The Fishman Artist Embassy Series is a presentation of the DC Jazz Festival, which celebrates Jazz from around the world. Each participating embassy hosts a concert of one of their countries most celebrated Jazz artists in a series that runs from April to June, with this years contributors including Spain, France, Italy, and Japan. The Japanese contribution this time is the Mika Mimura Group with special guest Warren Wolf on Thursday, June 16th, playing at the Japan Information and Culture Center, which is the theater in the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC. Tickets to see this (literally) world class band are only $15 a person, which is about half of what the valet would normally be tipped at such a concert in a major metropolis, so if you love Jazz and are close enough to make the show, do yourself a favor and be in the audience.
I love Filk, and a lot of it is coming from the Star Wars universe these days. The first track is Hello (From The Dark Side), the second is Leia’s Call Me Maybe, and the 3rd is Jedi and I Know It. Yes, these are all very silly, but that is a big chunk of the fun for this kind of fan creation.
Sekirara has a great sound and a lot of energy, as you can hear. The band formed in July of 2014, played live shows all over Japan, and started releasing singles in the middle of 2015. The first track is I Want To Be In Your Memory Long Even One Second from their second demo single, the next is Merry-go-round from their first full album, just released in January.
Qaijff’s second mini album Life is Wonderful was released a last week, and the first track is the first song on the disc, Wonderful Life. They started playing as a band in April of 2012 and had so much fun they have been doing it ever since. The second song is Organism from their 2015 first mini-album (which was also called Organism), and the final one is Clock Hands from a 2014 single. If you want to get a feel for what the band has been through over time, the photos on their blog will give you a pretty good idea.
Chu’s day is a high energy J-Rock girls band from downtown Tokyo who seem to be playing live somewhere every day. In fact it was difficult finding official studio tracks to post, most of their official videos are them playing live in some club or at some event. The first track is Rocking Shoes, the second is Cycling, at least one of them is from their 2015 album Have A Nice Chu’s Day.
On Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be With You) JJ Abrams sang along with Lin-Manuel Miranda, doing the Cantina Music from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, called Jabba Flow. If you would like to hear the entire song, hit the Star Wars web site, or if you would like it in your permanent collection you can get it from iTunes.