Those Queer Japanese

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 42, 2 May 1930, Page 24

Those Queer Japanese

AVE you ever listened to Japan? I did the other night and shall never forget the interest and amusement that the broadcast provided. I was more or less idly turning round the dials of my set when I heard music that sounded strange. I brought in the stranger and then

listened to his stranger’ fare. I presumed it was music, though far from what we term music. There was a one-stringed instrument, at least it seemed like that, and some one was plucking the string at irregular intervals and sliding his other hand up and down the string much the same as a child does when he gets a violin. There was neither melody nor rhythm but it must have interested the Japanese, for I was sure it could be no other than one of these Orientals, for the item continued for fully ten minutes. It then ceased. After

a few moments a man commenced to jabber and after a few sentences, issued in a high-pitched voice and very fast, I distinguished the letters JOFK. At this I received a real thrill for I knew that to be the call sign of a Japanese station. After he had ceased-is was a long

announcement compared with the curt introductions at the conclusion of items from our stations-a vocalist began to entertain. It was weird. He commenced with series of e’s high up the scale then, in a manner that would be frowned upon by the poorest of music teachers, began to descend to a lower pitch. He still chanted the e’s, if anything drawing them out a little more, and so !.e descended to the lowest registers. Then he changed, not his tune, but his note, ah’s this time, and repeated the perfsrmances, and so he articulated ali the vowels. Several times he went up and down the scale. All this time the one-stringed instrument was monotonously and mournfully strumming in the background. It was weird, to say the least of it.-Gwen.