Welcome Back…to Jazz in Japan!

Welcome Back…to Jazz in Japan!  

Pandemic or not, every night jazz is there. Every night jazz has been enjoyed in the hundred-plus clubs throughout Tokyo, Yokohama and the rest of Japan. I hope the re-launch of this site will help music-lovers back out to hear live music again and to listen more, and listen deeper.

 I love listening to music at home, but live music is another thing altogether. Now that the pandemic has eased, I’ll be back out to the clubs and concerts. Is live music better? I think so. Check out this article from before the pandemic. It applies even more now.

 https://www.jazzinjapan.com/articles/why-live-music-is-better-especially-jazz

The re-launch of this site took a lot longer than expected. The words “new content management system” will strike anxiety deep into the heart of any writer, but that’s what we have here. The other “systems” were all ridden hard and put away wet, so it’s onto the next. Technology helps and hinders in equal measures.  

Before the online world evolved, I started writing about jazz twenty-some years ago for The Japan Times. It was great to see my jazz articles in print. That newsprint didn’t last long. Journalism moved online and I branched out to a magazine, Jazznin, with my great friend, Marco Mancini. I wrote for other sites, too, along the way, and wrote about a lot of other things than jazz as well, art, politics, academic articles, and about Tokyo life for Newsweek Japan.

At some point, all the music articles were compiled and converted into a Joomla site, which morphed into a WordPress site. Now, it’s all gravitated over to Squarespace, where you are at the moment. Whew! I’m waiting on the next “system,” but I hope not too soon.

As a result of moving the articles from place to place, formatting and photos were lost along the way. Frankly, it’s a wonder any formatting survived at all. So, on the new site, you’ll have to forgive a few out-of-date links, missing photos, and wonky formatting. I hope they won’t get in the way of your love of music. Little by little, those will get fixed.

And take some time to spin through the 20+ years of reporting, reviewing, and thinking about jazz in Japan. Some of the oldest articles on the site come from 2001 (the newsprint ones), but others were written along the way. The scene has continued to be vibrant and in many ways the scene has expanded.

A whole new crop, in fact several crops, of young musicians have started to play diverse and intense styles of jazz and improvised music, as well as blues, funk, Latin, and styles that are hard to describe in a word. The young musicians express themselves in new ways with a new kind of energy—but, you know, so do most of the older musicians. That’s what jazz is all about—making it new, even when it’s old.

So, please enjoy this new site. Check out the calendar! There will be more there all the time. And check out the older reviews, interviews, and musing on the music scene. All of the articles on this site are my own unless otherwise noted. We have videos now, too, and sign up for the newsletter if you’re so inclined. We’ll be linking to other listening and updating it all.

And check out the social media, too, if that’s more your thing.

https://www.facebook.com/jazzinjapan

Twitter: @jazzinjapan

Instagram: jazz_injapan

It’s been a great big kick to hear all this music over the years. I just hope that this site will help others to share in the joy that music brings. Maybe the few words here will help deepen that pleasure.

Michael Pronko

April 1, 2023