the informatic frontier
with Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow.

---

Now, IBM is on the ropes. Marching to the tick tock
strokes of a steam locomotive, it can't swing to the
rhythms of the Apollo moon dance. Big Blue is
crying the blues because it isn't hip enough
to play the blues. If you don't want to be dogged
by the hell-hound on IBM's tail,
then baptize your brain in the soul-juice
of funkadelic jivometric drumology.

---

Still, we can't create the future from nothing.
The post-IBM world has been in the works
for a long time. In the Roaring 20s
the sons and daughters
of Henry Assembly-Line Ford
and Tom Light-Bulb Edison
cruised the night spots of African
America dancing to the
improvisations of Louis Armstrong,
Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway,
and all the other pioneering funkateers.
Getting juiced, they got loose,
and mechanical tick tock began to die.
Their sons and daughters dug
Elvis the Pelvis and blew
Bob Dylan's changing winds
into the high-tech studio wizardry of
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band.
When Woodstock Nation faded into decaying
reels of audiotape and videotape the young,
the hip and the restless decided that
communes were 19th century and
created the video game and PC industry.

---

Now a new cultural force has
emerged on the scene.
Tempered in battle with
Ronald Raygun and his
Bush League Wrecking Crew,
hip hop reaches back to
the rhythms which created
humankind on the African
savannas and, through digital
sampling, crosses those
rhythms with our recorded
musical legacy. Silicon Age
rappers insinuate body-heart
rhythm into the digital
warp and woof of emerging
cultural patterns. The anger
cuts through accretions of industrial
armor and
creates room to grow,
etting the neurons branch in new patterns.

---

That's where it all begins: the nervous system.
While the genes lay down the basic plan, the
detailed wiring is worked out through
extended and intimate interaction
with the environment.
To update William Wordsworth,
the jazz child is mother
to the cybernetic man.
The dancing you do at ten forms
the matrix out of which you think
when you are twenty. If you grow
up to mechanical rhythms,
digital dancing is unnatural.

---

To be a natural born child of the 21st century
you must dance at the wedding between
the soul of John von Neumann
and the science of Daniel Louis Armstrong.

Kojo no tsuki

An old Japanese favorite.



This next one is by me (I learned the tune from Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Thelonius Monk):


This version is by a Japanese quartet that calls itself Vanilla Mood; they seem to have a large and various repertoire that they perform in this vanilla-mood style:


This vocal version is clipped short unfortunately:


This song is known to have favorable effects on the immune system of toddlers.

6-year-old drummer & hip-hop international

Here's a Japanese jazz trio, playing on the street, with a 6-year-old drummer trading fours:



And here's a blog entry on international hip hop.

Cuteness to the Max

I raise you "Sugar Baby Love," the opening theme from Little Snow Fairy Sugar. It doesn't get any cuter than this:



In keeping with ultimate cuteness, the central story is about how middle-schooler Saga completes grieving for her mother even as her snow fairy friends become full-fledged snow fairies by finding their "twinkles." I can tell you right now that the show never ever tells you what a twinkle is. But nonetheless you know what it is when the show is over.

I'm guessing that onechan might well get into the waffos (waffles) and maybe the bubble baths, but twinkles are probably a bit sophisticated for her.

On a completely different tip, here's a mashup that combines the opening music* and visual styling for Cowboy Bebop with the characters from Azumanga Daioh:



*By the fiercely talented by Yoko Kanno, who's also done the music for the Ghost in the Shell franchise.

Here's a somewhat different take on Azumanga Daioh:



The little cute one is Chiyochan, a genius who went from 6th grade to high school. In the middle of that video you see a sequence where the girls are at the beach and one of them, Sakaki, daydreams that she's riding a dolphin. That is a very clever little piece of film-making, though it loses something without the dialog.