カウボービバップをちょっとやすみます

わたしはジャズがだいすきです。そして、(apparently?) 日本人もジャズがすきですね

The history of Japanese music and jazz is actually pretty interesting, er, to me at least.  While I'm not very familiar with post-WWII Japan, it would seem that along with the rest of world-wide cultural influences came American Jazz.  I say "American" to emphasize that it came from America, ahah. Ever since the mid 70's or there abouts, there has a lot of mixing in Japan of their more traditional musics with jazz.  The opposite happened, too, where American musicians starting copying the musical style of traditional Japan.  Ever since then, and especially in the 80's, Japanese ideas have been used in American music, which was used in Japanese music, and back to America and so on until it's hard to distinguish what aspects came first.  Here is an example.

日本のジャズの中で、上原ひろみがいちばんすきです。

My favorite Japanese jazz musician is Uehara Hiromi.  In one of her more recent albums, "Beyond Standard," she takes a lot of classic songs and puts her own jazz spin on them.  Some you might recognize are Caravan (by Duke Ellington), Clair de Lune (by Debussy), and My Favorite Things (popularized in Sound of Music).  But on a CD with largely western songs, I was always baffled by one song whose title is in Japanese.  My step-mom recognized it as an American song, but the title seemed to imply it was Japanese.  Let's see if you know.

Here is the version she is familiar with:

If you are familiar with older Japanese music (or maybe even not! this guy was really famous), you would have recognized this song as (excuse my poor translation?) "I shall walk looking up" by Kyu Sakamoto.  Of course, 日本語で、the song is 「上を向いて歩こう」。

Here is the original:

And of course, this is the song that Hiromi plays in her album. 

いいですね~

カウボービバップ３

So far, I've shown you the opening, ending, and one random song from Cowboy Bebop.  I think it's time for another ending.  About halfway through the show, there is a special two part episode featuring Vicious and Gren.  It's a very touching episode and incredibly well done (also more related to the overall story than most episodes), and so I guess the director thought that it deserved it's own ending.  I have to admit, I found it very fitting.  Although, since I'm posting it here pretty much without context (SPOILERS!!! :O) you may not know why it's so fitting. But trust me it is. Or better yet, go watch the show! A little context though.  The name of the song at the end is "Space Lion." (Wonder why? Watch the show!)  It is based on a song in another part of the episode named "Goodnight Julia" which, for reasons of spoilers, I cannot explain here~ *(Also, don't be daunted by the four videos I posted. It's really not a lot, 'cuz they are all short and one them is technically a duplicate version.  Also, they *are* all the same song...)*
^_^

Here's Julia (original music box version. want to know why? watch the show!):

Here's the sax/piano version:

And here's Space Lion: **SPOILER ALERT**

Here is the clean version of the song, sans ending, for those wary of the spoiler~ (jsyk, the song picks up a lot more than sax/piano version):

二十ねんごのわたし

二十ねんごのわたしは、何をしますか。ちいさいうちがほしいです。
わたしの国はアメリカです。でも、アメリカの中で、どこへ行きたいですか。わかりませんよ。
しんせつなつまがほしいですが、こどもがあまりほしくありません。
ぶつりがくのけんきゅうしゃです。そして、つまはミュージシャンです。
「フェルミラボ」の社員ですから、月曜日から金曜日まではたらきます。
しごとがいそがしいですが、とてもたのしいです。
そして、毎日つまと朝ごはんと昼ごはんをたべたいです。
二十ねんごのわたしのせいかつはひまじゃありませんですが、とてもいいです。

Katakana Literary Works Final

[アドバタイズメント]

またカウボイビバップ

Okay, so just in case you're gonna get any funny ideas, every song I'm gonna post from Cowboy Bebop will have been written by Yoko Kanno, as stated before.  So far, you have heard some jazz, and some blues rock. Now how about some classical?  If you are at all familiar with classical music in general, you are probably familiar with the song "Ave Maria."  If you are more familiar, you are probably aware that there are quite a few versions of the song, some using the same lyrics, some changing it up.  Some people just altered the melody or combined some other songs.  Arguably the two most famous versions, and very beautiful too, are from Schubert and Gounod.  (Gounod took a more standard melody/lyric set and added it to Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major.)  Anyways, I would like to submit Yoko Kanno's completely original Ave Maria composition as another of one of the most beautiful.

