Folk /
Japanese Traditional Music: Koto • Shamisen (Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai 1941)
2025 restock. The World Arbiter label presents 1941 recordings of the Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai -- masters of the koto and shamisen, heard with excerpts from theater and songs performed by many artists born in the Meiji period. They represent the earliest examples of ancient classical traditions. In the late 1930s, Japanese musicologists and experts completed years of work on a project to record their country's musical cultures, starting with ritualized shamanic traditions of the palace's gagaku, …
Japanese Traditional Music: Songs Of People At Work And Play
The fifth and final volume of World Arbiter's Japanese Traditional Music marks the completion of the label's excavation and restoration of 60 10" 78RPM discs of Japanese traditional music, bringing a great body of lost music to light and offering in full a legacy that has been almost entirely unavailable until now, even in Japan. The original set was manufactured in 1941 by a company now called the Japan Foundation, and was intended to be presented exclusively to libraries (though the Japan Foun…
Gagaku Suites
Tip! Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century.
The recordings partly reflect …
Kyogokuryu-Sōkyoku "Shinshunfu"
"Shinshunfu" exists at a crossroads, a form both distinctly Japanese and distinctly "other", a complex blend of folk strains that is deep with emotional resonance and hard to place even for aficionados of Japanese traditional music.
"Of "Shinshunfu", only the drone of the shō and the occasional taiko hit appear in plain view. The exploration sits comfortably in the idiosyncratic sound world that Ken has been prolifically constructing for himself in the last few years (what he has come to call "…
Kajyadhi Fu Bushi
"This was traditional, transformative music, and music that made so much sense coming from EM's epicenter."― Matt Werth
Printed on special paper embossed with matte silver aluminium foil. Please consider the jacket illustration as an image as the texture of the original cannot be reproduced graphically. The disc is a translucent coloured disc with the image of the Okinawa sun.
A charming set of double transformations on this 7 inch. "Kajyadhi Fu Bushi" is a traditional Ryukyu minyo (Okinawa fol…
Mibu
From Tsugaru, the birthplace of Kazuki Tomokawa and Kan Mikami, to Osorezan, Itako, Nebuta, Kesho Jizo... Mutsu's Orpheus (minstrel) Furukawa Mibu, who sings about a magical institution to connect this world to the next, left this superb work in 1978! Shocking analogue LP reissue!
Mibu, who is also a poet, deceives the dead in order to live the memory of his younger brother (Mibu), who died at the age of three. The song becomes a prayer and a cry, dancing wildly in this world and being sucked in…
Umwelt, Room
*300 copies limited edition* With Umwelt, room, An’archives releases the first vinyl LP by Japanese singer, songwriter and guitarist, Kotonashiso. An elegant collection of seven slow-moving, free-ranging song forms, Umwelt, room is reflective, pensive, and yet has a great, expansive sense of movement, each song’s parameters feelingalmost infinitely flexible. Born in Tokyo in 1984, Kotonashiso began playing music in 2000. After taking a long break from making music between the years 2005 to 2016,…
Newocean
Since their first album in 1995, Japan's Nagisa Ni Te has created an enchanting and deeply personal sound world woven from elements of folk, psychedelia and rock along with wistful melodies and gentle arrangements. Centered on Shinji Shibayama (Hallelujahs) and Masako Takeda's partnership, the group has created intimate, emotionally resonant music that floats and breathes with an ease that can only come from a sort of telepathic chemistry. Released in Japan on the group's 25th anniversary, Newoc…