was a Japanese

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

and blues singer, lyricist and composer. She was an important voice of the Japanese urban counterculture. It is written in ''

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'' that she "made her name in 1970" with ''

The World of Maki Asakawa ''Asakawa Maki no Sekai'' (English: ''The World of Maki Asakawa'') is the debut album by Music of Japan, Japanese musician Maki Asakawa, released in September 1970 by EMI Music Japan, Toshiba Records. A number of the tracks were co-written with ...

'' and is known for songs like "Yo ga Aketara" and "Kamome", as well as for the ''Darkness'' collections. Conversely, Thom Jurek of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

described her album ''Blue Spirit Blues'' (1972) as "perhaps her most memorable recording" and reported that works such as ''Maki II'' (1971) and ''Cat Nap'' (1982) are well-known.

Ben Ratliff Ben Ratliff (born 1968 in New York City) is an American journalist, music critic and author. Ratliff is the son of an English mother and an American father, growing up in London and in Rockland County, New York. From 1996 to 2016, he wrote abo ...

wrote, "Some of the most intense recordings she made were English-language covers or Japanese rewrites of American jazz standards, blues songs, and spirituals, backed by only acoustic guitar and drums. (If you can get her 1972 album ''Blue Spirit Blues'', you'll hear this tendency clearest.) She sang slowly, as if there were weights on her."

Biography

Born in Mikawa (now part of the city of Hakusan),

Ishikawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu island. Ishikawa Prefecture has a population of 1,140,573 (31 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,186 km2 (1,616 sq mi). Ishikawa Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to ...

, after graduating high school she worked as a teller in the local national pensions office before moving to Tokyo. Influenced by the styles of

Mahalia Jackson Mahalia Jackson ( ; born Mahala Jackson; October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. With a career spanning 40 years, Jackson was integral to t ...

and

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...

, she began her career singing at US Army bases and cabarets. Asakawa made her debut recording, "Tokyo Banka/Amen Jiro" with Victor in 1967. After appearing in a series of concerts organized by underground playwright Shuji Terayama in 1968, she signed with Toshiba, now

EMI Music Japan , formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When ...

, and released the popular songs, 夜が明けたら (Yo ga aketara; ''At the Break of Dawn'') and かもめ (Kamome; ''Gull'') in 1969. Her debut album, 浅川マキの世界 (Asakawa Maki no Sekai; ''Maki Asakawa's World''), was released in 1970. In addition to writing and composing, she also released cover versions of traditional American folk and blues freely rendered into Japanese, such as "Kimyō na kajitsu (奇妙な果実)" (

Strange Fruit "Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol published in 1937. The song protests the lynching of Black ...

), "Asahi no ataru ie (朝日のあたる家)" (

The House of the Rising Sun "The House of the Rising Sun" is a traditional folk song, sometimes called "Rising Sun Blues". It tells of a person's life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans. Many versions also urge a sibling or parents and children to avoid the same fate. ...

), "Gin House Blues", etc. She became popular in the 1970s and had more than 30 releases by the end of the 1990s, after which she was mostly known for performing live. Asakawa collaborated with musicians such as Yosuke Yamashita and

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto inf ...

. She continued performing live until the time of her death. Scheduled to perform in Nagoya January 15–17, 2010, she died before her show on the 17th, at the age of 67, of heart failure, just 10 days before her 68th birthday.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asakawa, Maki 1942 births 2010 deaths Acid jazz musicians Blues singer-songwriters EMI Records artists Women jazz composers Japanese women jazz singers Japanese civil servants Japanese experimental musicians Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese folk singers Japanese jazz composers Japanese lyricists Japanese women composers Japanese women writers Musicians from Ishikawa Prefecture Psychedelic folk musicians 20th-century Japanese women singers 20th-century Japanese singers 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers