Arata

I stole a cassette tape from
Arata Yamamoto. The outside
was in Japanese, so I wouldn't
know for many years what names
to put to the music I found.
It wasn't hard to find those
names: the cassette was a
greatest hits of soul and
R&B, Otis Redding, Aretha,
and my favorite, Patches by
Clarence Carter. The odd thing
to me thinking back on it now
is that those classic black-
American songs immediately
bring to mind the English
pig farm where I stayed when
I first listened to the tape.
I hear, "Patches, I'm depending
on you son," and all I can
picture is the great meadow
waving in the breeze before
the enormous barn that held
all the pigs. I became familiar
with a big chunk of American
music while mingling with
English swine. Similarly,
I embraced the bossa nova
because of a cassette I stole
from someone in a guesthouse
in Tokyo. I listened so many
times, the tape broke. And I
never figured out who or what
it was for years, until scouring
the jazz bins at a used CD store
I recognized the name of a song
(from the lyrics I remembered),
gave the CD a test listen, and
was gleefully reacquainted with
some of the best music I've been
lucky enough to hear, and now
could even put names to it.
Stan Getz, Luiz Bonfa, sambas
that changed my life, made it
sweeter. On their faces, these
two phenomena are startling:
I learned about American soul
from a Japanese kid while I was
living in England; I learned about
South-American music from a
European backpacker in a seedy
guesthouse in Japan.
If that doesn't sound like a
global village, I don't know what
would. Otis, Clarence, Jobim.
No difference to me. The varied
voices and colors of the village
humanity has become.

(2008)