3.25.26

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated March twenty twenty six,
which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of

(00:22):
the article I began last time, entitled Can TikTok Resurrect
Scott's by Ross Perlin across town at the Reeling and
Annual Traditional Music Festival. Young singers like Beth Malcolm moved
easily between Scott's and English. While the language melts into

(00:44):
the cosmopolitan mix of a city like Glasgow, it's up
north in fishing communities like Fraserberg and Peterhead that Scott's here,
often known as Doric, is sometimes said to be strongest,
having grown up there. A thirty seven year old writers
Shane stra Khan, is a bridge between a weathered Scott's
speaking world anchored in pubs and ports, as well as

(01:07):
farms and fairs, and the new language movement online and
on stage. His own grandmother barely speaks what would be
perceived as English, says Strukhan, and she was belted at
school for speaking her mother tongue. But as a former
Scot's scriber an official title like a poet laureate, stra
Khan acts as a roving ambassador for the language. When

(01:29):
he's not teaching at the ancient University of Aberdeen, he
visits hospitals and book festivals, and once hosted the annual
Geekily Glamorous Scott's Language Award. Glamour is originally at Scott's
word meaning magic or witchcraft, and deriving believe it or
not from grammar. Stra Khan sees Scot's revitalization being driven

(01:52):
in part by young people's desire for, as he puts it,
what's left that makes you different. In an era of
social media hamaenization. A new generation of Scott's speakers wants
to talk about what's happening in the world in their
own words. Strakhan's poetry collection d Woms, named for a
word meaning a stupor a trance, a day dream, reverie.

(02:17):
At least, that's one of six definitions in the dictionaries
of the Scots language, touches on everything from the climate
crisis to xenophobia to queer love and sex. In a
recent spoken world word performance, stru Khan brought the house
down with dreepin a poem in the form of sexy
voice males between Aberdeen and the oil industry. It's built on.

(02:40):
Singer Iona Feife, born and raised near Aberdeen, expands Scott's
linguistic horizons through music. I feel so much more comfortable
singing Scots than I do speaking Scott's, says the twenty
seven year old, because there's an art form that no
one can argue with. Fife is steeped in the Scott's
ballads tradition, also writes new songs in the language, and

(03:02):
has even recorded a Scott's version of Taylor Swift's Love Story.
Letting Scott's absorb pop culture through translation keeps it relevant,
she points out. Now you'll find books getting Scott's versions,
from Harry Potter to Animal Farm children's books to classical
Chinese novels. Of course, proof of Scott's vitality is its

(03:24):
presence in the myriad day to day conversations of a
gen zer Like five five. Texting in Scott's is really
normal nowadays, she says. She posts in Scott's and about
Scott's on every social media platform around, including TikTok, Blue
Sky and Facebook. It helps that technology has made typing easier.

(03:46):
You'll find Scott's support in browsers and predictive text. More
futuristically and controversially, chat GPT can write in Scott's, having
trained on texts by experts from the past and present
without permission. Fife has modest hopes that the legal recognition
of Scott's as an official and national language by the

(04:07):
Scottish Parliament will give a wee bit merr encouragement to speakers,
proof that just because you're using Scots doesn't mean that
your lower class or uneducated. More institutional backing could potentially
lead to multi language signage, which happened in some areas
for Gaelic, support for writers and a presence in schools

(04:28):
that goes beyond the poetry of Burns. Scott's existence is
in some ways a microcosm of Scotland's own political future,
caught as it is, between calls for independence and the
potential to be absorbed deeper into the United Kingdom. The
language's youngest champions are using every modern medium at their
disposal to keep it alive and vital, though lend Penny

(04:51):
also points to nothing more cutting edge than a great
Scott's word thrang on stubborn pig headedness. The next article
Greek Canal that took twenty five hundred years to build
by Sam Keane. How the Corinth Canal went from elusive
dream to engineering marvel with an unexpected fate. People complain

(05:13):
about construction delays, but even the most sluggish modern transit
project has nothing on Greece's Corinth Canal, which didn't open
until twenty five hundred years after it was announced. Four
miles long, with sheer rock walls that rise nearly two
hundred and sixty feet from the waterline, the canal connects
the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf, theoretically saving

(05:36):
Miranders a journey of hundreds of nautical miles around the
Peloponnesus Peninsula. A Corinthian ruler named Periander is said to
have first proposed it around six hundred BC. He settled
instead for a limestone paved road with a rudimentary railway
on which small ships could be carted across the Isthmus.

