Introducing the Secret Jazz Soundtracks of Anime, hiding in plain sight.
A little side-step from introducing more about Jazz Cow and his world. To explore the relationship between Jazz and Anime (Japanese animation).
One of the objections I hear from would-be commissioners is that “no one likes Jazz”. I have three things I say to that:
Even if you hate Jazz you’d still love Jazz Cow, why? It’s not a show about Jazz. I have no interest in selling real estate yet I love ‘Arrested Development’, I’m not keen on offices, but I enjoy ‘The Office’, and just like Homer Simpson, I have zero knowledge of nuclear power.
From where I’m sitting in London, Jazz looks pretty healthy. I was at a sold-out gig last week, with hundreds of young people crammed in to see Nok Cultural Ensemble, and before Christmas saw an even younger demographic of people jamming on the drums with Femi Koleoso. A lot is going on if you want to see it.
You know Jazz is used in soundtracks for shows you already love, right? You see there is the Baader–Meinhof effect, where you don’t see how common something is until you are aware.
I’ll soon post about my top Jazz soundtracks in animation, to prove my 3rd point. But with the recent realise of Blue Giant, a Jazz themed Anime, and Yoko Kanno’s birthday I thought it would be interesting to explore Jazz and Anime, I don’t know much, which is why I’ll speak to those who do:
Because Claire was so insightful, I’ve added an edited transcript for those who are super keen to follow up on her links. But if it’s too geeky, don’t worry, I’ll get back to stuff about Jazz Cow soon.
Either way please sign up to this mailing list for updates to Jazz Cow and exciting animated Sitcom. Come on let’s resist those pesky algorithms and get this cow on the road! we’ll launch on May 1, so please share it with people who might like it.
Transcript of interview with Claire
I’ve edited a little for clarity and length
John
Tell me about the context of Jazz music in Japan
Claire
The historical context is interesting. Jazz really took off in Japan in the twenties and thirties with the Jazz Age. It was very much tied into the relationship with the US, and [Japan’s] turn towards the West, since the late 19th century.
And so they pick up jazz really, enthusiastically, and immediately they start putting their own spin on it. We have the same thing happens in the Soviet Union, where jazz was seen not as being American, but as being African-American and therefore going against the grain of “the man”, the system, in the communist kind of ideology. And so initially it was really popular in the Soviet Union as well.
And we see a lot of it influencing a lot of early films and music as well. Of course, this is the era of silent film. So we don't know what the accompanists were actually playing, but it's a pretty safe bet that there were probably a few jazz pianists who were accompanying the silent films.
That's something [referenced by] one of the big anime greats, who started out in the 60s and 70s and is still active today. His name is Rintaro, and he has one piece that is completely a jazz score. His metropolis, a kind of homage to Fritz Lang's film.
But in Annecy [Animation festival] last year he actually premiered a short, it hasn't come out officially yet, it has a jazz score as well. It’s set in the 20s and 30s and it's an homage to those silent detective films.
So this is one of the ways that we see jazz coming into anime is through series that are set in the 20s and 30s, whether it's an actual historical piece or whether it's a kind of fantasy, historical, and whether it's set in Japan or in the States. So we see this kind of tapping into the history of jazz in a way.
Once Japan and America were at war, we see, not quite a ban, but suppressing of jazz in Japan but it only lasted about five years. Then we had the American occupation. What's really interesting is that the occupation has a concerted propaganda effort centred around radio, US Armed Forces Radio Service, I think it later became the East Asia Radio Service. Jazz played a large role in their strategy as it was used to sweep out nationalist Japanese culture and promote American culture's freedom, joy, and kind of swing dance of American culture.
In the 20s and 30s we saw Jazz cafes, in the late 40s, starting in about 47, we start to see all these swing dance halls. Basically, it's all jazz music. And then there's this effort by the American forces to recruit and train hundreds of Japanese musicians in the ways of jazz. It starts off as almost like a political tool.
