ARTIST: Sayuri Ishikawa
SINGLE: “Dan Ryu” c/w “Aki Shinshin”
STYLE: Enka
LABEL: Nippon Columbia
SOURCE: retail single, AK-92
YEAR: 1977
DOWNLOAD: Full single (ZIP file, 256kbps mp3)

This next single that we are featuring here at the Vinyl Pagoda Project – and the first since our migration from Stuck In A Pagoda to The Groove Music Life – is a prime example of the kind of good stuff I was hoping to obtain when I got hold of that first fifty-single stack.

Dubbed “one of the truly great Enka vocalists” by the English-language enka site Barbara’s Enka Site (OK, there’s only a couple of enka pages out there in English that I know of, bear with me!), Sayuri Ishikawa is a very well established name in the enka world, having recently celebrated her 35th anniversary in show business. According to that same site, Ishikawa is adored not only by her audience but by fellow vocalists in her genre. At 50 years of age (she passed that milestone on January 30th of this year), she still looks as beautiful – maybe even more so – as she did when she recorded our featured single.

Today (September 2, 2008) as I write this, one of Ishikawa’s most recent zenkyokushu (”complete song best”) compilations (specifically, this one released in October of 2006 by Teichiku) arrived at my PO Box today, thanks to CDJapan. Having listened to the whole thing – which includes our featured single’s A-side – I can safely say that I came away from my first listen to sixteen of her hits a very big fan of Sayuri Ishikawa. Her voice reminds me very much of Barbara Streisand’s – Sayuri possesses a lot of that same passionate and pitch-perfect quality.

Sayuri debuted in 1974 on the Nippon Columbia label with a single called “Kakurenbo” (”Hide and Seek” – no connection whatsoever to the Whiteberry song of the same name from 17 years later) at age 16, looking more like a typical teenage kayokyoku singer rather than the enka sensation she would soon grow up to be:

“Dan Ryu” (”Warm Current”) is her 17th single, featuring a soaring, unforgettable melody with an almost happy, optimistic feeling. The picture sleeve still had her in Western-style clothing (she wouldn’t don a kimono on one of her picture sleeves until 20 singles later, on her 1986 release “Futari Kasa”), but the music is still pure enka.

“Dan Ryu” is only the tip of a very big and beautiful iceberg where Ishikawa’s discography is concerned – she has done over 100 singles to date (Her 102nd single, “Choito”, comes out on October 22) and more notably, she seems to have retained the master rights to her Columbia and Pony Canyon recordings (”Dan Ryu” appears on the aforementioned 2007 Nen Zenkyokushu CD on Teichiku) – another indication of the high regard she is held in.

Here’s a clip of Ishikawa-san doing “Dan Ryu” live in 1991, still sounding as good as she did back then. Unfortunately, the clip I really wanted to use, a 1987 performance where Sayuri seemed to delight in moving around while she was singing – something most enka singers don’t do by tradition, as they’re usually expected to stand still – is no longer on YouTube. Fortunately, we can embed our own video here at TGML (complete with our own logo), so we can provide you with this fine performance where Ishikawa-sama gets a much deserved mega-ovation from the audience.

I only got one Sayuri Ishikawa single in that 50-single stack, but I’ll be adding a lot more of her music to my library in the future. I’ve already pre-ordered “Choito” and I’m sure more additions will occur before and after that release date.

The scan of the picture sleeve is courtesy of Sayuri Ishikawa’s Official Site..
Please read the disclaimer if downloading the mp3 files.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 3:35 am and is filed under Enka, Groove Music Life Video, Sayuri Ishikawa, The Vinyl Pagoda Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.