VOA标准英语2012--Digital Age Survivors, Japan’s Jazz Cafés Still Attract Fans

Digital Age Survivors¹, Japan’s Jazz Cafés Still Attract Fans

It was never about the coffee. Long before customers had a choice of a double espresso or soy latte, Japanese flocked to coffee shops serving just a couple of kinds of beans, but an endless variety of bee-bop, swing and avant-garde. They are known as jazz kissa - short for kissaten - tea or coffee shops.
"Tea for Two" sung by Anita O'Day accompanied by two Japanese jazz orchestras during a live 1963 telecast in Tokyo can be heard in one cafe. The original performance was a rare opportunity for Japanese to see and hear a famous American jazz star in their own country. It was also an era when an imported jazz album cost about one-tenth of the average professional’s monthly salary.
Times and moods have changed.
One of the few surviving jazz kissa in Tokyo is Eagle, in the city’s Yotsuya district, near Sophia University. These days it mainly attracts businessmen and office workers on their lunch hour, who pay the equivalent of nine dollars to sip² a cup of ordinary coffee.
Eagle was started in 1967 by jazz fan Yohei Goto, the son of a bar owner, when he was a college sophomore³.
Goto says he understands that to foreigners a jazz kissa can seem like a strange place. He explains it is a library of music. You are not allowed to talk. Unlike in United States, he says, where people listen to jazz for pleasure, in Japan it is a kind of art appreciation⁴. Goto says Japanese people seriously study jazz as a component⁵ of African-American culture.
Jazz historian, pianist and Hitotsubashi University professor Michael Molasky says, by the time Eagle opened, the genre⁶ in Japan had come to play a more significant role in Japanese society than it did in its country of origin.
“It acquired something of a cultural cachet among bohemian types, intellectuals and writers. So that, if you wanted to be considered cool, you basically had to have some familiarity with jazz, at the time. It was kind of a rite⁷ of passage. To gain familiarity you needed to listen and the only place you could listen to this stuff were these jazz kissa,” Molasky said.
Protesters against the U.S.-Japan security treaty would take refuge from pursuing riot police in the coffee shops, listening - ironically - to jazz music from America.
At some jazz listening spots these days, cocktails⁸, in addition to coffee and tea, are on the menu.
One of them is New Dug, in Tokyo’s Shinjuku shopping district. It opened as a jazz kissa named Dig in 1961.
New Dug’s owner, Hozumi Nakadaira, recalls the days when the clientele, mostly university students, would spend hours absorbed in the music.
Nakadaira says they could stay as long as three hours if they ordered one cup of coffee. He recalls it was okay to remain as long as five hours if a customer bought a second cup.
Professor Molasky, whose latest book in Japanese is a study of the history of the country’s jazz cafés, explains another compelling aspect is their elaborate and expensive sound systems. For generations of Japanese relegated⁹ to cramped¹⁰ apartments with paper thin walls, the jazz kissa were an audiophile’s heaven.
“Some of the jazz magazines, around the 70s, would advertise not only the number of records - and sometimes they had like 5,000, 10,000 LP’s [albums] in their collection - but they would advertise exactly the woofers and tweeters and the speaker system. And, some places went so far as to advertise what needle they used in the cartridge¹¹ for the phonograph,” Molasky said.
Despite that acoustic¹² niche¹³, at Eagle, which has been spinning jazz discs for 45 years, owner Goto has no illusions that the specialty¹⁴ music cafés will survive for even another five years. He says, proudly, they are victims of their own success.
Goto explains the kissa had a big role to play in the 1960s and 70s, but now, they have completed their job of introducing American jazz to the Japanese public and witnessing it permeate¹⁵ the mainstream¹⁶.
The love for the voices of Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday has also created a cottage industry of jazz vocalists in Japan.
You can hear Grace Mahya singing “Skylark,” on her new album. The tune¹⁷ is a 1942 jazz standard by Johnny Mercer and Hogey Carmichael. Mayha trained as a classical pianist but switched to jazz about six years ago.
Nakadaira estimates there are 500 singers, mostly Japanese women, trying to make a living belting out jazz in English.
Nakadaira says most of the audiences probably cannot understand the lyrics¹⁸, yet they prefer standards sung in English. He contends that Japanese lyrics just are not considered cool or interesting to Japanese fans.
Some aficionados¹⁹ will study translations of the lyrics. But for Japanese jazz fans, as Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald put it:
“It don't mean a thing if ain't got that swing. ...”

