Back in the mid-90's, when my two younger brothers were still in college, their friends would often descend upon the family abode for a weekend of partying and letting off steam. Oddly enough, after a Saturday night of drinking enough to float a sizable sailing vessel, a couple of us would hit the local bookstore to pick up the Sunday New York Times and we would pass it around while eating a large "hangover mitigation" breakfast. One morning, while on the paper run with "Whisky Joe", we decided to stop at a table in the bookstore cafe to guzzle a cup of coffee. There we were, two rough looking customers amid the post-church crowd. I turned to Whisky Joe and intoned, "Some people have yahooism thrust upon them, they don't have a choice in the matter, but we choose to be yahoos. We're sophisticated, educated yahoos." From then on, the Sunday paper run became known as "The Educated Yahoos Club".
As an educated yahoo, I have to confess that my exposure to the works of composer Akira Ifukube was strictly through the soundtrack work he did for Toho films. Ifukube was the genius behind the outstanding 1954 Godzilla soundtrack, including the iconic "roar" of the monster:
Poking around the intert00bz, I found one of Ikufube's earlier classic compositions, the beautiful 1935 Japanese Rhapsody:
Ifukube was also an ethnomusicologist... as a youth on the island of Hokkaido, he became acquainted with the music and culture of the Ainu people. Here is an excerpt from his 1949 vocal composition, Three Lullabys of the Native People of Sakhalin
Amazing what you learn when you decide to lift your knuckles off the ground and explore the more "highfalutin'" aspects of the career of a guy who's mainly known for his gorgeous sountracks for movies about giant moths.
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4 comments:
Hey, I Can Lift My Knuckles From the Ground!
SHOW-OFF!
~
I need to get back onto to the computer more. Look at all this cool stuff I have yet to learn!!
Truthfully, since I got my Blackberry, I'm hardly ever on here. I check my Facebook on there. A blogger that doesn't go on the computer has essentially killed her blog.
(I do have a post summer blog in the works though so.. I'll be back!!!)
((Hugs))
Laura
I'll be thrilled the day I can get my knuckles on the ground...
I'm not much for that kind of high-falutin' music - you know, the kind without enough guitars - but as someone with an interest in geopolitics, Sakhalin Island has played an outsized role in modern history.
First, it is, of course, no longer part of Japan at all - the Russians launched a "Far East Offensive" on August 11, 1945, pursuant to their agreement at Potsdam, certainly, but a naked land grab nonetheless. Despite the Japanese surrender on August 15th, fighting continued between Japanese and Russian forces on Sakhalin Island until the 25th.
Also, remember that KAL Flight 007 was shot down after overflying Sakhalin Island in 1983...
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