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Suzuki is a voice from the future, a woman from another world. She has a raw look at existence, which has made her life more tormented, but her art purer. These stories are disturbing because they sound familiar: they hit and shock like an iced cocktail thrown in the face.

The first volume of a trilogy that introduces a cult work to Italy, Terminal Noia is a kaleidoscope of nonconformist and provocative images for a scathing work of speculative science fiction, and it is also the book I am currently reading. What it has in common with jazz music and how you will find out by continuing to read the post.

I was very surprised to find a very interesting article on the blog of Fabricio Vieira, a Brazilian jazz critic and journalist, who retraces the life and works of Suzuki, also proposing the film dedicated to her. I thought of translating and proposing the entire post. Enjoy the reading.

The name of Japanese writer Izumi Suzuki (1949-1986) is part of the imagination of free jazz lovers, even if they have no particular interest in the literature of the Asian country. Suzuki was married to saxophone legend Kaoru Abe (1949-1978), and their troubled relationship was told in the film “Endoresu Warutsu” (
Endless Waltz , 1995), directed by Kôji Wakamatsu (based on a book by writer Mayumi Inaba).

Abe died of an overdose; Suzuki hanged herself. Anyone who, after seeing the film, was particularly interested in learning more about the writer’s work, found themselves faced with the obstacle represented by the lack of translation in the West (at least not in book form, with commercial distribution). It was only in 2021 that the independent publisher Verso began publishing her in English, with the collection of short stories “Terminal Boredom” (the publisher has just published her third title, the novel “Set My Heart on Fire”, which demonstrates the growing interest of the public in their texts). This discovery of Suzuki in the West is gradually gaining ground, so much so that it has already been translated into Italian (“Noia Terminale”).

Izumi Suzuki was an artist who circulated widely in the Japanese counterculture and underground of the 1970s. Before establishing herself as a writer, she worked as an actress and model, taking part in films such as the aforementioned Wakamatsu and being part of the legendary theater company of Shuji Terayama. Her career as a writer gained strength and importance especially in the last decade of her life. The short story was her form of expression par excellence. And most of her work is enclosed in the science fiction genre. She was among the first female writers to try her hand at this narrative genre in Japan and began publishing her works in magazines and collections in her country, when science fiction was the exclusive preserve of male authors.

Terminal Boredom is a collection of seven stories, unfortunately without the publication date of each (and where it originally occurred, whether in a magazine, in another book, etc.). It is striking that the Brazilian edition is the same as the one published in English a few years ago, including the cover (the Italian one is also identical except for the cover). Everything indicates that it was the Japanese publishing house Bunyū-sha that organized this volume, selecting seven stories that were part of the larger “Covenant: The Complete SF of Izumi Suzuki”, published in Japanese in 2014. In other words, the Japanese publishing house prepared a volume for export, with the aim of introducing the writer to the West. It is worth noting that both the English and Brazilian editions benefit from the support of the Japan Foundation.

The seven stories in the book, written between the 1970s and 1980s, reflect on themes that are still current, making the work noticeably contemporary. Suzuki’s narratives often feature female characters. The traditional dystopian themes that characterize science fiction are present, without forgetting scenarios set in other worlds, futuristic technologies or even some alien beings. But Suzuki’s art, more focused on specific characters and individual crises – keeping away from the narratives of changing/revolutionary societies that are very present in this field – goes beyond the genre in question. In general, the setting of the stories, although in an uncertain future, reflects the Tokyo of his time, with its underground scene of bars and cafes. His literature has as its distinctive trait the act of exploring the distortions of reality through dreamlike means (remembering that the dream world also includes nightmares, delusions and daydreams). His creation is permeated by characters in personal crises, drugs, alienation, desires and desperation. In her texts, the author alienates the real world to raise questions that, if they had not been incorporated into the structure of science fiction, would have encountered greater obstacles in their elaboration and diffusion, especially in the notoriously sexist Japanese society of the time.

