There is a joke like this: "Shinji Tanimura, Koji Tamaki, and Miyuki Nakajima have fed most of the Hong Kong music scene." "It's about the booming Hong Kong music scene in the 1970s and 1980s, with a lot of songs and lyrics borrowed from Japanese pop songs. These songs became the mainstay of the Hong Kong pop music scene at that time, and popular singers sang Japanese songs to a greater or lesser extent.
This can be seen from two perspectives. A large number of cover songs will inevitably damage the original driving force of the Hong Kong music scene later. Since a simple cover song can be a big hit, why should an original composition be. On the other hand, good music has its own independent life. The newly filled words give it a second life and let it enter the hearts of more people.
Today I want to talk about Shinji Tanimura. Born in Osaka in 1948, he is small, atmospheric, deep and loose, and has composed nearly 600 songs, nearly 50 of which have been covered as Chinese.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of Shinji Tanimura's debut and the 45th year of normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. On June 1, his "Shanghai Concert commemorating the 45th Anniversary of the Normalization of Diplomatic Relations between China and Japan – 2017 45th Anniversary of Shinji Tanimura's Acting Career" will be performed at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
This is not the first time Thatumura has performed in China. At the opening ceremony of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Tanimura, as the overseas promotion ambassador of the Shanghai World Expo, shared the stage with Chinese children to perform his famous song "Star".
Further on, Shinji Tanimura first stepped onto the Chinese stage on August 23, 1981. At the Beijing Workers' Gymnasium, she participated in the concert of "Hand in Hand Beijing" with Chinese singers. The trip also set his sights on the entire Asian region.
Tanimura has a strong Showa legacy, and his diligence is evident in the figures of more than 4,000 concerts and more than 30 million records sold. He is the representative of the typical post-war Japanese generation, confident, energetic and friendly to neighboring countries, always committed to the cause of Sino-Japanese friendship and care for children, this uncle is blameless, a structured and well-respected predecessor of the Japanese music scene.
In his active years, the vigorous and abundant Showa era was coming to an end, but it also burst into a brilliant light. The opening chapter of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yoshiki Tanaka's "Forward! Go ahead! "To this day, the exuberant and exuberant spirit of the "Ultraman" series, as well as the spirit of reflection on society, technology and one's own situation, are all true portraits of Showa. At the time, this optimistic national spirit was known as the "100 million total middle class", that is, 100 million people considered themselves to be middle class.
In that era, people believed that struggle could lead to a better life, and believed in the uniqueness of their culture. Whether on the screen or in literary images, men and women are sword-eyed, healthy and cheerful. Although not every man in the Showa period was Ken Takakura and every woman was Momoe Yamaguchi, they were indeed the most memorable figures in modern Japanese history.
The inherent "material mourning" and "Bushido" of Japanese culture, the adherence to traditional culture and the high acceptance of foreign culture were balanced in the late open Showa period.
Like the Japanese pop music of the time, there were both tunes and features of traditional Japanese songs, as well as the addition of early electronic music. Gentle, graceful, sad undertone but not delicate or decadent. Think of Yamaguchi, so young, but with a calm and slightly hoarse voice. She didn't have to scratch her head, but she had already bent as far as she could.
Shinji Tanimura was also a master of JPO music in the late Showa period. In 1971, Shinji Tanimura and Takao Horiuchi formed the ALICE band. They released their first single in 1972 and released the band's debut album two years later. While working in alice, he and Takao Horiuchi also began to publish their own solo albums. In 1974, Shinji Tanimura's first solo album HIGURASHI was published. He has also composed songs for many of his peers, including Momoe Yamaguchi, Tomomi Sakamoto, Yuzo Kayama, Noriko Sakai, and Aya Matsuura.
At this concert, familiar melodies such as "Spend Together" (Zhang Guorong cover, original "Flower"), "Distant Her" (Jacky Cheung cover, original "Romantic Railway"), "Star" (Teresa Teng, Rowan cover, original "Pleiades"), "Rainy Blue" (Jacky Cheung cover, original "Blue Rain") and other familiar melodies will all sound.
Showa legacy and Cantonese songs are the biggest selling points of publicity, but I want to hear Shinji Tanimura for a while and not only because of these.
The older he got, the more flavorful he sang.
I once watched a live video of him singing "Pleiades". Sit upright, one microphone per person. It seems to be settled, like the possession of the gods, which is a state that only exists when singing with life.
The Pleiades, made up of more than 300 stars, are one of the brightest in the night sky, especially in autumn and winter. Tanimura's "Pleiades" is not optimistic or pessimistic, but a narrative of "not seeing the ancients before, not seeing the comers after, reading the heavens and the earth slowly, and being alone but drooling". It is like the unspeakable fate itself, confused, lonely, contradictory, and still hopeful and bright.
Tanimura's voice is not very recognizable, and he never uses too much force. His singing is natural, flowing exactly as the song progresses. Although he could not understand the language, because of his common memories and some common culture, it was never difficult for the Chinese people to understand his music.
What I am more looking forward to is what kind of arrangement he will use and what kind of state he will present to interpret these familiar songs. A new division of Tanimura will be a living time itself.