(05:57):
Julius Caesar and Caligula contemplated reviving the canal scheme. But
it was the Roman emperor Nero in eighty sixty seven
who broke ground. His thousands of laborers, slaves, prisoners, soldiers
dug some two miles of trenches before Nero's ouster and
suicide put an end to the project. It took eighteen
more centuries until a Greek company armed with steam power

(06:20):
and dynamite finished the job. Alas the canal opened in
eighteen ninety three, as steel hulled ships were replacing smaller
iron ones, only seventy feet across in spots, the passage
was too narrow for the shipping industries increasingly beefy veg vessels,
and it never caught on as a major conduit for commerce.

(06:41):
Today it's primarily a tourist attraction. It just reopened after
five years of sporadic closures during a project to stabilize
its rock fall prone walls. Some fifteen thousand ships will
pass through this year, says the canal's general manager, George Zubliz,
and the fact that moose will carry sight sayers and
instead of cargo doesn't make the waterway any less of

(07:02):
a marble. Every captain on every ship going through Zuglise
says they lived this history that connects two eras, the
ancient with the modern. Next article Learning to Listen in
Japan by Joe Hagen. In the warm glow of the
country's jazz cafes, a subculture of vinyl afficionados is preserving
a communal form of music appreciation and cultivating the kind

(07:26):
of deep sensory experiences that our noisy world has forgotten.
On a Saturday afternoon, we navigated the narrow streets of
Shimo kits Zawa, a trendy Tokyo neighborhood, in search of
something we'd only seen on Instagram. Shoppers hunted for vintage
T shirts, women tested lipstick shades in storefront windows, and

(07:47):
the smell of lunch counter curries wafted through the air.
We were looking for a sign when we finally spotted
the unassuming placard. We climbed a narrow stairwell to a
windowless door. A gentle knock, and we stepped into an
intimate oasis, a wood paneled room decorated with beaded curtains
and a painting of jazz harpist Alice Coltrane. Seated couples

(08:12):
faced two enormous speakers with prayerful attention. A turntable spun,
the bell like chime of a vibraphone, the reedy huff
of a saxophone, and the delicate patter of drums radiated
through the room. The only other sounds were the tinkle
of cups and an occasional whisper. A smiling woman seated us,

(08:32):
offering a menu that came with instructions. We asked that
you speak in a low voice in our store. We
were at Masako, a jazz kisa or cafe where music
isn't just in the background, listening to records is the
featured event. Hundreds of kisas are scattered across Japan, and
Masaco is a quintessential example. Found it in nineteen fifty

(08:56):
three at once hosted Charles Mingus and Maul Waldron during
their tours of Japan. Current owner Mueko Hayashi took over
the space in twenty twenty after inheriting the record and
art collections of the cafes late founder and namesake Masako Okuda.
Hayashi has discovered the cafe as a teenager in the

(09:18):
nineteen eighties, drawn by its loud jazz and stacks of
manga comets. She assumed kisas were foreign. At first, I
thought Japan was copying that, she said. Jazz kisas are
a purely Japanese invention, originating in the late nineteen twenties
and popular throughout the sixties and seventies. They went into
decline as home audio systems became more accessible, but the

(09:41):
past decade has seen a surge of interest in the
jazz cafes from young record collectors and audio files. In
an age when music is a digital utility piped in
through earbuds, visiting kisas has become popular among music fans
in Japan and something of a pilg image for Westerners
like me, all of us looking for a chance to

(10:03):
experience listening as an act of veneration are appreciation and fellowship.
I first discovered kisas through an Instagram account at jazz Kisa,
which has become the most influential interpreter of a subculture
that's largely unknown even to many Japanese. With the aid
of Google Translate, I befriended its creator, sixty six year

(10:25):
old Katsumasa Kusa Nose, a former magazine editor who has
visited more than four hundred kisas and become the leading
authority on these establishments. Originally from Shikopu Island, Kusuose dropped
out of university in Tokyo to spend his days at
Mosu Akisa, founded in nineteen fifty five. The best jazz

(10:47):
cafe experience isn't about going once and feeling something, he said.
It's about going every day for a week or months
or even years and getting to know the place. Musu's owner,
Yuko Sugano, became Kusinose's mentor. I went there until she
passed away, so I attended her funeral and visited her grave,
he said. With Kusuinose as our guide, photographer Tim Davis

(11:10):
and I visited two dozen kisas from venerable spots in
Tokyo to the cafe, a next generation kisa located in
a remote village north of Kyoto that roasts its own
coffee and spins a vant garde jazz we encountered in
the back streets and alleys of Japan, an entirely different
way of listening, complete with its own customs and layers

