THAT IS GOOD

Vietnam A country that has not won, but has not lost.

Hot. Of course, there is no air conditioner in the cheap room, and only a slowly rotating fan hanging from the ceiling provides a warm breeze to my body.
I’m sitting on my bed in my dirty room with my headphones on, feeling the atmosphere of this place, the Vibes, and putting them into the melody and the beat as I play on my laptop.

Here is Saigon. The city is now called Ho Chi Minh City.

I got a taste of the recording trip in Cuba, and was curious about the different situation in a socialist country, I jumped into this place with one assistant and one junior colleague who accompanied me on the flight, and with no particular background or connections to this place, which gave me the same impression as the Thailand and Bali I visited in the past.

In terms of distance, it seems close, but not close enough.
However, in the image of “Asia,” they are almost the same.
At least it’s a different Asia than Japan, the Far East…

However, there is something different from Indonesia and Thailand.
Even from the calm appearance I felt from people, I could sense a hint of a combatant.

I can’t deny that there is a lot of influence from the Vietnam War movies, especially “Hell’s Apocalypse,” which I was forced to watch since I was a child.
In a sense, I’ve been brainwashed (lol) and made to fear them because of their propaganda.

But the fact is, this is a socialist country. It is a country that was born out of the vortex of the famous Vietnam Civil War, a war that scattered various social problems, exploded among the people, stimulated various expressions in literature and music, and set something in motion.

Socialist Republic of Viet Nam

To put it simply, it is one of the few countries that made the US withdraw from the invasion and kept the Asians in control of their own country, even though it had a great deal of backing from the Soviet Union and China.
Even if we lump them all together as socialist countries (which I feel is the case in Myanmar at the moment), the direction and intentions will be different even within each country.

First of all, I didn’t realize until I arrived that this country is long and narrow.
If we assume that the distance is from Hokkaido to Kyushu, the tribes must have been different since ancient times, just like in Japan.

That war between the North and the South tends to be as fragmented as the current wars in Korea and Sudan.
In many such conflicts, there is usually a major power behind it.
Small countries are always at the mercy of large countries with capital, but the people of Vietnam do not seem to have such a tragic attitude. They are gentle and dignified, and their responses are gentle, as is typical of Buddhist countries. Yet, deep inside, I felt a strong, unyielding spirit.
It can be summed up in one word: nobility.

This recording was done in 2005.
That’s 16 years ago.

The only clue we have is this record, but we have no contacts anyway!
There was no other way but for the three of us to find it. However, it was the first time for all of us to be in this place, and even my English was poor,
but my group members had also been to India once. Objectively speaking, their language skills were poor lol
And most of the people in Vietnam don’t speak English!
Under such circumstances, we split up to look for a musician.

Based on my experience in Cuba, I thought that I would be able to get a lot of clues by going to a music school, so I set out to go there,
but it was quite difficult with people who didn’t speak English…

and I have included the various episodes of that time as a drama in this album.

I asked one of the aforementioned companions, a man from Saga, called Edu, to put on an earphone-type microphone,
I recorded it with a portable DAT (digital recorder), and the conversations and sounds recorded when I was not there were quite interesting, and even now when I listen to them again, I can’t help but laugh.

(By the way, the crowd noise is from Saigon, the voice was recorded in Cuba, and the guitar and trombone were recorded in Jamaica.)

I managed to find a Vietnamese guy who could speak the language and tried to talk to him, but he could only speak poor Japanese and no English. Edu was suspicious of foreigners who didn’t speak any language, including English (lol), and the fact that he could only speak Japanese added to his suspicion. In the middle of the conversation, he shouts, “I’m not talking to you anymore!” But the Vietnamese man who approached him just(?) wanted to tell him that he knew about the music school, so he followed him around lol

The second half of this song is recorded as a live action documentary recorded with the ears of Edu lol

As it turns out, it was a good story, he’s not a bad guy, and he’ll get us where we need to go lol

(The song, string quartet, piano and horn section of this song were recorded in Cuba.)

In the latter part of the song, Edu is halfway through his persistence and starts to listen to him and finally ends up at the music school.
In short, it became an important song that taught us a great lesson: trust rather than doubt people lol
(I’m listening to it as I write this, and it still makes me laugh no matter how many times I repeat it)

Anyway, after all this drama, I met two female performers at the music school where we arrived, and the quality of their performance was beyond anything I could have imagined coming across through such a random route, which was too good for my first recording in Vietnam.

Their performance is included in the album “Toki No Kawa feat Breath Mark”.

For “Toki No Kawa feat Breath Mark”, I made a promotional video, and I tried to connect the scenery in Okinawa and the terraced rice fields distributed in Asia as a common culture.

From the performance of this ethnic instrument, the bau, and the instrument that resembles the koto, I could not help but feel the beauty and nobility of Asia, which I could not feel in Japan.

We got off to a good start and headed north from Saigon,

In the midst of a scene straight out of the aforementioned Vietnam movie, THE END by DOORS was echoing in my head lol

The city that had relations with the Japanese in the Edo period – Hội An

After such a hot and humid tropical Asian and jungle feeling.
On the way to the ancient city of Hue, I happened to visit this town.

Hội An

This area had diplomatic relations(?) with Japan during the Edo period, and there are still many old buildings and residences of Japanese origin here and there. In any case, almost all Japanese cities except Kyoto were bombed, and there are almost no structures left from the Edo period in the cities except in the countryside. I was very impressed to be able to see these carefully.

