I’ve been thinking about what I should write about on this blog more often. As I mentioned in a post a while back, I’m going to focus more on Japanese entertainment. Japanese dramas is one of the bigger categories here, but now I’m going to introduce you all to a new category; Japanese music. I’m a big fan of Japanese music and I know many artists in many different genres, so this is something I can write a lot about. So this is going to be a weekly thing, I’ll introduce you to one artist or group per week, and there’ll be both old and new, famous and unknown artists and groups. I’ve posted about Japanese music before, but I think it deserves it’s own category now.
The first group I’d like to introduce you to is Monkey Majik.
Monkey Majik is a Japanese four man rock band named after a song by Godiego called “Monkey Magic”. The band consists of Canadian brothers Maynard and Blaise Plant as guitarists and vocalists, drummer Takuya “tax” Kikuchi, and bassist DICK. Maynard Plant came to Japan in 1997 to teach English after graduating from Queen’s University, Maynard is now fully fluent in Japanese. Blaise Plant used to be a solo musician in Canada before he moved to Japan in 2000 to form Monkey Majik.
Their first single, “fly”, was released in 2006 and was a commercial success. The first single was soon after followed by another single called “Around the World”, which peaked at number 4 on the top 200 Oricon singles chart (this song is also one of my favorites). Their latest single is called ただ、ありがとう (Tada, arigatou) and was released on August 27, 2008.
Besides being a great band for everyone interested in this kind of music, Monkey Majik is a great start for people who just recently started listening to Japanese music. Their sound is more like a western rock band, but with Japanese lyrics. Even my parents who’s not completely into Japanese music (yet) loves this band. I strongly suggest you to browse through YouTube, they have a lot of cool videos, and be sure to check out Change (feat. the Yoshida Brothers) and Picture Perfect (feat. m-flo).
Also visit their website at www.monkeymajik.com
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I just saw them on Japanese tv, and I was like “Oh, Sano talked about these guys!”
Just though you might like to know, haha.
Haha cool! What was it about? Or was it just a music video? ^^
I’m not sure at all really, haha. It was that program where they’re in a little white room. Anyway, it was pretty neat to hear them all talking/singing.
That was pretty cool! Didn’t really like how they mixed his voice though =/
on first listen, it was okay -
but putting it on again, I like it a lot XD
have heard blanc.’s song ‘new world’? tis very catchy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QOii_UVAMU
すごい！
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Like Hoolan said, seeing that Canadian guy singing in Japanese is kind of a trip. But I guess Leah made a Japanese album before she could actually speak the language, haha.
I don’t think these guys sang in Japanese before they actually learned to speak the language though. Well, I guess Blaise (the brother that came to Japan a bit later) might have had a couple of Japanese lines before he actually spoke the language.
But this is pretty normal, isn’t it? Oh well, maybe not with complete Caucasians, but with mixed Japanese people it is ^^
MONKEY MAJIK!! ♥
haha, I absolutely love their music and their MVs are always entertaining. XD
Haha yeah I guess it’s hard to believe since his Japanese is really good. Well, one of them has been in Japan for 11 years and the other one for 8 years, so it’s actually not that hard to believe :P
They’re really good anyways!
Oh and btw, just found your blog, can’t wait for more posts! ^^