午夜剧场

Blues! What comes to mind when you hear that word? "Is it 'St. Louis Blues'?" (from those born in the early Showa era), or for younger generations, it might be a definitive "It's Eric Clapton." More recently, one might say, "Wages aren't rising, and what's with this decline of Japan?"—now that, too, is the blues.

The pre-war "St. Louis Blues" became a pioneer of Japanese kayokyoku blues, and Clapton greatly increased the blues-listening population. However, the music called blues must first and foremost be Black blues. This is because it is a foundational music with a tradition distinct from both jazz and rock.

It seems blues is at the foundation of jazz; there is also folk-blues as part of folk songs, and concepts like the "blues impulse"—eventually, in the 1960s, rock music that had fully digested the blues also became popular.

At the next time, even if you walked all over Tokyo, there were almost no blues (or R&B) records to be found. You had to place a special order, wait about three months for it to arrive by sea, and pay over 2,000 yen for a $3 or $4 LP (at an exchange rate of $1 = 360 yen). It was a world away from a single click. Without understanding the system or history of the blues, I pieced together fragments of knowledge little by little. I even remember handing out flyers for record concerts at the Mita Campus.

From that era until around 1980, when the blues became established, I started a company with "Blues" in its name in 1975. This book, which I wrote and edited with Akira Kochi, compiles reviews reflecting the reception of the time from "The Blues" magazine we published—full of misunderstandings, prejudices, and major discrepancies in evaluation—reproduced chronologically with some original mimeographed and typed text. It is a volume that looks back on the blues as it was discussed with strange fervor while illuminating its future. On every page, the pounding heartbeat toward a vast, unknown music pulses.

In an era when the unwavering king B.B. King was sometimes dismissed as a servile entertainer, and we sought out things that began to shine in the dark night of fifty years ago, many young listeners also asked for these records to be preserved. Mixing in my hobby of Black folk art and using many color plates, it has become a volume as heavy as the blues itself.

Yasufumi Higurashi

P-Vine

368 pages, 4,620 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.