Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

There’s a fine post over at NeoJaponisme by Caleb Deupree about composer Takemitsu Toru’s (1930-1996) early 1960s musical experiments. It includes images of a couple of Takemitsu’s nonconventional “graphic scores,” in which visual maps take the place of traditional musical notation. It also provides a nice survey of recordings of the pieces made by musicians who were up to the challenge of transforming abstract visual images into sounds.

Deupree’s piece resurrects fragments from the musical past, the same task Brian Wilson will be up to in the coming months. In a shrewd move, the George Gershwin estate has inked a deal with the former Beach Boy maestro to complete some of the unfinished pieces that the composer left behind after his death in 1937. I say “shrewd,” because this not only brings Gershwin back into the public eye, it will also produce new copyrights for at least some of his pieces, thereby ensuring steady income for the estate for the coming decades (Gershwin’s other copyrights will mostly expire in 2019). But “shrewd” too in the sense that Wilson is an unlikely, but potentially brilliant, choice for the task. Stay tuned.

Someone else is revisiting and tinkering with the musical past. Ray Davies’ new CD, The Kinks Choral Collection, will be out in the US next month. Released in the UK earlier this year, it consists of reworkings of a number of Davies’ Kinks and solo compositions in the company of a full choir. Ray has also announced a brief U.S. tour in November to mark the release, and rumor has it he will appear on the Letterman show around then. Little brother Dave has also announced a mini-tour for early 2010, his first live appearances since suffering a massive stroke several years ago–very good news, indeed. Dates for both tours are available here. The bad news: neither brother has seen fit to include Chicago on his itinerary. Like musicians working from Takemitsu’s graphic scores, I guess I’ll just have to use my imagination.

Just as I did last summer, yesterday afternoon I attended the annual quasi-reunion of the old Muddy Waters band at the Chicago Blues Festival. It’s become a multi-generational event: Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Muddy’s former drummer, now plays harmonica, while his son Kenny mans the percussion. Two of Muddy’s sons, Big Bill Morganfield and Mud Morganfield, handled most of the vocals. Bill plays guitar and sings, and he’s clearly inherited his father’s fun, showboating side, while Mud carries on the grave, stately side of the old man’s legacy.

The biggest name in the line up was legendary pianist Pinetop Perkins, looking very fine indeed in his pine green suit and keyboard socks. They closed the set with “Got My Mojo Working.” Pinetop took the first couple of choruses, then the various band members took their turns, and eventually Muddy’s youngest son and widow joined in the proceedings. The context had me wondering, though: what does it mean when 95-year-old Perkins sings “I got my mojo working, but it just don’t work on you”?

Likewise, what happens when Muddy Waters’ classic assertion of black masculine subjectivity, “Mannish Boy,” is sung several decades later by his own sons, who have carved out their own musical careers in their father’s shadow. Context is everything.

We’ll be back at the Blues Festival tomorrow night to see Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings close the joint down. She sings new songs that sound old; we’ll have to see what the context does to them.

When Satoko was a teenager, she became badly addicted to Lotte Choco Pies. Sold in boxes of six, they consist of two disks of a rather dry yellow cake separated by a layer of marshmallow cream, with the whole thing coated in a chocolate crust. They aren’t bad, but I can’t imagine getting a deep hankering for them myself. To develop the sort of full-blown Choco Pie habit that Satoko has, I think you need to encounter them as an adolescent. Or, as a worker in a Stalinist socialist regime.

I know the latter is true because of recent reports that the Choco Pie has become a source of tension in North Korea. Choco Pies produced by Orion (one of Lotte’s big competitors) were originally introduced as snacks for the tens of thousands workers in the Kaeson Industrial Complex in the North run by South Korean firms. The workers apparently fell in love, and now there is a rampant black market for Choco Pies in and around Pyongyang. The Asia Times reports that

“North Koreans love Choco Pie,” said Ha Tae-keung, president of NK Open Radio, which beams two hours of news daily into North Korea from its base in Seoul. “It’s an invasion of the stomach.”

North Korean workers, and the friends and family members for whom they save their daily treats, may salivate over Choco Pie, but it’s giving a severe stomach ache to senior officials fearful of the infiltration of South Korean culture in all corners of their Hermit Kingdom.

Choco Pie – along with other favorite South Korean cakes and candies as well as instant coffee – has come to symbolize the image of the capitalist South as a multi-tentacle beast that may be impossible to digest.

I do think the revolution remains safe, at least for the time being. If, however, they introduce Meiji Almond Chocolates, it’s all over for the Pyongyang regime.

I am both suprised and not surprised by the recent revelation that Japanese Foreign Ministry bureaucrats only told certain Prime Ministers–those deemed ‘trustworthy’–about a secret agreement in place since the early 1960s to allow the U.S. to transport nuclear weapons across Japanese territory. It’s just one more sign that when push comes to shove, AMPO, the Joint Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, takes priority over the Japanese constitution. I mean, it’s not like Japan is a democracy with an elected government, right? Dick Cheney would feel right at home in the Foreign Ministry, methinks.

I am also surprised (and not surprised) at how little coverage this all seems to be receiving in Japan. Here’s the Japan Times version of the story, which seems to have run on the front page of yesterday’s paper. I saw a Japanese-language version of the same article at the on-line version of the Tokyo Shinbun, but nothing on the websites for the other major vernacular newspapers. Perhaps I just missed it, or perhaps the editors of those publications found nothing surprising in the news.

More hopeful is a recent piece by Jim Walsh, one of my favorite music critics. Having overcome a recent medical scare, he composed a list of things that are really important. It includes the following:

*Before he died, singer/songwriter Warren Zevon said, “Enjoy every sandwich.” Meaning, of course, that tomorrow isn’t promised and that life is fragile. I would also say you should enjoy every ant, breath, bud, and magic moment, and, as often as possible, put yourself in situations where your and others’ enjoyment is maximized.

*When said enjoyment is happening, various wanton killjoys will try to rain on your parade. Don’t let them. Smile your wry smile and move on.

*The Bible’s most oft-cited mandate is “love the stranger.” Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that you start wrapping your arms around every Sven, Dick, and Lorna you run into, but at least talk to strangers. Here in Minnesota, that will get you plenty of arched whataya-selling? eyebrows, but more often than not it’s worth it.

You should take in the whole list, and so too should the Prime Minister of Japan, even if he isn’t particularly trustworthy.

I’m currently in St. Paul for a couple of days, taking care of a few issues related to my mother’s estate. It’s my first road trip since knee surgery; I’m a bit slow afoot, but so far so good.

Yesterday morning, before driving up from Chicago, I woke in the middle of a very odd dream. It was my own Tom Sawyer moment. I was attending a big-time funeral in Tokyo: guestbook signing tables outside, a large auditorium filled with mourners inside. As I looked around me in the hall, I recognized many old friends and family in the crowd, people who had clearly traveled from around the world to attend the service: my middle school principle, old workmates, friends from Sendai. It gradually became apparent that this was in fact my own funeral–but I wasn’t dead. The priest began the service and indicated to me that I needed to come up on the stage to explain to all of these good people why they had been summoned to attend my funeral when I wasn’t dead. I had no idea why this had happened and felt quite awkward and apologetic about the whole mess. I woke just as I was to begin speaking to the assemblage.

So why were people told to attend my funeral even though I was apparently in the best of health?