Great music like great music makers defy time and space; they
are both relevant and ageless.

By: Lyndah Malloy-Glover

Hiroshima cut their self-titled album in 1979. And record executives at their own label placed bets that the band’s unprecedented blend of traditional Japanese instruments, American jazz, and Latin percussion, which produced an intriguing yet refreshing departure from the norm in the waning days of the disco era, wouldn’t make much of an impact in the music world in terms of sales or critical acclaim; ouch!

Thirty years later, Hiroshima is still in the game. And they’ve remained a staple on the music scene by maintaining their original point of view. Hiroshima magic potion consists is conjured up by blending genres to map out and promote unlikely artistic and cultural connections. After three decades of making music, incorporating sounds from all over the world, it appears that the world has now caught up Hiroshima.

Hiroshima offers a retrospective of those early years with the September 22, 2009 release of Legacy on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group. This album relevance lies in the re-recorded songs from the first ten years of their prolific history by the band’s current six-member lineup with the assistance from four guest artists.

 “When you start looking back at fifteen records over thirty years, that’s a lot of material to choose from,” says Dan Kuramoto. “So we narrowed the scope to the first ten years, which includes five records – two of which were gold. We tracked everything live in my home studio for this new recording, with almost no overdubs. In many cases, the songs on this record are fairly similar to the originals. In some cases, they’re very different.

At the heart of Legacy, and of the Hiroshima experience in general, is the merger of Eastern and Western music forged by saxophonist Dan Kuramoto and koto player June Kuramoto, the founding members. Their joint commitment to genre bending and cross-cultural innovation is as solid today as it was on that first recording.

Despite its retrospective sensibilities, Legacy is by no means a swan song for Hiroshima. Rather, it’s a bookend to thirty years of innovative music, and a promise of more great things to come. “I would like to think that there’s a heart and a voice within this music that doesn’t go out of style,” says Kuramoto. “These songs are as fresh and meaningful to us today as they were the first time they were recorded. They’re not of a particular genre. They are our musical heart. They shift gears from Japanese to jazz to salsa to R&B and beyond. Throughout each piece, you can hear the echoes of all the experiences that have influenced us along the way.”

The test of time has validated Hiroshima’s musical perspective. And Legacy is the aural expression of that truth.