HIROSHIMA

When Hiroshima cut their self-titled debut album in 1979, record executives at their own label placed bets that the band’s unprecedented amalgam of traditional Japanese instruments, American jazz structure and Latin percussion – an intriguing but ultimately refreshing anomaly in the waning days of the disco era – wouldn’t make much of an impact in terms of sales or critical acclaim. Thirty years later, Hiroshima has remained very much in the game. And they’ve done so by sticking to that original philosophy of blending genres to map out and promote unlikely artistic and cultural connections. After three decades, in a time when the globe grows smaller and more connected by the day, and sounds from all over that globe can be found in almost any piece of contemporary music, it appears that the world may finally be catching up with Hiroshima. The band offers a retrospective of those early years with the August 18, 2009, release of Legacy (HUCD 3153) on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group. The album features eleven songs from the first ten years of Hiroshima’s prolific history – each re-recorded by the band’s current six-member lineup with assistance from four guest artists. At the heart of Legacy – and of the Hiroshima experience in general – is the convergence of Eastern and Western music, as forged by saxophonist Dan Kuramoto and koto player June Kuramoto, the founding members whose joint commitment to genre bending and cross-cultural innovation is as solid today as it was on that first recording.