Japanese-Panamanian Friendship Concert

The Japanese navy’s training fleet was in town the other day. Yes, I know --- since World War II Japan technically has had no navy, just as, despite those guys who marched in last November’s parade in camouflage paint carrying rocket launchers, Panama has no army.

It was the “Training Squadron of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force,” and its band came to the Curundu Dome on the afternoon of June 2 to play a Japanese-Panamanian Friendship Concert along with Panama’s Banda Republicana. The squadron and its band are making an eight-country tour of the Americas.

This was a very well attended event, mostly by members of high school and police marching bands who were bussed in for the occasion. Some diplomats, members of Panama’s small Japanese community, a bunch of the University of Panama’s art students and various other music lovers also came for the show.

The music began with a performance by a half-dozen traditional Japanese drummers, also from the training squadron. I wish they would have played a bit longer --- I’m the sort of guy who appreciates Moby’s Blue Men, and from what I saw and heard at Curundu, these drummers are that more famous painted percussion group’s equals or betters.

The drummers took away their large wood and leather drums and it was time for the main Japanese band to play. And here was where the lack of printed programs and my lack of a formal musical education became an impediment to my journalism --- what WAS this classical piece they were playing?

And should I say “classical” at all? Like the Banda Republicana, this was primarily a brass, reed and woodwind band, without the string section found in a symphony, and with saxophones not generally associated with classical music. It was more like a marching band without much of a drum corps. But the strings and percussion did have their lonely representatives in the Japanese band, with a drum set akin to what one would find in a standard rock and roll band, and an electric bass.

But in any case, they played something that sounded twentieth century classical but with which I was totally unfamiliar but nevertheless enjoyed.

Then the Banda Republicana, which is actually older than the Republic of Panama, set up beside their Japanese counterpart to the right side viewed from the audience, performed another modern classical composition that I didn’t recognize, but which sounded an awful lot like the sorts of things that Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein wrote. I like that too.

Next, back to the Japanese band on the left. They played a clearly Japanese modern composition, with a couple of drum solos, a drum and piccolo duet and some traditional notes that surely quoted compositions originally on an Asian five-note scale. Now I REALLY wished that I had a program. Very cool.

Back to the Banda Republicana, we heard a tipico-based composition by Alberto Galimany with which I was just familiar enough to recognize as having heard before but not familiar enough to name.

Then the Japanese, as might have been expected from a naval band, a novel and intriguing --- but very recognizable --- slightly syncopated arrangement of “Anchors Aweigh.”

After that the bands merged, with alternating conductors.

We heard the early 60s hit, “Sukiyaki.”

Then the quintessentially Panamanian “Mejorana Lamenta” --- but without any actual mejoranas in either band.

For encores they played a couple of marches, the first of which I didn’t recognize at all, the second which I have heard just about every time I have seen a bombero band in action, but which I can’t identify.

Gotta send this reviewer to a music appreciation class, or recruit some new music reporters. That, however, would take away my excuse to go to concerts like this one. But I’d surely find another one.

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