唄

Songs for work, for drinking parties and for storytelling, sung over a hundred and twenty years.

The oldest is Kappore, the comic dance song of Edo Tokyo, on an Edison cylinder from 1903–04. A naniwabushi reciter from around 1906 tells a story to shamisen. In 1925 the young tenor Fujiwara Yoshie sang the fisherman's song 'Oki no Kamome' with piano, as Japanese singers then often did. From 2017 come three sake-brewing songs from Itami, sung by Tamba brewmasters with shakuhachi. The old guild songs kept the rhythm of scrubbing tubs and mashing rice through the winter.

The set ends with festival singing at the opening of the Tsuyazaki Gion Yamakasa and a sanshin player on Miyako island in Okinawa.