(January 1, 1951 – March 9, 2021) was a Japanese

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

drummer A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drums. Most contemporary western music ensemble, bands that play Rock music, rock, Pop music, pop, jazz, or Contemporary R&B, R&B music include a drummer for purposes including timekeepi ...

and

session musician A session musician (also known as studio musician or backing musician) is a musician hired to perform in a recording session or a live performance. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a reco ...

Career

Murakami was born in

Nishinomiya 270px, Nishinomiya City Hall 270px, Aerial view of Nishinomiya city center 1985 270px, Hirota Shrine is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 484,368 in 218,948 households and a population density ...

. He first learned to play

French horn The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most o ...

, but switched to classical percussion as a teenager before settling on the drum kit. He worked extensively as a sideman on jazz sessions in the 1970s and 1980s, with, among others, Sadao Watanabe, Yosuke Yamashita,

Kazumi Watanabe is a Japanese guitarist. Other guitarists such as Luke Takamura and Sugizo have cited him as an influence. Career Watanabe learned guitar at the age of 12 from Sadanori Nakamure at the Yamaha Music School in Tokyo. He released his first album ...

Masayoshi Takanaka is a Japanese musician, producer and composer. Takanaka rose to fame and achieved commercial success during the 1970s and 1980s. He is known for his virtuosic guitar playing and skilled musicianship, composing and performing across various diff ...

Jun Fukamachi was a Japanese jazz fusion composer, arranger, and keyboardist. He played with The Brecker Brothers and Steve Gadd and released albums for Polydor and Toshiba in the 1970s. Early life and career At the age of 3, Fukamachi began to learn pian ...

Akira Sakata Akira Sakata (born 21 February 1945) is a Japanese free jazz saxophonist. Early life Sakata was born in Hiroshima on 21 February 1945. He first heard jazz on short-wave radio and Voice of America, then became more interested in it from listening ...

, and

Takashi Kako (born 31 January 1947) is a Japanese pianist and composer, who works in both jazz and art-music idioms. Early life Kako was born in Osaka. He began playing piano at eight years old and learned to play jazz while in his teens. Later life and care ...

. He founded the group Ponta Box (featuring sidemen Masahiro Sayama and Masatoshi Mizuno), which recorded three albums for

JVC Victor is a subsidiary of JVCKenwood that produces and distributes music, movies and other entertainment products such as anime and television shows in Japan. It is known as JVC Entertainment in countries where Sony Music Entertainment operates the R ...

and appeared at the 1995

Montreux Jazz Festival The Montreux Jazz Festival (formerly Festival de Jazz Montreux and Festival International de Jazz Montreux) is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second-largest annu ...

, and has recorded several albums under his own name. He also worked as a

for

J-pop J-pop (often stylized in all caps; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in trad ...

stars for several decades. Murakami died on March 9, 2021, after suffering thalamic bleeding at the age of 70. A year later, a tribute concert titled "One Last Live" was held at the

Tokyo International Forum The is a multi-purpose exhibition center in Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The complex is generally considered to be in the Yūrakuchō business district, being adjacent to Yūrakuchō Station, but it is administratively in the Marunouchi district. Toky ...

, featuring Junk Fujiyama,

Yo Hitoto is a Japanese-Taiwanese pop singer. Early life Yo Hitoto's mother was Japanese, and her father was a Taiwanese businessman (顏惠民). Tae Hitoto is her older sister. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother died when she was ...

, Fusanosuke Kondo,

Maki Ohguro is a Japanese pop singer and songwriter from Sapporo, Hokkaido under B-Gram Records label. Biography In 1989, she passed Being Inc.'s singers audition, the "3rd BAD". In 1992, she debuted with the single "Stop Motion" released under B-Gr ...

Miho Fukuhara (born June 19, 1987) is a Japanese singer, songwriter and actress who made an independent label debut in 2006, releasing a single titled "The Roots" and mini-album titled ''Step Out''. In early 2008, she made her major-label debut under Sony Mus ...

Chisato Moritaka (born 11 April 1969) is a Japanese pop singer who also is notable as a songwriter. She is affiliated with Up-Front Create, a subsidiary of the Up-Front Group.

, Chikuzen Sato,

Taeko Onuki is a Japanese singer-songwriter and musician who achieved success and popularity during the 1970s and 80s in the city pop music scene. Early life and career Taeko Onuki was born in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, in 1953. Her father was Kenichiro Onu ...

, Mie, and

Toshiki Kadomatsu is a Japanese singer-songwriter, musician, and producer best known as one of the pioneers of the city pop genre. He has released many studio albums, as well as several instrumental and live albums. He has been active since 1981. Biography Ka ...

Discography

;As leader *''Introducing Ponta Murakami'' (

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

, 1976) *''Tokyo Fusion Night'' (Polydor, 1978) *''Welcome To My Life'' (JVC, 1998) *''Rhythm Monster'' (

Universal Music Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum ...

, 2012) ;with Ponta Box *''Ponta Box'' (

JVC JVC (short for Japan Victor Company) is a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as , the company was best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for developin ...

, 1995) *''Desert in the Desert'' (JVC, 1995) *''NYPB'' (JVC, 2001)

References

Japanese jazz drummers Japanese session musicians 1951 births 2021 deaths Musicians from Nishinomiya {{Japan-musician-stub