Released on September 15th, ‘Bring Minyo Back!’ is a captivating music documentary that chronicles the Minyo Crusaders’ journey since 2017. In this article, we delve into the film’s exploration of the past and present of traditional music, intertwined with the band’s vibrant activities.
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Fusing folk traditions with a global beat: the Minyo Crusaders’ musical alchemy
A music documentary film documenting the activities of the Minyo Crusaders over the past five years, “Bring Minyo Back! was released in theaters.
Based in Fussa, Tokyo, the Minyo Crusaders are a band that fuses folk songs from around Japan with the world music, including cumbia, Latin and Afrobeat. The band’s unique sound transcends genres and generations, attracting a large audience; their first album, “Echoes of Japan,” was released in 2017 to much acclaim, including praise from Peter Barakan and Ry Cooder. Since then, he has expanded his activities, performing at large festivals and in prominent national and international media outlets, with a successful world tour in 2019 that will take him to Colombia, various European countries, and more.
Director Yuji Moriwaki has been filming Minyo Crusaders since 2017 and accompanied them on their world tour. He has closely followed the band as they reconstruct folk songs and bring them to modern audiences. The film was screened at Peter Barakan’s Music Film Festival 2022, a music film festival supervised by Peter Barakan, and received high acclaim. This time, the film will be shown in its entirety, including footage from the 2022 European tour.
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Reshaping tradition: navigating the world of folk songs
This film can be divided into two parts. The first half explores the significance of the Minyo Crusaders and “what is minyo? The second half of the film is about their world tour, including recording in Colombia.
The first half of the film shows the Minyo Crusaders performing in Japan and introduces min’yo from various regions of Japan, interspersed with footage of records and festivals. In doing so, the film unravels a multifaceted study of minyo through interviews with artists such as Motochitose and Makoto Kubota, critics such as Peter Barakan, Yuichi Kishino, and Hajime Oishi, and DJs in the Riso Yoku Mountains.
Characteristically, rhythm is emphasized. After the discussion of rhythm, the camera showing festivals in various regions focuses on the clapping and clattering clogs as well as the people dancing. The loud clapping gradually makes the folk songs sound like groovy dance music.
In this way, the activities of the Minyo Crusaders are positioned in the history of min’yo as it is reinterpreted from a variety of perspectives. After a discussion of the history of the fusion of min’yo and popular music, particularly the relationship between Latin and Japanese min’yo, a video of a concert featuring the Minyo Crusaders and the Tokyo Cuban Boys, one of Japan’s leading Latin big bands, is shown.
It is impressive that the film does not use live footage in a way that overly emphasizes the charisma of the artists, although it is not limited to this joint performance scene. In particular, the first half of the film, as soon as a live performance is shown, it is immediately mixed with footage of interviews and records. In recent years, there have been documentaries on popular artists that are more like direct promotions of new releases or lack journalism. This film stands apart from such works, and as mentioned above, it connects folk music with the Minyo Crusaders while exploring folk music itself in depth.