1 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

2 sip   

v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量

参考例句：

• She took a sip of the cocktail.她啜饮一口鸡尾酒。
• Elizabeth took a sip of the hot coffee.伊丽莎白呷了一口热咖啡。

3 sophomore   

n.大学二年级生；adj.第二年的

参考例句：

• He is in his sophomore year.他在读二年级。
• I'm a college sophomore majoring in English.我是一名英语专业的大二学生。

4 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

5 component   

n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的

参考例句：

• Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。

6 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

7 rite   

n.典礼，惯例，习俗

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite.这个节日起源于宗教仪式。
• Most traditional societies have transition rites at puberty.大多数传统社会都为青春期的孩子举行成人礼。

8 cocktails   

n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物

参考例句：

• Come about 4 o'clock. We'll have cocktails and grill steaks. 请四点钟左右来，我们喝鸡尾酒，吃烤牛排。 来自辞典例句
• Cocktails were a nasty American habit. 喝鸡尾酒是讨厌的美国习惯。 来自辞典例句

9 relegated   

v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类

参考例句：

• She was then relegated to the role of assistant. 随后她被降级做助手了。
• I think that should be relegated to the garbage can of history. 我认为应该把它扔进历史的垃圾箱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 cramped   

a.狭窄的

参考例句：

• The house was terribly small and cramped, but the agent described it as a bijou residence. 房子十分狭小拥挤，但经纪人却把它说成是小巧别致的住宅。
• working in cramped conditions 在拥挤的环境里工作

11 cartridge   

n.弹壳，弹药筒；(装磁带等的)盒子

参考例句：

• Unfortunately the 2G cartridge design is very difficult to set accurately.不幸地2G弹药筒设计非常难正确地设定。
• This rifle only holds one cartridge.这支来复枪只能装一发子弹。

12 acoustic   

adj.听觉的，声音的；(乐器)原声的

参考例句：

• The hall has a fine acoustic.这个大厅的传音效果很好。
• Animals use a whole rang of acoustic, visual,and chemical signals in their systems of communication.动物利用各种各样的听觉、视觉和化学信号来进行交流。

13 niche   

n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等)

参考例句：

• Madeleine placed it carefully in the rocky niche. 玛德琳小心翼翼地把它放在岩石壁龛里。
• The really talented among women would always make their own niche.妇女中真正有才能的人总是各得其所。

14 specialty   

n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长

参考例句：

• Shell carvings are a specialty of the town.贝雕是该城的特产。
• His specialty is English literature.他的专业是英国文学。

15 permeate   

v.弥漫，遍布，散布；渗入，渗透

参考例句：

• Water will easily permeate a cotton dress.水很容易渗透棉布衣服。
• After a while it begins to permeate through your skin.过了一会，它会开始渗入你的皮肤。

16 mainstream   

n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的

参考例句：

• Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
• Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。

17 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

18 lyrics   

n.歌词

参考例句：

• music and lyrics by Rodgers and Hart 由罗杰斯和哈特作词作曲
• The book contains lyrics and guitar tablatures for over 100 songs. 这本书有100多首歌的歌词和吉他奏法谱。

19 aficionados   

n.酷爱…者，…迷( aficionado的名词复数 )； 爱看斗牛的人

参考例句：

• West Coast aficionados of postwar coffee-shop architecture(Karal Ann Marling) 西海岸战后咖啡店式建筑的狂热追随者（卡拉尔安马林） 来自互联网
• Clay developed a radical style which appalled boxing aficionados. 克莱发展出一种震惊拳击迷的全新风格。 来自互联网