Let’s consider a short story like “A world of women with women” (1977), with a more directly feminist discourse. Here the narration takes place in a not very precise future, apparently the 21st century, where we have a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, in which men, representatives of a deviant lineage, generators of wars, disharmony and destruction (“Men are also human, but they are a mutation. They are barbarians, aberrations”), are practically extinct, with the remainder living confined in the “Isolation Housing Zone”. The other pieces will develop through other thematic channels, despite the female protagonists being dominant. “Smoke Gets in Our Eyes” (1979) features drug/pill-addicted protagonist Leiko in the midst of a fleeting relationship, the core of the story, shrouded in an opacity that will only be revealed to the reader at the end. Although music is not the main focus of the story, Leiko goes to work in a jazz bar, a world Suzuki frequented and, I imagine, knew well – and some signs of this remain along the way: “Wanting to change the subject, I commented that that song was good too. The bar owner held back her laughter and pointed to the album cover. The “pretty good” song was Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. “I didn’t feel good,” Leiko says, who will also talk about Dolphy’s performance of “Last Date” in the sequence where jazz appears as background music.

Music, in fact, is a crucial point in Suzuki’s literature. Musical references are scattered throughout the pages and, if the reader pays attention and creates a playlist based on the suggestions that appear throughout the work, he will see new windows open. Let’s start with the titles. “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” is an American song from the 1930s, recorded by many musicians (including Charlie Parker!), which will be immortalized in the version by The Platters (early 1930s). The text is quoted at a decisive moment in the story, it is impossible not to echo the voice of the Platters at that moment). Another short story is titled “You My Dream”, a song by the Japanese new wave/pop rock group Sheena & The Rokkets. In “Memories of the Seaside Club”, more music. Here the characters are always humming, whistling, listening to music from the bar’s jukebox: “What song is that again?”/ “Sometimes I can’t help but cry, Emi replies” (a reference to a song by the rock group Blues Progetto, mid-60s). “The sound of the shotgun echoes in the silence between the three of us.” – probably a quote from “Shotgun” by the R&B/soul band Junior Walker & The All Stars. “A song begins so softly that I want to die. I turn to look at the screen and see the name. , I Got a Mind To Give Up Living by Paul Butterfield Blues Band.” Then the temperature of the sound changes abruptly: “Two days later, I go to Anjo to Sexta. Heroin is the background, which makes me happy.” And so on.

The story that closes the collection is the one that gives it its title: Terminal Boredom. According to the information found, it dates back to 1984 and would have been the last text published by her during her lifetime: her name could not be more symptomatic. This is the most sensitively realistic story. At least that’s how it resonates with contemporary readers. In a not too distant future, with a growing horde of unemployed and jobless people, people’s attention will be mainly focused on screens. Not only the ubiquitous TV (for which they are developing a brain implant that makes the viewer feel even more pleasure when sitting in front of it). When people call each other, they can see each other on the phone screen. The main couple sees a man killing a woman and the question is: did someone film the scene? Real life is so boring, people are so apathetic that they have even lost the desire to eat (most young people are underweight). Only the older generation (less dependent on screens?) still shows energy. “We ate sitting next to each other, watching the video scrolling on the screen. We had to watch something to feel more relaxed. “Are there similarities with today’s world?

In an interview with translator Rita Kohl (for a report on the translation of Asian literature), the importance of saving names like Izumi Suzuki was highlighted, a writer, among many, excluded from the canon regardless of the impact her work had on her life. We hope that the good reception that Suzuki’s work has had in English will be repeated here, so that other titles of hers will have the chance to be published in Portuguese (and perhaps in Italian!). Also, may other Japanese authors forgotten by time have the opportunity to be saved.

But who was Kaoru Abe? I fished out this enlightening article from 2016 from Impattosonoro.it by Fabio Marco Ferragatta. Forgive the verbosity of this post of mine, but I think it’s worth it and I hope you appreciate it:

….The protagonist of this gross page full of information thrown in haphazardly is a legend of avant-garde jazz and his name is Kaoru Abe. And like all legends worth their salt, Abe died in 1978 at just 29 years old.

