Welcome to The Gaijin Chronicles Live, where I come up with a loophole for my normal insistence upon posting things in chronological order and instead talk about something that happened that day. “But Curtis,” you may say, “it doesn’t have to be in chronological order, we won’t know.” I’ll know, and I must follow my rules, because if I don’t, whose rules will I follow? My reports are of high scientific importance, and as such, must adhere to a high standard of accuracy. I’m not here for your entertainment (you don’t really wanna mess with me tonight). I’m here to record my travels, and to inform the masses (and also to try and mess with them by getting songs stuck in their heads. If that last one didn’t work, I’ll just try again later). So, live from Tsu York, it’s TGC night!
After teaching my first class, the teacher told me that there were jazz musicians playing for the 9th graders in the music room and that I should go watch. I went up not really sure what to expect. It was a three man group from Tokyo called Super 3 (something three, I forgot). One was on the piano, one on various wind instruments, and the third on the drums. They started out with an original jazz flute song, a la Ron Burgundy, then moved to other instruments. First the lead musician, who looked just like the rolling heads from Spirited Away (and was even called Daruma-chan by his bandmate), asked the students about playing the recorder in elementary school. Then he performed his first miracle by making me listen to a recorder song without losing the will to live. It was actually really good. While he did this, the piano player switched to a pianica (piano with a tube that looks like a breathalyzer for your car). Well, one hand switched, the other kept playing the grand piano. After that song, the piano player came up front and played Amazing Grace on a saw. That wasn’t a typo, he pulled out a hand saw and a violin bow, and by bending the saw and rubbing the bow along the backside of the saw, and he played an actual song. It sounded a lot like a Theremin (the instrument that makes the spooky oooooOOOOOOooooo ghost sound). Next Daruma-chan switched to the trombone as they played another song, during which he was able to make sounds that in my years of learning never heard anyone do. He somehow seemed to play two notes at the same time just by adjusting his embouchure (mouth position). Afterwards he asked who played the trombone. Most people were surprised when I raised my hand (likely both because they didn’t know I played and because I actually understood the question). He then repeated the trick, and I have still have no idea how. After that was a song on the hand flute (cupping your hands together and blowing into them). He pointed out that the word they use was a foreign word and had them repeat “hando fuluuto.” I wondered if I should correct that when I taught them later. I used to be able to do it, but only as a crappy bird call, never as an actual instrument. He played Somewhere Over the Rainbow, then taught the other kids how to do it. I was able to repeat it a little, and so were a select few other kids. The percussion guy then asked who played drums. Surprisingly, it was only one girl. He took out some kind of bongos and played them, then asking where they were from (Cuba in this case, he also had an African drum). He got a volunteer to come up and play a little rhythm on the drums. The kid got really into it and was bobbing his head up and down with the rhythm (Night at the Roxbury style), which the musician found hilarious (it was). He got another kid to try, though to less success, and then had the two do a duet together. After they took their bow, he held up some maracas and asked what they were. A kid in the back enthusiastically yelled out “Mascara!” So close. The girls all thought it was hilarious, as did most of the guys who likely had sisters. Then he got a volunteer to play them, and another for that jagged wood block you scrape with a stick. Much like us white folk, the Japanese are not known for their sense of rhythm. After trying to repeat a more complex pattern, the kid with the maracas just gave up and started randomly shaking them and his butt, which is basically what I would’ve done. For their finally (I think, I had to go teach class during this part), Daruma-chan performed his second miracle by making my listen to It’s a Small World without losing the will to live. They started with an American-jazz style cover, then switched to a softer, smoother Bazilian-jazz (I think), then finally (for me), mambo style. I think it’s either the singing or the repetition (or both) that makes that song so unbearable. For those of you who haven’t been to Disney lately and think, “maybe it’s worse in my mind than it actually was,” I was naïve, too, once. I thought, “Hey, it can’t be that bad, can it?” It can, and it is. It has to be one of the longest rides in all of Disney, during all of which it plays that accursed song. I’m convinced those singing dolls are like dementors, sucking out peoples’ happiness as sustenance so they may one day become real children. The lyrics even contain hints of the rides demonic origins. “It’s a world of laughter (of Satan), a world of tears (of everyone else). It’s a world of hopes (that it will end soon), a world of fears (that it never will, also of the dolls).” Disney even thought, “Hey, it’s not fair that only English speakers get that song drilled in their head,” so about halfway through they begin to play it in every language so that no human is safe. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that as you pass the dolls, their hands spell out the lyrics in sign language. I know none of that has to do with the Jazz group, but I’m bored and I really hate that ride. As a wise man (lion) once said of the song, “Not that! Anything but that!”