(11:33):
of history. Masako Hayashi performed the kisa's master's traditional ritual
of selecting records. She does this from new to ten
p m. Six days a week, for a crowd weaned
on cell phones and tik tok. On a typical day,
she said, a sense of unity arises even when no

(11:54):
one is talking. As we became engrossed in the music
New Blues by v phonist Joel Ross, every note seemed
italicized by our collective attention. A quasi monastic focus usually
reserved for meditation retreats. That sense of unity has some
scientific basis. Research shows that listening to music together creates

(12:17):
measurable synchronization in brain waves, which correlates with social bonding.
Kisa culture grew out of shared fandom. The first cafe
Blackbird opened in nineteen twenty nine near the University of Tokyo,
inspired by the American jazz that had only recently arrived
on cruise ships anchored off port cities like Yokohama. The

(12:39):
Japanese government banned American culture during World War II, but
jazz resurfaced after the war ended when US servicemen stationed
on air bases near Tokyo in the nineteen fifties brought
records over from the States. Early kisas served a practical purpose.
Few jazz artists toured Japan until the nineteen sixties, and
imported ours were prohibitively expensive. Owners curated collections and became

(13:05):
educator's sensize, introducing jazz to a new generation. The kisa
renaissance went into high gear after Art Blakely and The
Jazz Messengers Monin became an unlikely hit. Followed by Blakey's
celebrated tour of Japan in January nineteen sixty one, the
cafes sprouted nationwide more than more than eight hundred. Novelist

(13:28):
Hurruki Murakami famously wrote his first three novels while operating
his own bar Peter Kat from nineteen seventy four to
nineteen eighty one. Traditional kisas showcase nineteen fifties and sixties jazz.
Others taggle between old and modern mixing in Brazilian French chassons.
Even tango Cafe Leon was established in nineteen twenty six

(13:52):
for listening to classical music instead of spinning single tracks
as DJs do. Most kisa owners play entire size of LPs.
Soon we met with spoke of kuki O Yumo reading
the air or discerning the vibe. I look at the
customer's face first, says Sho Chief Suzuki, the owner of

(14:14):
Genius in Tokyo, who queued up a record by saxophonist
Benny Golsen during our visit. Masahiro Gooto, a jazz critico,
opened the slikly designed Eagle in nineteen sixty seven, leaves
nothing to chance. He maintains handwritten notebooks with precise song
orders drawn from sequences of four related records. Japanese comics

(14:37):
have four panels, don't they? He said, I understand the
structure of a story. He even published a methodology book
called Jazz Music Selection Guide Secrets to Listening to a
four album set. This didn't sell at all, he laughed.
Noku two kisas are alike, such an expression of its
owner's personality. Jazz in Roko Din in Kyoto is a

(15:02):
cave like bar with a punk aesthetic where drummer Nyohisa
Yokota plays the loneous monk while customers chat over cigarettes
and whiskey. Downbeat founded in Yokohama in nineteen fifty six
and now run by forty year old Shuhai Yo Yoshihisa
is a virtual museum wallpapered in yellowing pages from Downbeat magazine.

(15:26):
Miyoko Hayashi no relation to Masako's Moiko opened jazz Spot
Candy in Chiba City, just outside Tokyo to venerate her
favorite artists like Keith Jarrett and John Coltrane. Kisa owners
are sometimes called otaku geeks with obsessive interests. Alongside jazz

(15:48):
cafes are on gaku music kisas devoted to rock, classical
or Brazilian genres. In Tokyo, a bar called shohand Slow
Hand plays only Eric Clapton's output from nineteen sixty eight
to nineteen seventy two. What they all share as a
cultural understanding gleaned from the elders of the kisa scene,

(16:09):
masters who established the rituals that defined the experience today.
The most important was Huzumi Nakadayaira, a photographer who founded
DIG in Tokyo in nineteen sixty one. Dig became legendary
for establishing a strict no talking rule. Nakadera played records
at high volume as customers bowed their heads like monks.

