Answer: A normal Saturday night at Kenny's Bar, a Western-themed cowboy bar complete with cowboy hats and vintage records of classical old Western country music. They even had a Johnny Cash-signed record addressed to the owner's band (the Tennessee 5). Many of the people who come here are normal Japanese people with day jobs like dentists, tax-accountants, and book publishers, but they get their kicks on the weekends at Kenny's. I spoke with some of them and they said that they got in to country music when they listened to it in their youth in post-war Japan when American G.I.s brought it to Japan. Kenny (a.k.a. Kenji Nagatomi) started the country music group, the Tennessee Five, and organizes the annual Country Dream music festival in Kyoto. It was last weekend, but I didn't get a chance to visit it. The music was fun and the people were nice and interesting to talk to. The singers were great, singing with just a hint of a Japanese accent, most of the words were in English. Everything felt pretty normal except when the singers busted out in fluent Japanese.
No comments:
Post a Comment