People who listen to jazz, buy more records, listen to music and watch more performances, it is inevitable to make a comparison between the United States, Europe and Japan, which are the three major jazz indicator regions today. Many of the jazz music I know well, or are fond of the United States or focus on Europe, and all of them like to belittle Japanese jazz. As for their reasons for derogatory, it can be summed up in one point, that Japanese jazz is slightly inferior to europe and the United States, and the overall level is slightly inferior. On this topic, my view is more tolerant, believing that the jazz music of the three places has its own strengths and distinctive characteristics. As the birthplace of jazz in the United States, jazz has always had a sufficient talent pool, and late or online jazz masters have emerged in an endless stream, while American jazz people have a natural sensitivity to this kind of music, whether it is creation or performance, the maturity of American jazz skills and the authentic aspect of charm do not make a second thought. European jazz is obviously not willing to chase after the American ass, European jazz people often exude a humanistic high in their bones, their music from production to composition interpretation, from recording style to record cover design often has a European style (ECM's works are examples), breaking through the rules of the traditional American jazz game while gradually establishing the own vocabulary of European jazz, of course, in terms of technology, European jazz people are more than their American counterparts.
Japanese jazz started later than the United States and Europe, as an oriental country, the Japanese people did not have jazz factors in their blood, but the Japanese with strong learning ability entered the country quickly in this way, and in just a few decades after World War II, Japanese jazz has gradually grown into a size and level that cannot be ignored. Japanese jazz musicians have no obvious advantage over their European and American counterparts in technology, and indeed they are slightly inferior in terms of originality and exploration, but Japanese jazz obviously attaches much more importance to the affinity of music, especially for Asian countries that have a little resistance to European and American jazz that accept too strong personalities.
In recent years, many outstanding representative figures have emerged in the Japanese jazz scene, and they have also received considerable high evaluations in the international music critics, which has further enhanced the image of Japanese jazz. The following is to introduce three contemporary japanese jazz female singers and their works, and to comfort fans and friends who have missed the opportunity to watch the beautiful scenery of Japan's cherry blossom season due to the epidemic.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Asian Bossa Nova Music Spokesperson: Lisa Ono</h1>
Drawing on the bossa Nova musical renaissance in recent years, Lisa Ono, a Japanese-Brazilian jazz singer, has become the music spokesperson for The Asian Bossa Nova. She is well known far beyond the average jazz singer, and the somewhat petty bourgeois general public has heard her name, because the popularity of her music has broken the category of jazz singing, and she has also been the holder of the best-selling record of Asian jazz singers' albums.
Bossa Nova music originated in Brazil, flourished in the United States, and then spread to the world in the 1960s. Among the largest number of foreign immigrants in Brazil are Japanese, you can understand why the Japanese are no less enthusiastic about bossa Nova music than the Brazilians who created it. Lisa Ono was born in 1962 to a japanese immigrant family in São Paulo, Brazil. Because her father ran a local club, she was fascinated by the performances of first-class musicians from an early age. She taught herself to play guitar and sing Bossa Nova songs at the age of 15, and at the age of 20, she went to Rio de Janeiro to learn first-hand, and her singing skills and acting experience have been significantly improved. In 1989, she released her first Portuguese-language Bossa Nova solo album Catupiry in Japan, and her exotic rhythmic sense and fresh singing style quickly conquered countless fans, and then became the most popular female singer in the Japanese jazz industry, starting her career as a superstar. After joining EMI, Lisa Ono has released dozens of albums so far, maintaining a stable film production rate, she not only shows more and more diversified trends in musical styles, but also further pushes herself to the international music stage and becomes a truly international jazz female singer.
Lisa Ono has a number of representative recording albums, but the most admired is her 2007 release of Ipanima – Music of Antonio Carlos Zubin (OPCD-20230).
The album is the pinnacle of Lisa Ono's Music Interpretation, and she doesn't think second in her work. The album "Ipanima" is impeccable in terms of song selection, performance lineup, and interpretation standards. Antonio Carlos Zubin is the father of Brazilian pop music, and it was under his impetus that Bossa Nova became a wave of popularity in the world. "Ipanima" has selected 15 works created by Zubin, in addition to "The Girl from Ipanima", which is known as the "Bossa Nova National Anthem", it also includes "Monophonic Samba", "March Rain", "Drinking Water", "Jet Aircraft Song", "A Little Joy" and other popular songs, and fans who love to listen to Bossa Nova are sure to be extremely kind.
Zubin died of illness in 1994, and during his lifetime, Lisa Ono made a special visit to Zubin in Rio de Janeiro, and received careful guidance from the master. Lisa Ono is grateful for this teacher-student friendship, and in this album, she sings her unchanging passion for Bossa Nova and her incomparable respect for Zubin. We can find a series of Zubin's musical team behind the scenes of this album: arranger/guitarist Paul Zubin, pianist Daniel Zubin, who is the grandson of Master Zubin and is now the leader of the Bossa Nova field, harmony singer Miaocha, a Brazilian female singer who has been with Zubin for a long time, and the wife of Bossa Nova King Joa Gibato. The geographical and cultural environment in which she grew up made it easy for Lisa Ono to solve the language barriers that are difficult for the average non-Brazilian Bossa Nova singer to overcome. Her standard and pure Portuguese pronunciation and singing the famous Bossa Nova song naturally exude a feeling of familiarity, and the addition of the above Brazilian musicians ensures the authenticity of the Bossa charm of this disc. Lisa Ono's singing style is a bit like Este Jibato, fresh and natural like the girl next door, and this sound texture is an important part of the casual rhyme of Bossa Nova's music. Her singing volume is very soft, as if it comes from somewhere far away, and the music is often filled with a kind of nostalgia for the past and a faint sentimentality, which is as powerful as the melody written by Zubin.
At the end of 2011, Lisa Ono signed to her new owner, Dream Music, a subsidiary of Universal, and released the album Sakura Love (NUMBER: MUCD-1254). This album, also wrapped in the guise of Bossa Nova, is quite special, because its track selection is Japanese contemporary pop songs, and the carefully arranged J-POP works have taken artistic tastes to a higher level, which is amazing and makes this disc another masterpiece of Lisa Ono's singing career. Sakura Love is the first all-Japanese song album in Lisa Ono's solo career as a singer. The album contains a number of japanese pop songs that he has covered, including Yosumi Inoue's "Moru Serenade", Yumi Arai's "Want to Go Back to That Day", kubota Hayaki's "Alien", etc., all of which were reinterpreted in the Style of Bossa Nova, giving these songs a new look.
Perhaps the younger generation of J-POP fans are not familiar with this repertoire list, but in fact, these tracks are masterpieces with years and stories. For example, "I Want to Go Back to That Day" was the first number one single released by Yumi Arai (her name was Yumi Matsunaya at the time) in October 1975, and it was also a landmark work of the Japanese godmother pop musician. "Mo Ru Serenade" is from an album created by Inoue Yangshui in the 1980s, which made Inoue Yangshui, who was up and down in the song world, rise and fall again and enter the ranks of first-line singers. Lisa Ono obviously attaches great importance to this album that returns to her native language, she personally participated in the production of the whole disc and the arrangement of all the tracks, these old songs that have touched her and countless middle-aged and elderly fans, through her re-renovation and interpretation, actually show a uniform musical temperament, the first capital image was originally built for her. The relaxed and charming Bossa Nova style cover is suitable for the emotional expression of these tracks, Lisa Ono's whispering voice is like a gentle love story in the listener's ear, and the excellent recording makes this disc quite satisfactory whether it is replayed at a low volume or reproduced in a loud amount.