When the Beatles make it big, then we see the American jazz artists, John Coltrane, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus tour Japan. And so we see a kind of resurgence of interest and not so closely tied to the occupation in the sixties.
And that's the second type of historical cueing that we see in anime as well. So we'll see anime that are set in the 60s and 70s and up into the 80s. Often we'll have jazz soundtracks, or at least jazz motifs in the soundtrack. Again, cueing. This is a particular historical era in Japan.
where do we go from there? Of course, we got the nightclub scene in the eighties, a lot of connections with the Yakuza and the crime syndicates and everything. So there's a lot of anime that are investigating that. So we'll see it kind of come up again with those themes.
But what's quite interesting is today in Japan, much like hard rock and metal, jazz is actually dominated by women, which is unusual when you compare it to the scene in the US and elsewhere. So it's a surprise for us Westerners that it was a woman who actually scored Blue Giant [ Hiromi] and who recorded the piano, and all this sort of thing. But for a Japanese audience, if you like, of course.
John Lumgair
Even though the characters are male.
Claire
Yeah,
John
Because I didn't realize it was Hiromi until I saw the credits and I was excited because I really love her music. It wasn't what I expected from a soundtrack by her. I’d say she may have been influenced by the person who will do the soundtrack for Jazz Cow in the final concert scene, but that’s speculation.
Claire
I only knew her from her like her Tiny Desk concerts on NPR. Yeah, no, this is totally, totally different. But since then I've done more reading and listening and realized that she's a bit like, like Madonna, right? Constantly reinventing herself. You know, every album is totally different, but in the sense that that is the heart of jazz, isn't it?
John
Thank you that’s really good, and for anime specifically?
Claire
One of the ways that jazz comes into anime is by cueing particular historical periods, and that tends to be either the 20s and 30s or the kind of 60 70s.
It can also cue geography. So things set in the US tend to get, at least a motif coming through, but in some cases, the entire soundtrack is. And then the second main way that we see, of course, is with Yoko Kanno and more of jazz as an aesthetic. Often the whole series.
There’s there's another famous composer, Makoto Yoshimori, and he's done a couple of series that have quite strong jazz scores. And one of them is set in the States, I think in the Prohibition era Baccano! So that makes sense because it's kind of queuing time and place.
The other one is in contemporary Tokyo and it's called Durarara!! And there really because it's a series with a real frenetic energy. But just like Blue Giant and that theme of jazz musicians are there, you know, they treat each other as stepping stones. That's the point. It's not to form a band that lasts for 50 years, that series has an ensemble cast and all of their stories are weaving in and out, there's not a hierarchy in that sense So it's I think the jazz score, there is a really powerful, powerful metaphor for the style of writing and storytelling in that series, even though it's not connected to it historically or in terms of location. The kind of metaphoric or aesthetic use.
And then out of that, we've got a third time period, where we see jazz music, which is the future. The futuristic setting and that's really down to Yoko and Watanabe and Cowboy Bebop. They define for Japanese anime culture, what the sound of the future and the sound of future is. Jazz infused, right?
So we've got quite a number of sci-fi dystopian and a lot of steampunk because steampunk is kind of that late Victorian Edwardian, almost into mixed gets mixed up into Prohibition-era kind of stuff. So we'll see these kinds of weird futuristic series. Often we'll have either entirely jazz or at least more commonly a jazz-influenced score.
And we get that, especially like Yuki Kajiura, who is a contemporary of Yoko Kano, about 60 different anime series, and quite a number of hers will have jazz motifs. She's she's very eclectic in her influences, but but she has a really strong kind of jazz and new-jazz background as well. A really interesting composer.
John
So I need to check her out.
Claire
So, there are so we've got the time and place, we've got the aesthetic and then we've got the the futurist aesthetic in particular. And then of course there are just a very, very few series that are actually more clearly about jazz. So there we've just got Kanno and Watanabe's subsequent series after Cowboy Bebop, which is Kids on the Slope, and that set in the sixties and this group of high schoolers who basically kind of discover jazz and the way that the jazz music weaves through their very melodrama, love triangles and quadrangle and all of that sort of thing. Some incredible performances and people knowledgeable about Jazz raving about it online and from the reactions this might even be a superior score. Cowboy Bebop is amazing as well. And it was genre-defining.