Terrible for an infinite number of reasons. The pain that comes from jazz culture is perfectly embodied in this boy and his crazy and disastrous music. At his side and between his lips an alto sax and a clarinet and in his head a fast and lucifuging psychosis, with his feet planted entirely in the (s)grammar of the most extremist and “bad” free jazz.

Abe said of himself, “I want to become faster than anyone else. Faster than the cold, faster than a single man, faster than the Earth, faster than Andromeda. Where is the crime in all this?” and it was, indeed it was. At 17, he left school and went to Shinjuku, a city at the heart of a rapidly growing culture. Here he threw himself headlong into the alto sax, learning the technique on his own, in defiance of the social conventions of his native country.

Young Japanese jazz musicians begin playing with their senpai and then dabble in ensemble music with their supporting players, and only after following this path do they debut. Abe is an “anarchist” from these basic notions, he has no teacher and does not want companions, he trains for hours in senseless places like the emergency lane of the Tokyo-Yokohama highway near his home, thus learning to make his sax scream, above everything, above cars, above cities, without a border (leitmotif of this article, apparently).

And so Abe is a “lonely” man, almost unable to play with others because of his being over the top, and not only that. He made his debut at 19, but the responses were slow to arrive, but our young psychopath was in no hurry and in 1970 he began performing in some clubs in the red light district of Shinjuku, and the stories of his improbable exploits behind the saxophone soon became legend among musicians until they attracted another anomaly of Japanese jazz, the guitarist Masayumi Takayanagi (who would later cross paths with Keiji Haino).

And so Abe’s idea of ​​solitude was interrupted for the beauty of three albums (“Kaitai Teki Kohkan”, “Mass Projection” and “Gradually Projection”). The two were outside of any rule, whether it was that of keeping jazz in the standards or of wedging rock towards choruses suitable for sale, they mixed everything together and took it to extremes, giving improv of this type a new form, more brilliant and bastard. The puritans repudiate them, and they do nothing to counter this trend.

The life of the young Kaoru takes a disastrous turn when drugs and alcohol appear on his path. The speed of the performances and their ferocity doubles but almost none of it will see the light of day while the artist is still alive. Abe must have been a real bastard, and who knows how the hell he could have behaved with the businessmen of the music labels, so much so that many of his records were released posthumously, many of them published by P.S.F. Records, greedy for madness (in its roster the aforementioned Mailiner, The Acid Mother Temple, Haino, the Japanese Ghost (nothing to do with the Ghost you imagine) and also the Six Organs Of Admittance).

The fastest saxophonist in Andromeda also indulges in a nice university tour in 1971, something that could only happen in those years, in addition to several forays alongside Toshinori Kondo and none other than Derek Bailey (you can find them both on “Aida’s Call” recorded in 1978, a sort of swan song? Who knows). Mr. Kaoru’s life also deteriorates because of his marriage to the writer Suzuki Ikumi, a union made of violence and substance abuse (masterfully immortalized in the film about the life of the alien jazz musician “Endless Waltz“, 1995 directed by Koji Wakamatsu). Abuse that will cost the musician his life, the overdose is just around the corner and arrives in 1978, cutting off a crazy path, but in full evolution.

It is no surprise that the saxophonist from Shinjuku chose Celine as inspiration for this album. Both rejected, hated, misunderstood, violent. So “Mort à Credit” is affected by the sadness of the French writer, the torment of loneliness, a dormant ferocity, all devoured by the volume even when it should be on tiptoe. Recorded in 1975 in complete solitude in two key locations for Japanese jazz, the Iruma City Hall and the Aoyama Tower Hall, one wonders in front of how many people.

The alto sax and the sopranino are torn apart and devoured, the melody stubbornly insists on themes hungry for clarity and then self-digests and goes crazy, so much so that it seems like an electric guitar in full psychosis. The seeds of the Zorn to come peep out on the alto sax improvisations, hallucinatory syncopations, alternation of Parkerian speeds and slowness that kisses Coltrane’s ass, noise symptoms that will be useful to his compatriot Merzbow, hallucinatory journeys of senseless length (almost all over thirty minutes) in a piercing succession of endless desperation. To date the most advanced of all.

