(January 1, 1951 – March 9, 2021) 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 ...

drummer A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one mem ...

and

session musician Session musicians, studio musicians, or backing musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a recording artist on a ...

Career

Murakami was born in

Nishinomiya 270px, Nishinomiya City Hall 270px, Aerial view of Nishinomiya city center 270px, Hirota Shrine is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 484,368 in 218948 households and a population density of 48 ...

. He first learned to play

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most ...

, but switched to classical percussion as a teenager before settling on the drum kit. He worked extensively as a sideman on jazz sessions in the 1970s and 1980s, with, among others, Sadao Watanabe, Yosuke Yamashita,

Kazumi Watanabe is a Japanese guitarist. Other guitarists such as Luke Takamura and Sugizo have cited him as an influence. Career Watanabe learned guitar at the age of 12 from Sadanori Nakamure at the Yamaha Music School in Tokyo. He released his first album ...

Akira Sakata Akira Sakata (born 21 February 1945) is a Japanese free jazz saxophonist. Early life Sakata was born in Hiroshima on 21 February 1945. He first heard jazz on short-wave radio and Voice of America, then became more interested in it from listening ...

, and

Takashi Kako (born 31 January 1947) is a Japanese pianist and composer, who works in both jazz and art-music idioms. Early life Kako was born in Osaka. He began playing piano at eight years old and learned to play jazz while in his teens. Later life and care ...

. He founded the group Ponta Box (featuring sidemen Masahiro Sayama and Masatoshi Mizuno), which recorded three albums for

JVC Victor , also known as in Japan, is a subsidiary of JVCKenwood that produces and distributes music, movies and other entertainment products such as anime and television shows in Japan. It is known as JVC Entertainment in countries where Sony Music Ente ...

and appeared at the 1995

Montreux Jazz Festival The Montreux Jazz Festival (formerly Festival de Jazz Montreux and Festival International de Jazz Montreux) is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second-largest annual ...

, and has recorded several albums under his own name. He also worked as a

for

J-pop J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...

stars for several decades. Murakami died on March 9, 2021 after suffering thalamic bleeding at the age of 70. A year later, a tribute concert titled "One Last Live" was held at the

Tokyo International Forum The is a multi-purpose exhibition center in Tokyo, Japan. The complex is generally considered to be in the Yūrakuchō business district, being adjacent to Yūrakuchō Station, but it is administratively in the Marunouchi district. Tokyo Int ...

, featuring Junk Fujiyama,

Yo Hitoto is a Japanese-Taiwanese pop singer. Her mother is Japanese and her father is Taiwanese. She can speak three languages: Japanese, English, and Mandarin. Tae Hitoto is her older sister. Her name Hitoto is not her real surname, it is her mother's ...

, Fusanosuke Kondo,

Maki Ohguro is a Japanese pop singer and songwriter from Sapporo, Hokkaido under B-Gram Records label. Biography In 1989, she passed Being Inc.'s singers audition, the "3rd BAD". In 1992, she debuted with the single "Stop Motion" released under B-Gram ...

Miho Fukuhara is a Japanese pop singer who made an independent label debut in 2006, releasing a single titled "The Roots" and mini-album titled ''Step Out''. In early 2008, she made her major-label debut under Sony Music Entertainment Japan. Her single, "Cha ...

Chisato Moritaka (born 11 April 1969) is a Japanese pop singer who also is notable as a songwriter. She is affiliated with Up-Front Create, a subsidiary of the Up-Front Group.

, Chikuzen Sato,

Taeko Onuki is a Japanese singer and songwriter. She is influential in the city pop genre. Early life and career Taeko Onuki was born in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, in 1953. Her father was Kenichiro Onuki, a member of the Japanese Special Attack Units during ...

, Mie, and Toshiki Kadomatsu.

Discography

;As leader *''Introducing Ponta Murakami'' (

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...

, 1976) *''Tokyo Fusion Night'' (Polydor, 1978) *''Welcome To My Life'' (JVC, 1998) *''Rhythm Monster'' (

Universal Music Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, Dutch law. UMG's cor ...

, 2012) ;with Ponta Box *''Ponta Box'' (

JVC JVC (short for Japan Victor Company) is a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood corporation. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as , the company is best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for ...

, 1995) *''Desert in the Desert'' (JVC, 1995) *''NYPB'' (JVC, 2001)

References

Japanese jazz drummers Japanese session musicians 1951 births 2021 deaths People from Nishinomiya Fellows of the American Physical Society {{Japan-musician-stub