References(only japanese )

• 【歴史ロマン】ベトナムの世界遺産都市「ホイアン」は500年前に日本人街だった！？謎多き朱印船貿易時代の日本とベトナムの関わり、現代でも残る史跡をご紹介します。(ベトナム旅行とベトナム情報・アンコールワット旅行とアンコールワット情報)
• かつて1,000人の日本人が暮らしていたベトナム・ホイアンで、三大名物料理を食す(マイナビニュース)

Here, again, I was keenly aware of the Beauty of Asian Art and the sense of good taste that I had not felt in Japan.

The ancient city located in the center of Vietnam – Hue

We immediately went sightseeing, or rather, looked for musicians while trying to catch up with the situation.

Incidentally, the ancient capital of Japan is Kyoto in our minds, but we also tried the refined Vietnamese royal palace cuisine, just like in Kyoto.

As you can see, the three guys drank a lot of (tasty!) beer and had a lot of carbs, and by the time we left, we were all puffed up.
Of course, we didn’t just eat and drink (lol), we also checked out traditional music to study and find performers.

Traditional Dance in Hue Vietnam 2005

However, I couldn’t imagine a performance style that would suit my music,
so instead I went to the Mekong River, one of the most important rivers in Asia, and was watching the sunset when I heard a sound coming from the river.
As I approached the sound, I was told that I could go cruising on a Japanese style houseboat with a musician playing!
Of course I’d go!
When I got on the boat, the sunset of the Mekong River and these people were a perfect match…

I was able to record the performance here.
And I used it at the end of this song.

We also asked them to record the same song for the full-length version at the hotel where we were staying the next day.

By the way, Nguten Quangvinh, who plays this guitar-like instrument called Ngujet, had Logic, the music production software I was using at the time, and was a very progressive musician considering the situation in Vietnam at the time and took a great interest in my work and musical style.
Considering that he was not only an ethnic instrumentalist, but even used so-called DTMs, I’m sure he’s doing something interesting again now in 2021. (We’ve exchanged a few emails since then.)
And the songs are good too.
It’s cheerful and elegant.

The results of this recording are reflected in these works.

This song also became a multinational and stateless music with the addition of guitars and trombones recorded in Jamaica, which I would later visit.

The sequel to our Cuba-inspired recoding in a socialist country is finally here, and we’ve reached the halfway point.
From Hue, which is located roughly in the middle of this long, vertical country, we headed further north to Hanoi, the current capital of socialist Vietnam.

Behind it is a huge China.
And towards the big Asia….

＜To be continued.>

---

J.A.K.A.M. (JUZU a.k.a. MOOCHY / NXS /CROSSPOINT)
http://www.nxs.jp/
soundcloud / Bandcamp / Twitter / Facebook

Born in Tokyo, he started playing in bands and DJing at the same time when he was 15. As a DJ, his innovative and original style has taken the world by storm, and his activities have quickly expanded from huge festivals to underground parties both in Japan and abroad. In 2003, he went on a recording tour with local musicians in Cuba. In 2003, he went on a recording tour with local musicians in Cuba, and since then he has been recording all over the world, and started his own label, Crosspoint, as a new guideline for world music.
In addition to music production, he also produces video works, picture books and art books, and organized the outdoor festival “Jomon and Rebirth” in 2012. In 2017, he released HIGHTIME Inc. with DJ Tasaka, and in 2018, he released ZERO with MACKA-CHIN of NitroMicrophoneUnderground and MaL of PART2 STYLE. In 2018, he also started the unit ZEN RYDAZ with MACKA-CHIN of NitroMicrophoneUnderground and MaL of PART2STYLE.
In the same year, his music under the name of J.A.K.A.M. was released in analog form on the French label HardFist, which led to a live performance at the huge 30,000-person Nuits Sonores Festival, followed by a DJ tour of Europe and Israel. In 2019, the production of MYSTICS, a unit with Marcus Henriksson and Kuniyuki of the internationally popular Minilogue/Son Kite, began, and this year, 2021, the long-awaited album will be released. His original vision is spreading all over the world, crossing all genres.
He has been behind the decks at home and abroad with:
Acid Arab (FR) / Adam Ffreeland (UK) / Alex Patterson (The Orb, UK) Andy Baz (Background Records, Germany) / Asaf Sammuel (islael) / Dego (4Hero, UK) / Fabio (UK) / Francois K (NY) / Fred P(NY) / Foolish Felix (UK) / Grooverider (UK) / I.G.Culture (People, UK) / Jeff Mills (Chicago) / Joe Claussell (NY) Nick the Record (UK) / Moodyman (Detroit) / Panasea (Germany) PHOTEK (UK) / Storm(MetalHeadz, UK) / Suv (Fullcycle, UK) / Q-Bert & Inbisibl Skratch Piklz, Mix Master Mike with D-Styles, Yogafrog and Shortcut (US) / Theo Parrish(Detroit) / Terre Thaemlitz (US/JPN) / Tom Wieland (Vienna) /DJ KRUSH (JP) / Flying Lotus(US)/ / Boredoms (JP) / FAUST (Germany) / Dennis Bovell(UK) / Dillinger Escape Plan (NY) / Juno Reacter (UK) /Lee Perry (Jamaica) / LKJ (UK) / Lake Trout (US) / Mad Proffesor (UK) / Mala (UK) / Marcus Henriksson(SW) / Meat Beat Manifesto (UK) / Merzbow , MMW (US)/ Yakaza Ensemble(Turkey) etc. His style keeps evolving and defies categorization.

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