Soul Flower blossoms

There was not an electric guitar in sight when Japanese rock band Soul Flower Union took to the stage at Kobe's Nagata Shrine for a concert to commemorate the anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake - Instead there were Okinawan sanshin, accordion, clarinet, and an eccentric variety of percussive instruments: it was about as far as you can get from Western rock. This was chindon, a form of street music usually played by chindonya - kimono-clad, face-painted musicians who were once a frequent sight in Japan acting as musical adverts.

Chindon now forms such I an important part of the Soul Flower repertoire that the band - under their alternative name of Soul Flower Mononoke Summit - have recently released an entire album of this happily bizarre-sounding music on the new independent label, Respect, after the refusal of their major record company to take it on. Japanese and Chinese traditional songs, an Ainu folk song, and an American marching song - many with new biting political lyrics by lead vocalist, Nakagawa Takashi - are all given the chindon treatment.

"We all suddenly realized we were just a poor imitation of Western bands," explains Nakagawa. "I was the one who firs. t felt we needed a change, because I was the singer/songwriter and also I produced all the records. The rock music we has been playing had a rhythm which fitted the English language but we had been trying to fit the Japanese language into that rhythm and it wasn't right. It's as if you are stealing something that doesn't belong to you. Then I heard about the cultures of the Ainu, Okinawans, Native Americans, Koreans. I started to realize that we needed to be more involved with our own Japanese culture."

The real revelation occurred when he discovered a song about the Ainu on an album of Okinawan music. "When I heard 'Ainu-Puri' on an album by Kina Shoukichi and Champloose I was amazed that an Okinawan artist was singing about Ainu. Later, in 1992, a cable television channel asked us to do a concert with Champloose. So we met Kina and played together and I decided that it should be Japanese people as well who should sing this kind of thing".

This led to the introduction of the three-stringed sanshin into Soul Flower Union's music Another Okinawan artist, Daiku Tetsuhiro, provided the next impetus. "Daiku Tetsuhiro's album Uchina Jinta was another surprise: an Okinawan musician was singing old Japanese songs and mixing his own music with chindon. The chindon music we do now is, of course, influenced by Daiku. I really think that he is one of the best singers in the world. Even more important, though, was the fact that the ordinary people in Kobe we visited after the earthquake - old people and children alike - enjoyed our experiments so much and encouraged us to do it."

Soul Flower Union have been travelling regularly from their Kyoto base to Kobe since last year's earthquake in order to play for the people affected by t-he quake, visiting numerous temporary housing settlements to meet the people. The all-day Nagata concert, played to a very large crowd, was the culmination of their efforts and for this they were joined by many other singers, musicians and dancers. But Nakagawa is modest about his aims. "The first time I went to Kobe after the quake I was rather arrogant because I thought I could, or should, help people and would he able to do it easily. But the situation was much worse that I'd imagined. Nobody can really call what I've done a proper social activity I just decided to try and cheer people up through singing, which is what I enjoy doing. We tried to make a better atmosphere for about half an hour. l suppose, though, that 1995 was the year when realized that you can change something through music. You don't need to shout about war or peace. We just sing songs, the audience enjoy it and have fun. Then maybe they remember it 2lnd become interested in our ideas later."

Soul Flower Union was formed in 1988 from the merging of two bands, Mescalin Drive - two women who used to call themselves a garage band - and Newest Model, three men, including Nakagawa, into punk. "Our musical tastes were not exactly the same but we got on well tog ether and shared a similar sense of humour "

Nakagawa admits that they have lost some fans through all these changes and the subsequent foray into chindon. "Every time we do something different the fans disagree with us Some leave and then new ones come. In fact, we've probably got less fans now than before as many of them said we'd betrayed punk music. The same thing happens whenever we do something new, but I don't care. I enjoy this situation."

Ki/oon Sony however did not enjoy it so much and refused to put out the chindon album, not so much because of the musical content as because of over-sensitivity to certain words in the songs. Nakagawa has always had a strong po1itical outlook and was one of the first Japanese musicians to champion the cause of British political singer-songwriter Billy Bragg Whereas Bragg's own leftist lyrics are apparently received without censorship in the U.K., the Soul Flower album was hastily shelved by Ki/oon Sony on far flimsier grounds. "The whole thing is rather stupid," complains Nakagawa. "They didn't like the names 'Nagata' in the song 'Fukko-Bushi' or 'Korea'. The record company said that the song might give people the idea that some Koreans in Japan are poor and this would be a bad image. I could hardly believe that someone was saying this in the 1990s."

Despite the chindon influence, Soul Flower Union have not abandoned rock music entirely and still play sets with the standard rock line-up as well. Their second album Watatumi Yamatumi has a much harder rock sound, though even here other influences creep in. On some of the other songs I could detect an English folk-rock feel. "I suppose some of the songs are like English folk music," agrees Nakagawa. "I love those English hands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span so maybe we were influenced by them without even noticing it. But then some people have also said they sound like Central American music. I think a1l good ethnic music has some similarity. Actually, when I wrote these songs I felt that they were more like old Japanese songs, so it shows that everyone can hear the same songs in a different way."

Recommended Albums: Soul Flower Union
Watatumi Yamatumi (Kl/oon Sony KSCZ 82); Soul
Flower Mononoke Summit Asyl Ching-Dong (Re-
spect Records RES-6).
Soul Flower Union are playing at Chicken George,
Kobe on 16th March, 19.00.

Kansai Time Out, Mar. 1996, p. 24. Thanks for a kind permission.

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