Guitarist Ryo Kawasaki anthology 1976 to 1983, limited time only

 

 

Here's an artist probably everyone knew, but I hadn't really regarded closely until some weeks ago when I learned of the tragic news of his passing.  Then I attempted to collect all his albums from the fusion beginning on (i.e. roughly mid-70s) through to the mid-80s, when the law of declining progressiveness holds.  Here's his discography.  As a series I feel terrible to say it's not at the highly sustained level as James Vincent (how many are?) when you're seeking after really progressive and/or creative compositional ideas and that unique amalgam of modern composition, rock and jazz I'm always striving to seek out, so common too in Euro-fusion.  But there are touches here and there of that fire.

For me the best album was the 1980 Little Tree under the monikor R. Kawasaki and Golden Dragon.
A little blurb feels oddly out of place in the database but I'll quote it for the sake of the artists:

This 1980 classic has long been heralded as a fusion ground breaking release. With motivative use of the guitar synthesizer, Kawasaki created a mesmerizing bond between improvisational jazz and high energy rock that has never been duplicated. Refreshingly non-commercial, the eclectic performances of Golden Dragon throughout the early 80's has indeed influenced today's alternative artists. Golden Dragon features drummer Buddy Williams, bassist Lincoln Goines, percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, saxophonist Azar Lawrence, and the haunting vocals of Kawasaki's long-time collaborator Ilana Iguana.

First of all I'd present the remarkable composition by Ryo called You Are The Sunlight, which reminds me not a little of my favourite Japanese fusion composition, Hiro's Crystal Ship, which I raved about so much in the past.  It's not just the smoothness of the jazz and the very pure and crystalline vocals of Illana Iguana (what a name!) but the textures, and the chord changes.  On the opening notice the combination of synth strings like the sky, the acoustic guitar arpeggions like a walk in the forest, the electric guitar curlicues all around like birds flying about, the more central synth melody which draws you in like the sunlight in a clearing.  Really gorgeous.  The chords start on F and move down to Eflat, then completely surprisingly drop down to a B7 with added tritone (i.e. F) and then G7 plus tritone (D flat) before resolving to B flat.  Then the F in the melody (with the word "Starlight") is the perfect way to go from B flat to G flat, it actually sounds like a shining star thanks to the sunny disposition of the added major 7 note on the major chords. From there of course it's natural to go the one semitone back down to the F tonic key we started in, with an added tritone too for good measure.  It's clever to add so many tritones on the last few chords for both dissonance and for resemblance, for symmetry.  When Ryo plays the electric guitar improv, it's utterly amazing how well he transitions his solo from one odd chord to the next.  Just genius to bridge together chords so well.  Finally, the song which resolved into the tonic F of course, descends to an E minor just below for a darker outro as if to evoke the dark of a night sky although I don't appreciate the importation of standard hispanic/flamenco melodies in her little improvised solo there.  Listen to the purity of the vocalist's high notes, reminds me not a bit of Chick Corea's female vocalist for RtF whoever that was.






Ryo has a wonderful English wikipage that begins as follows:

Ryo Kawasaki (川崎 燎, Kawasaki Ryō, February 25, 1947 – April 13, 2020) was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader, best known as one of the first musicians to develop and popularise the fusion genre and for helping to develop the guitar synthesizer in collaboration with Roland Corporation and Korg. His album Ryo Kawasaki and the Golden Dragon Live was one of the first all-digital recordings and he created the Kawasaki Synthesizer for the Commodore 64. During the 1960s, he played with various Japanese jazz groups and also formed his own bands. In the early 1970s, he moved to New York City, where he settled and worked with Gil Evans, Elvin Jones, Chico Hamilton, Ted Curson, Joanne Brackeen amongst others. In the mid-1980s, Kawasaki drifted out of performing music in favour of writing music software for computers. He also produced several techno dance singles, formed his own record company called Satellites Records, and later returned to jazz-fusion in 1991.

This was written by a human.  I can assure you.  Really, I can tell.  On the other hand, the wonderful, fabulous google translate function works oh so well for the wikipedia page written in Japanese, and I can never resist quoting from these miraculous advances in artificial intelligence as applied to the easy work of translating human languages, note how innocuously the paragraph begins and how badly it ends:

Ryo Kawasaki (Ryo Kawasaki, 1947 February 25 - 2020 April 13 ), the Japan representative of the jazz - guitarist . He has been active around the world since the late 1960s.  In the mid-1980s, the United States was released in the PC of Ganso, Commodore 64 some of the music software that was written for (hereafter in Japan Fujitsu author of was released is converted at the same time to the model of the FM synth installed).

And yes, I think those wonderful computer programmers are getting really close to passing the famed "Turing Test."  (Computer fools people into thinking it's a person.)

The English wiki page ends:

In 2014, Kawasaki discovered a younger generation of Estonian musicians who inspired him to further develop a fusion, jazz-rock sound using his own compositions. His attention on these directions had somewhat faded away after recording in the early 1980s with his group Golden Dragon. In spring 2016, Kawasaki formed a new quartet called Level 8, exclusively with Estonian musicians: Raun Juurikas (keyboards), Kaarel Liiv (electric bass) and Eno Kollom (drums). Level 8 finished recording a self-titled album focusing on Kawasaki's compositions both from the past and present utilizing a funk/fusion/jazz-rock sound. The album Level 8 was released in March 2017.

In April 2016, UK independent label Nunorthernsoul released a vinyl EP titled Selected Works 1979 to 1983 by Ryo Kawasaki. A follow-up vinyl EP titled Selected Works Part 2 - 1976 to 1980 by Ryo Kawasaki was released in April 2017.

Kawasaki died in Tallinn, Estonia in April 2020 at the age of 73.

RIP