What This Site Is About

This website is dedicated to all the jazz musicians, club owners, small label owners, managers, fans, and waitstaff who form the amazing world of jazz, blues, and improvised music in Japan. The site focuses on jazz in Japan, but in the broadest possible sense.

No good or complete definition of jazz has ever existed, so it’s better to be inclusive. This site covers all types of jazz, but also blues, Latin, improvised music, and related ideas and practices. It’s about improvisation and creativity that expresses itself as music.

Most of the focus of this site is on Japanese or Japan-based musicians, their live performances, and their recordings. That also includes interviews, essays, and writings on jazz as a way of being in the world.

Tokyo is a dynamic city with so much music that any claim to be comprehensive would be absurd. And when “Tokyo” includes Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama, it’s even harder to claim coverage. Outside Tokyo, jazz abounds. Little by little, the site is growing to encompass more, but like a well-tended garden, some things are inevitable left out.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I do not write about music I feel is dull. I am not creating an encyclopedia. This site does not cover all of the jazz and improvised music in Japan. There is simply too much to get it all down in words. 

Instead, I’m writing in response to engaging, intriguing music that I find, and search out. I like to write about music that moves me. Listening with “big ears” is essential, but certain music satisfies me in sometimes selfish ways. For me, any style can be good, if it’s good. That means, any music with organic energy and human spirit, regardless of its category, sound, or intention.

The point of this site is not to attack poor quality music, to serve as an arbiter of taste, but rather to jump into what is special. A critic’s role is to point out what listeners might miss, to suggest the interesting aspects of unknown music, to revel in what is known and liked, and to try to put words to an experience that is beyond words. In writing about music, it is a lot easier to find what is wrong than to appreciate what is right and it is harder to explain the enthusiasm for certain music.

Good music deserves strong writing, deep feeling, and reflective thinking. That is the aim with this site.

This site is run by Michael Pronko

All opinions are my own, as are the mistakes and occasional insights.

Michael Pronko

I listened to jazz from when I was very young. I fell asleep every night with music coming up from the living room. My father had an enormous collection of records, and I gradually had my own, too. I always went to the Kansas City Jazz Festival and all the music I could when I was young. Then, as I got older, I went on my own, borrowing a fake ID to get into clubs in Kansas City as soon as I could drive.

I took piano lessons for many years, taught myself the guitar, and fooled around on a few other instruments. I had great music teachers and picked up fake books on my own to figure out how to play. I still do, but not much. I sat in with my high school jazz band, though keyboard players were numerous and high level, and jammed with friends in rock bands and upstart jazz bands, too. Mostly, though, I listened.

While studying philosophy at Brown University, I went out to hear music in Providence, which was on the tour circuit for everything from Dylan to the Dead Kennedys to Albert Collins. Boston, with all its music, was just an hour and a five-dollar bus ride away. I went dancing every weekend. It seemed the opposite of philosophy then, but now I understand how closely related it is.

New York was and is jazz heaven, so the first chance I got, I headed there on the train and went to the Village Vanguard to hear Phil Woods. I could barely afford the entry fee and a bottle of beer, but when Phil Woods sat down next to me during the break, I offered to buy him a drink. In a gruff voice, he said, “Thanks, man, but I drink here for free.” One night before catching the late train back to school, I was sitting right next to McCoy Tyner at the piano, feeling it tremble, and I thought I had gone to jazz heaven.

After school I traveled and traveled, finally ending up in Tokyo. I teach American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University. My seminars are on contemporary novels and film adaptations. I teach courses in film comedy, American music, and art. Going out to hear live jazz is one of the homework assignments for my students.

I have written about jazz for over 20 years, and about Tokyo for ten years. I wrote about jazz for The Japan Times for over a decade, worked on the first Japanese-English bilingual jazz magazine, Jazznin, with Marco Mancini, and have written for many other publications and sites about jazz over the years. I also write the Detective Hiroshi series, set in Tokyo, and about Tokyo life and culture.

Information on all my other writing is available at:
www.michaelpronko.com

Contact me here:
michaelpronko@gmail.com
or here:
jazzinjapan@gmail.com

And a big shout-out to my good friend and long-time associate, Marco Mancini. He’s been an inspiration, a friend, and the force behind Jazznin magazine. He created and ran the last version of this website. Though he has moved on to bigger and better things, this site would not be here without him. I wouldn’t be, either.

His visual, design and creative work can be seen here:
www.magnetjazz.net

Contact him here:
mancini@magnetjazz.net