John
Yes, Cowboy Bebop’s score sounds so authentic. It just sounds right all the way.
Claire
Because it's this combination, they're doing homages to the American origins in some ways. But it's also just so clear that this is Japanese jazz. Yeah. And that's, that's something we never get in the Soviet case, it's always linked to America there. It is never becoming its own thing. In Japan, there really was this enthusiasm to make it their own. And in a way, you know, there's part of it, too, and there's kind of a strand that develops in the whole light music movement, which is Keiongaku, and that's the very kind of like lounge singing. You get that everywhere in Japan all kinds of especially the big films you know so it's kind of not fully jazz, but it's kind of it's in this nebulous space in between.
John
What are they trying to signal with that?
Claire
Well, I think it's it's the quintessential Japanese music of the modern era it's heavily influenced by Parisian music and German music of the time in the New Wave and these kinds of things. But it's it's very Japanese in the themes of the music. So it's almost linked with haiku and that tradition of writing.
You'll see it often in films themselves, they'll make these connections. So there was a film that came out, it's on Netflix, it's called Words Bubble Up like Soda Pop. And they're so one of the characters was one of these singers. She's passed away, so she's just a minor character. But so there are just a couple of songs like that that weave through it, but it's really a song about haiku in the modern era, but also weaving in a traditional Japanese summer celebration called Daruma. I think this weird little character almost looks like a nested doll, but it's kind of scary. So it's actually being integrated into much older Japanese traditions.
John
It makes sense jazz is always a hybrid music anyway. And so adopts to wherever it goes, and takes on its qualities.
Claire
Yeah, that's really, cool. It makes me want to some really proper research now
One little fun fact. Miyazaki's first feature film as a director was part of Lupin the 3rd
Adaptation from the manga and it’s the film The Castle of Cagliostro, and that has a jazz soundtrack as well. And Lupin was an interesting figure. I mean, he's French, but a world traveller. But this is a very Japanese kind of mega-hit from the seventies. So. So even Miyazaki got a little toe in there.
John
Wow.
Claire
That's always a good little hook, right?
John
Yeah, his soundtracks are usually incredibly beautiful, like his films. But they can be bit too sweet and too sugary.
Claire
Yeah
John
And I can see that jazz could rescue some of the sugar.
Claire
Exactly. And like Lupin the 3rd he's meant to be the grandson of the famous and the famous thief. So, he’s morally grey. He's a protagonist. But shall we say, he's he's a gentleman thief. I know. And lots of car chases and, you know, gunshots and know all this kind of stuff.
John
That's right up my street.
Claire
It's perfect for a jazz soundtrack. It was a composer named Yuji Ohno who did that score. And another really great one I would say is just recently there's been this absolute mega-hit in Japan and around the world called Spy × Family And it's a kind of it's set in a hybrid of Britain and East Germany in the 70s. So the school that the little girl goes to is basically Eton, but, you know, dressed up. So it's a Cold War kind of spy comedy, family comedy. And it has it has, again, you know, quite a strong jazz influence there. But because it's all these crazy madcap chase sequences and ridiculous fight sequences and just the craziness like that.
John
Sounds great
Claire
Kanno actually mixed or the theme song for the second season. So, obviously, the people working on the score recognized, that we need to get her in on this because she's kind of the queen of this, this whole venture.
John
So that's amazing.
Claire
And so I think we're prepping for another generation, basically to discover jazz through through anime.
John
Well, this is the thing. This is I was talking with a Latin American friend and he was talking about how anime made him want to play jazz. And when I went to See Blue Giant, I bumped into a jazz pianist, a guy called Robert Mitchell, who's one of the UK's great jazz pianists. He wanted people to see the film to discover Jazz. I'm pretty convinced that people get into jazz through film because they hear it somewhere and they're like, what is that?
