Minoru Muraoka: Bamboo [MR BONGO]

Why you'll love it

This Mr Bongo reissue comes in a gatefold jacket. Muraoka's shakuhachi floats over funky, psychedelic grooves on tunes by Dave Brubeck, the Beatles and Burt Bacharach, plus his own "Soul Bamboo."

This edition

• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Most people first hear a shakuhachi in a temple garden or a samurai film. Minoru Muraoka took his into a jazz club. Born in Yamada in 1923 and trained in the classical folk style, he spent the 1960s dragging the Japanese end-blown flute into modern music, cutting Harlem Nocturne, one of the first shakuhachi jazz albums, for Columbia in 1967 and following it with the jazz-rock of Shakuhachi Rock.

Bamboo came out in 1970 in United Artists' New Emotional Work Series in Japan, and it mixes jazz-funk with psychedelic rock. "Take Five" opens the album with his flute breathing over the familiar 5/4 swing, the Yamagata boat song "Mogamigawa Funauta" sits right next to "And I Love Her," and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" takes a slow, smoky stroll. Muraoka's own "The Positive and the Negative" and "Soul Bamboo" show how far he could stretch a centuries-old instrument without losing its hush.

He went on to form the New Dimensions, who made eleven albums, and later recorded with Herbie Mann. Now-Again Records founder Egon once said you file his music under jazz by default, and we've done exactly that, our racks having no section marked funky bamboo.

Also at Kops: more Minoru Muraoka on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Mr Bongo (cat# MRBLP195), a reissue of the 1970 album.