(16:32):
He even dimmed the lights and darkened windows with tape
to encourage maximum concentration. So strange was the atmosphere that
Tokyo police grew suspicious. They'd bring light meters and say
it's below the required level. Recalled Suzuki, who served as
Nakadera's understudy and record selector at DIG in the sixties.
The police asked him if customers were sleeping no their

(16:54):
listener listening. He said, look at their feet moving. When
we visited Genius the Kisa as Suzuki opened in nineteen seventy,
the spry eighty year old eighty four year old recalled
the arrival of Coltrane's nineteen sixty five album A Love
Supreme in Japan. He was the first to play it
at DIG. The customers didn't move at all. We even

(17:15):
brought out extra chairs. Two months after our visit, Suzuki
passed away. His son was glad you interviewed him one
last time. Kusinose later told me dig's fans started their
own cafes Garo, Disk Bird, Jazz Street fifty six and
distinguished themselves with sophisticated sound systems. Others like Yoshida Masahiro,

(17:39):
built custom equipment at IgA Khan His roughly fifty year
old kisa in an Aly in Tokyo's Bunkyo City, Masahiro
showed off wood horned speakers that he designed and cut
from Japanese ash. The ornate steam punk like inventions loomed
over his hobbit sized cafe, enveloped being customers in rasan

(18:02):
Roland Kerk's sonorous saxophone looking like a tinker in spectacles
and suspenders, Masahiro seventy nine gave us a close up
look at his handmade amplifier, the vacuum tubes glowing behind
the counter. He has likened listening to jazz and akisa
to a religious experience. The balance between listening and socializing

(18:24):
sparked debate in Tokyo's Kissa scene. Nakadera opened a sister
Kissa doug in nineteen sixty seven to allow for talking.
By then, some kisa's served as meeting spots for university students,
many of whom opposed the American War in Vietnam. Protesters
viewed black jazz artists as civil rights avatar's Billie Holliday's

(18:47):
Strange Fruit became famous in Japan. Jazz was directly linked
to political movements. They were one and the same, says
Tatafumi Kuma Shiro, owner of Yamatoya, which opened in Kyoto
in nineteen seventy. That's why students came, because they wanted
to drink and talk on a bright day in Tokyo.
Filmmaker Nick Dwyer, who has spent a decade documenting kisas

(19:11):
for a forthcoming film series called A Century in Sound,
took us to Cilencio, a neighborhood kisa so tiny that
talking would be conspicuous. The non binary proprietor Ara sized
us up and put us put on a rare nineteen
sixty seven album by Brazilian singers Kaitano Vevoso and gel Costa.

(19:34):
Two feathery voices singing in Portuguese over plucked nylon strings
floated from mid century JBL speakers too beautiful to dare
speak over. We caught each other's surprised glances and experienced
what a Japanese called torri hada chicken skin. There is
a peculiar magic to experiencing music in a kissa, an

(19:55):
atmospheric attention that abuse a piano solo with imminence and
supper like watching fireworks together. A twenty twenty two study
in the journal Brain Sciences describe the phenomenon as musical synchrony,
suggesting that collective listening decreases the experience of self other
distinction and can relate to a sense of communal identity.

(20:18):
Academic language can't quite capture what happens in their room,
which is why Westerners are showing up in increasing numbers.
Dwyer has become an ambassador for English speakers interested in
sampling the scene, showing around high profile visitors like former
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden and filmmaker Roman Coppola.

(20:41):
Musician Andre three thousand held a listening party for his
twenty twenty three flute record at Kalas Tokyo, a cafe
operated by Violin Lutier isau Izutsu Kuzunose. Our Guide first
began hearing from Instagram followers outside Japan in twenty seventeen,

(21:01):
starting with the Los Angeles hi Fi enthusiast. When his
social media following spike to twenty thousand, he began publishing
picture books of the kisas he visited. Last year, he
published his largest documentary project, a hardcover coffee table book
called Jazz Kisa Kisa inspired listening bars have sprung up

(21:22):
across the United States and Europe, though the intimacy of
a Japanese kisa can be difficult to translate, especially where
collective listening and public quietude are harder to achieve. In LA,
Goldline advertises itself as a gold bar as a record
bar with high end speakers in vinyl, but a typical

(21:42):
Friday finds roaring crowds and thumping music like at any nightclub.
All Blues in New York serves twenty dollars cocktails and
encourages reservations for its listening room, where DJ's play records
through audio file speakers. An online music community called in
Sheep's Clothing hi Fi promises curated hi Phi listening experiences

(22:06):
at pop up events in LA. A critical piece of
the kisa experience, though, is cultural. Japanese social codes seed
individual expression to collective good. On the other hand, Masako
Hayashi told me Turists often understand KISA history and protocol
better than many Japanese because they learned about it online

(22:27):
and when to experience the real thing, I could relate
At Tonelist, a bright Tokyo dinoret, patrons can enjoy contemporary
Jaas with a side of Icelandic style hot dogs to
enlist in Icelandic for music. But it's not just food
that owner yu Yu Uno forty nine, a car designer