Claire
That's interesting. yeah, definitely. I will for myself too. I was just kind of going through my memory banks and thinking apart from Blue Giant, do I have anything to say [on Anime and Jazz]? And then I realized, Wait a second, Yuki Kajiura, and then I see Taisei Iwasaki. So I just bought his, score and see airing right now called Metallic Rouge. And the reason why I even started watching it is the first episode was like a mashup between Blade Runner and kind of like a speakeasy, you know? And I'm now listening to this soundtrack on loop. I'm like, Wait a second, These have jazz in here, you know, And it's more kind of character motifs that come through. But it's it's definitely a touch point. And I started to realise, it is actually everywhere. I just haven't clicked, you know, because I don't know, I haven't ever researched the music itself. But it's just it's everywhere. And so I started to get really excited then and now I'm just like, wow, this is incredible.
John
You know, when I was talking to people, about Jazz Cow, people say jazz is not going to put people off. But Jazz is used in animation soundtracks all the time. And then people don't believe you until you start naming stuff. And I was naming Charlie Brown, Pink Panther and people go, yeah. And it's somehow they don't think they like something, but they do.
Claire
And exactly.
John
Blue Giant obviously had a Jazz Soundtrack it was the dominant theme of the whole thing.
Claire
In that sense it is unique, I could not find any other series that are actually about jazz musicians who are, trying to break through. Kids on the slopes like they're just high school kids who are using jazz to explore. It's it's a rite of passage or like a coming-of-age kind of story. So it's there and you couldn't have the story without the score, without the jazz performances. But it's not like Blue Giant where it's it’s front and centre.
John
They do a really good job. My only criticism would be some of the performance scenes in the club, I don't know whether it's motion capture or CGI. Yeah, a bit. They don't have the beauty of something that was just drawn Traditionally. But other than those moments, I think it's just breathtaking
Claire
So those were rotoscoped, it was motion capture and then it was rotoscoped. I would say that in the industry, I only know one animator who can handle rotoscope I think well this young up-and-coming director in, in Japan Yoko Kuno. And when you see her rotoscoping right it does not look like rotoscoping because she does so much hand-drawn on top of it and that's it. But it's ridiculously time-intensive and you kind of wonder why is she even doing motion capture rotoscoping? Why does she just draw it?
John
Yeah. It has just a strange feel about about it. Disney did it well and I think that's just because they had world-class animators who could just draw it.
Claire
So we're not still, right? even when we're being still we're constantly just with these little micro movements and even just breathing and the Rotoscoping captures that. But when we look like our eyes filter all of that movement out. So it looks really unnatural to see an animation that hasn't filtered that out essentially.
John
Yeah.
Claire
You know, and I think that's where the art of rotoscoping lies, is you've got it filtered that out and basically nobody ever does, right? And so it always just looks a little bit kind of alien.
John
That's probably the reason.
Claire
There were a few walk cycles where they used CGI and I was like, Why did you do that? Like walk cycle is the easiest thing to do. It's like.
John
It’s not easy, but these Japanese guys are masters of that stuff. Yeah, and it's got easier with technology, but yeah.
That's really helpful. I'm going to have to look all those things up now.
Claire
There's some great series. There’s one that I haven't seen yet, but now I want to, after reading about it, it's called Shōwa Rakugo. Rakugo is a strict Japanese stand-up comedic storytelling, you’re allowed, I think it's two props, a fan and a little cloth. Jazz isn't really addressed in the series but serves as a metaphor because it follows a group of these comics who are pushing back against a very rigid art form. And so I guess, like Jazz Cow, is just pushing back against the constraints and this sort of thing. Apparently, the score is really good for that one as well.
John
We saw in Blue Giant there weren't fight scenes, but the way the musical scenes were shot was like a fight scene. I was looking at the little trailer that I'm producing and i’ve been reminded they've been so much more creative in the way that they've done the shots. I’m really inspired to push things further when I make this.
Thank you I hope that was interesting.