Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today let's go into another Three Tune Tuesday post.

As always, thanks to @ablaze for making this series. Lots of people participate in it! Follow the tags to find a ton of good music recommendation.

The other day I was in the park and someone was practicing their shamisen. That's fairly normal in this country. Houses are a little too close together, making practicing at home potentially annoying for the neighbors; as a result, karaoke places make good practice rooms. People a little more brave to play where others can hear will try to find a remote area of a park where they are hopefully unlikely to annoy anyone.

Anyway, I was at a park playing with my kids and I heard someone practicing their shamisen. The shamisen is a very interesting instrument. I confess I didn't think much of it before I came to Japan, but it has grown on me over the years and nowadays I really enjoy good shamisen playing. That in mind, I thought we'd look at some shamisen for #ttt today.

Let's start with this song which some of you may know...

Masakatsu - Smooth Criminal

I figure this is a good place to start just in case you've never heard a shamisen before. It's a fairly good cover and shows you the unique sound of the shamisen.

This guy does a lot of covers on his channel, so if you enjoyed that then look at his channel for more.

Ki&Ki - Sakura

Let's jump deeper into shamisen music with this version of Sakura. I pick this because Sakura is probably the best known Japanese traditional music song outside of Japan. For most people it is in fact the only traditional Japanese song they know—and they probably only know the first few notes at that and don't know the title. Very often if movies call for a traditional Japanese scene, Sakura is playing in the background.

Anyway, they start pretty basic, but it ramps up from there. Great version of the song and very well played.

Yoshida Brothers - Rising

Oh now here we are at top level. These guys may be at the top of modern shamisen music. They really push the boundaries of what the instrument is capable of. Their music does have a lot of traditional things in it, but it is overall very modern. See what you think with this one.

If you liked that, just search their name on Youtube and you will find tons more.

Bonus: Yoko Nagayama - Jonkara Onna Bushi

Whenever I listen to shamisen music, it doesn't take long before this song jumps into my head. Yoko is an amazing shamisen player. I believe her father signed her up for lessons when she was really young, so she has been playing all her life. When she became a singer, originally she was forced to do modern pop songs, but eventually she was able to switch to what she loved: enka, which is a kind of Japanese blues music. And in enka, she could really use her shamisen skills.

This song may be her most famous. The lyrics basically tell of a lonely tsugaru shamisen player wandering around Japan, seemingly following an ex-lover or someone she is otherwise obsessed with. The lyrics tell of how much she wants him and how torn apart she is without him, and so on. Enka can be a little over-the-top, which may be why it is sometimes compared more to country music than blues.

In the end of the singing (but not of the playing in the video below) when she looks directly at the camera, she says "あんたが欲しい" (anta ga hoshii, "I want you") and makes anyone of the opposite sex watching feel exactly the same way.

So what's your favorite?

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.