“Jazz and Japan shouldn’t mix,” says All-Japan: The Cat­a­logue of Every­thing Japan­ese. “After all, the essence of jazz lies in impro­vi­sa­tion — a con­cept large­ly absent from both tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music and Japan­ese soci­ety as a whole. Japan may adapt, but it does not impro­vise.” And yet, as the book goes on to tell, jazz and Japan do indeed mix, and they began doing so even before the Sec­ond World War. Japan­ese jazz dates back to the 1920s, when it drew inspi­ra­tion from vis­it­ing Fil­ipino bands who had picked the music up from their Amer­i­can occu­piers. In the cen­tu­ry since then, devot­ed Japan­ese play­ers (and their even more devot­ed Japan­ese lis­ten­ers) have devel­oped per­haps the most robust jazz cul­ture in the world.

But please, don’t believe me: have a lis­ten to the mix of 1970s Japan­ese jazz on vinyl above. Spun by Turk­ish DJ Zag Erlat on his Youtube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal, it show­cas­es such musi­cians as trom­bon­ist Hiroshi Suzu­ki, sax­o­phon­ist Mabu­mi Yam­aguchi, and gui­tarist Kiyoshi Sug­i­mo­to. These names will sound famil­iar — though not over-famil­iar — to those of us who’ve spent years dig­ging crates around the world for Japan­ese jazz on vinyl.

Thanks to Youtube, they’re now becom­ing bet­ter-known among jazz fans of all stripes: just like the 1980s Japan­ese high-tech dis­co-funk now known as city pop, Japan­ese jazz owes much of its mod­ern recog­ni­tion to the algo­rithm. As a result, actu­al Japan­ese jazz albums like the ones non­cha­lant­ly dis­played by Erlat in the video have become a hot­ter com­mod­i­ty than they used to be.

Like all of Erlat’s “cof­fee break ses­sions” (oth­ers of which focus on Japan­ese dra­ma funk, Turk­ish female singers from the 70s, and “USSR grooves”), this mix runs a brisk 33 min­utes. If you enjoy the taste enough to go back for more, allow me to sug­gest the work of such Japan­ese jazzmen as Teruo Naka­mu­ra, Masayoshi Takana­ka, and Teru­masa Hino — much of which comes from the 1970s, an era that enthu­si­asts across the world now see as some­thing of a gold­en age. You’ll still only have skimmed the sur­face of Japan­ese jazz, one of the many West­ern inven­tions tak­en to anoth­er lev­el of mas­tery, and exhil­a­rat­ing new direc­tions, in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. As one com­menter on Youtube puts it, “Japan­ese Jazz is like Japan­ese whisky: under­rat­ed, but very high qual­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Stream Loads of “City Pop,” the Elec­tron­ic-Dis­co-Funk Music That Pro­vid­ed the Sound­track for Japan Dur­ing the Roar­ing 1980s

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

A few weeks back (but what seems like a dif­fer­ent world now) we told you about the Play­ing for Change project, which fea­tures cov­ers of well loved pop songs played by a group of inter­na­tion­al musicians…the gim­mick being that each musi­cian is record­ed in their own coun­try and only come togeth­er in the mix.

Sud­den­ly, it seems that Play­ing for Change was ahead of the curve, because this is the way the entire world is liv­ing right now. Peo­ple are mak­ing art in quar­an­tine, join­ing togeth­er only through the mag­ic of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy.

But in hon­or of the pass­ing of Bill With­ers, who left us last week at 81 (not, we should men­tion, because of COVID-19), here’s Play­ing for Change with their ver­sion of “Lean on Me.” With­ers’ mes­sage of love and com­mu­ni­ty is exact­ly what we need right now.

In a 2015 Rolling Stone pro­file Quest­love called him “the last African-Amer­i­can Everyman…Jordan’s ver­ti­cal jump has to be high­er than every­one. Michael Jack­son has to defy grav­i­ty. On the oth­er side of the coin, we’re often viewed as prim­i­tive ani­mals. We rarely land in the mid­dle. Bill With­ers is the clos­est thing black peo­ple have to a Bruce Spring­steen.”

That arti­cle adds that With­ers was so long out of the spot­light that many already thought he was dead. And now he’s passed dur­ing a grim time, it seemed like there was one full day to mourn him before the next round of mor­tal coil shuf­flings. (We’re here to cel­e­brate him for a lit­tle bit longer).

This cov­er fea­tures Renard Poché (New Orleans) on gui­tar, Rober­to Luvi (Livorno, Italy) on slide, Grand­pa Eliot (New Orleans), Clarence Bekker (Ams­ter­dam), Sar­i­tah (Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia), and Titi Tsira (Gugulethu, South Africa) on vocals, aid­ed by Keiko Koma­ki (Kagoshi­ma, Japan) on key­boards, Toby Williams (Chica­go) on drums, One eat One (Livorno, Italy) on elec­tron­ics, Mari­achi group Las Rosas Angeli­nas (Los Ange­les) on strings, Alan­na Vicente (Los Ange­les) on trom­bone, and the chil­dren of Tin­tale Vil­lage in Nepal on har­mo­ni­um.

The track was orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion for The Art of Sav­ing a Life, which aims to tell the sto­ry of vac­cines and their impor­tance to chil­dren over the world. (I would hope that we under­stand the urgency of vac­cines right about now.)

Bill With­ers was an acci­den­tal hit­mak­er, a nat­ur­al tune­smith, who didn’t enter the busi­ness until his 30s and then dropped out of it less than ten years lat­er. No come­back tour, no duets with an up-and-com­ing star. (Though Quest­love was deter­mined to pro­duce one final album). What he has left is time­less, and his music is still there to get us through these trou­bling times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.