せいめいが。。。

すみません！

わたしはとてもとてもいそがしかったですから、ポストがすこしありました。しけんとしゅくだいがたくさんありました。そして、先週の週まつはサンクスギヴィングでした！だから、ぜんぶであまりわるくありませんでした。しちめんちょうをたくさんたべました。マチネリスを三本のみました！ジュースの中で、マチネリスがいちばんおいしいです、ね？でも、わたしはぜんぶでとてもいそがしいでした。今朝さいごのしけんがありました。ぶつりがくのしけんでした。

でも、かえりますよ。

じゃあ、何かはなしたいですか。。。

もっとアニメをはなしょうか？もう、サムライチャンプルーをはなしましたから。。。カウボーイビバップをはなしたいか？じゃ、そうしましょう。これがニメの中でいちばんせいこうですよ！ハンｄスダウン！びじゅつやおんがくがだいすきです！そして、アインがいちばんかわいい、ね？でも、おんがくがだいすきですから、おんがくがはなしたい。

。。。えいごでいいですか？

Good, ahah.  The composer of the entire soundtrack is Yoko Kanno.  She is probably my favorite modern composer.  "Why?" you ask.  She doesn't just make awesome music, she makes awesome music in sooo many styles. Except hip-hop.  But you got enough of that when you looked up the Samurai Champloo OST, right? Right??? Anyways, she writes jazz, classical, rock, metal, pop... pretty much anything you could want.  And of course, the show is called "Cowboy Bebop" so you can expect a lot of jazz.  By the way, in case you haven't seen the show yet (blasphemy!) and are wondering, it is not about cowboys.  "Cowboy" is just slang for "bounty hunter" and came from, well, the Wild West days, you know~  If you want to learn more about the show, which I highly recommend you do, you can just check out the Wikipedia page. 

So yea, let's start with the opening theme!!!

And, uh... the closing theme???

By the way, the ending theme has some pretty sweet lyrics. Which you can check out here.

More Cowboy Bebop to come.

See you, space cowboy

Katakana Analysis (Final)

Two phrases that I found interesting in Katakana are スズキ and ヒト.


Suzuki seems to be in katakana to emphasize the fact that it is not just a name (like the name of a person) but the name of company.  The company is internationally known and is certainly not limited to Japan, so writing the company name in katakana, as opposed to kanji, probably implies this as well (since kanji is, at the very least, incredibly Japanese/Asian looking).  This seems supported by the fact that Suzuki also writes their logo in romaji, so that Japanese people know that the company has strong international/western ties, and so that it can be recognized by those who do not speak/read Japanese.  (Of course, this is all aside from the fact that it might just look cooler to use Katakana for international reasons.)


The usage of Hito in Katakana is a little more subtle, where writing it in Katakana implies a specific scientific usage, and not just referencing a random person.  In general, words written in katakana seem to be written that way as some type of emphasis.  Regardless of the intention (to look cool, to imply something western, etc), words in katakana, surrounded by kanji or hiragana, stand out.  So, one way or an another, the writer puts emphasis on that word and wants to draw your attention to it by writing it in katakana (perhaps with the exception of loan words).


Different textbooks explain Katakana usages in various ways because there are so many potential reasons to use Katakana (many different aspects of the language to emphasize).  It can be used for foreign words, sounds, names, and even to show that person writing or speaking is not native Japanese.  Each textbook would focus on the aspects they find most prevalent and easy to understand from a foreign perspective.