***

If you don’t own much of Laura Nyro’s music and have a couple of hundred quid to spare, a newly released 19-CD set of her complete studio and almost complete live recordings titled Hear My Song would be a good investment.

All the 10 studio albums are there, from 1967’s More Than a New Discovery to the posthumously released Angel in the Dark, plus the official live albums — Spread Your Wings and Fly (1971), Season of Lights (1977) and The Loom’s Desire (1993-94) — and two live performances from a San Francisco hotel in 1994.

For me, though, there’s one thing missing: a double album called Laura, subtitled Laura Nyro Live at the Bottom Line. Recorded during a tour in 1988, her first in 10 years, it was released the following year on the independent Cypress label after the A&R department at Columbia Records, her home since 1968, indicated that they didn’t want her next album to be a live recording and gave her permission to make a one-off deal with another company.

For the tour she put together a small band with Jimmy Vivino on guitar, David Wofford on bass guitar, Frank Pagano on drums, Nydia Mata on percussion and Diane Wilson on harmony vocals. It’s not the kind of virtuoso-level team with which she toured in 1976 and whose work with her was preserved on Season of Lights — guitarist John Tropea, double-bassist Richard Davis, Mike Mainieri on vibes, Andy Newmark on drums — but it’s a much better fit with her music and recorded with much greater warmth, richer textures and sense of space. Laura’s own performance is much more mature and confident.

The whole lengthy set is very fine, but the one thing I wouldn’t be without is a song called “Companion”, of which this seems to be the only recording. It begins with the drummer ticking off the time and a heart-melting guitar-and-bass lick that leads into a slow 12/8 blues ballad. It’s the fourth song in, and Laura addresses the crowd in the Greenwich Village club: “Well, now that you’re finally my captive audience, I’m going to force these new songs on you…”

Then she sings. “I don’t want to marry / I don’t want your money / But love’s come our way / Just a warm companion is what I want, honey…” The melody as simple and gorgeous as the lyric: “Life is complicated / Funny, love can be that way / When just a warm companion is what I want, honey / A very special trust / A very special lust…” There’s a short bridge passage (“Walk inside the rain / Laughter in the dark…”) that goes out of tempo, then the guitar-and-bass lick returns and the band riffs quietly as she introduces them, one by one, before three part harmony (Nyro/Wilson/Pagano) gently takes it out.

There nothing here of the wild originality she brought to Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry when she was in her very early twenties. She’s a different person, no longer sitting on a fire escape above a New York street. Her life has changed. She’s been through a marriage. She’s living in Amherst, Massachusetts with a female partner, the painter Maria Desiderio. She’s a radical feminist campaigning for women’s rights, Native American rights, animal rights. She’s a mother, bringing up a son, Gil. But as different as the songs may be, the voice is still hers, with all the poetry it contains.

Some people criticised her later studio albums — Smile, Nested, Mother’s Spiritual, Walk the Dog & Light the Light — for lacking the fire of her early music. That’s like accusing her of growing up. We’re lucky to have all of it. And for me, alongside “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Emmie” and “Been on a Train” and “When I was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag”, there’s “Companion”, the expression of a woman no less powerfully connected with her deepest feelings but now finding peace.

Maria Desiderio was with Laura when she died in April 1997 of ovarian cancer, the disease that had killed her mother, her maternal grandmother, and her maternal great-aunt. She was 49 years old. It’s a great thing to know that, around the world, people are still listening to her voice and her songs with admiration and love.

The Hear My Song box is released on the Madfish label. Live at the Bottom Line is out of print in both vinyl and single-CD formats. The photograph is by David Bianchini, to whom Laura Nyro was married in the early ’70s, and is taken from the booklet accompanying The Loom’s Desire.