(22:50):
by day, hopes people come for who wants his kisa
to emphasize how fantastic good sound is. When Una played
fibrophonist Sasha Berliner through vintage Tanoi speakers, the music was
breathtakingly clear, among the finest we heard in Japan. When
I praised his speakers, Uno smiled and said, the best

(23:10):
sound system in Japan actually belongs to a kisa named Basi,
located in the post industrial city of Ichinoseki, four hours
north of Tokyo. Jia's legend Count Basie, who inspired the
kisa's name, gave the owner, Shoji Swifti Sugawara his nickname,
and visited the kisa in nineteen eighty. Drummer Elvin Jones

(23:34):
and his band played the club every New Year's for
a decade. Bassi has been closed since the pandemic, but Sugawara,
eighty three and retired, agreed to open for National Geographic.
The occasion was so rare that Una asked to join
our pilgrimage, which included Kusinose and superfan Michikazu Mitch Yanagawa,

(23:56):
whose shaven head and bearded chin gave him the appearance
of a monk. Our entourage of Otaku entered Sugawara's spacious,
wood paneled club on a rainy day. The place was
lined with thousands of records and decorated with signed photographs
from Elvin Jones and Freddie Hubbard. A row of benches
faced two speakers, each the size of a refrigerator custom

(24:19):
made by Sugawara in the nineteen seventies. Sugawara welcomed us,
sporting an elegant suit and sunglasses, hair quafed in a
nineteen fifties style. With a nimbish smile, he said that
he wears shades indoors because he's shy. A former big
band drummer, Sugawara spent the sixties skipping classes at Waseda
University to hang out at Kisa's, including dig. In nineteen seventy,

(24:43):
he returned home and converted an old storehouse that belonged
to his family into a Kisa, experimenting with hi fi
and building his record collection. It was in this very
room that his obsession began. Sitting on to Tommy Matt's
as a teenager, he wired two speakers to a record
player and listened to The Five Pennies, the nineteen fifty
nine duet album by Danny Kay and Louis Armstrong. That

(25:07):
was the most intense experience, he said. Danny's voice came
from one side and satch Mo's from the other, with
a girl's voice in between. I thought stereo is amazing.
Resolutely old schools, Sugawara still uses a fax machine situated
behind a large round table where he holds court like
a Japanese version of Tony soprano. Under a low lamp.

(25:30):
Sagawara was surrounded by his younger disciples, including Taichi Sato,
a Tokyo audio expert, who wore a homemade t shirt
featuring the electronic components inside Sugawara's speakers. After drinks, our
host motioned us to the benches facing his speakers and
retreated to a hidden booth. He queued up four and

(25:51):
more Miles Davis's live album When So What came on.
It was explosively loud, as realistic and clear as the
concert must have sounded at Length Center in nineteen sixty four,
Tony William's drums crashed into the room. Davis's trumpet leaped
from the speakers like a virtual hologram on an invisible stage.

(26:11):
Sato rocked gently, drawing on his cigarette. Sugawara smiled from afar.
Listening together, we formed an impromptu fellowship, the music, dissolving
language and cultural barriers. This was what became for the
essence of the Kisa experience. I was really happy to
see Sugawara San still plays such powerful songs, said Buno,

(26:32):
for whom Baisi is like a sacred temple. I cried
with emotion and joy. These aren't just listening rooms. There
are sanctuaries where music becomes communion, where strangers become temporary family,
where the simple act of sitting together in silence creates
something larger than ourselves. Before leaving Japan, we returned to
Masako one last time. Ayashi greeted us like friends. Customers

(26:57):
occupied the same seats facing the inenorva's speaker with the
same prayerful attention. We found our spot in the back
and bowed our heads to listen to the music. Blue
Nile by Alice Coltrane tori hatta chicken and skin. The
Kisa Masako in Tokyo's hectic Shima Putsawa neighborhood opened to
nineteen fifty three. Long time patron Muiko Hayashi took over

(27:19):
in twenty twenty, decorating the storied establishment with its late
founder's art and spinning records from her collection. Each kisa
is an expression of its owner's personality and preferences around
how to experience jazz music. The most austere forbids speaking
of any kind, while others allow talking or whispering. Some
serve only tea, but others, like Cileencio, a tiny kisa

(27:43):
in Tokyo's Nerima ward, also offer alcohol. This concludes readings
from National Geographic Magazine For today. Your reader has Ben Marsha.
Thank you for listening, Keep on listening and have a
great day.