Lover's Lament

Two musicians from the Gagaku ensemble
Songs and Sounds of the Orient (cover)
A custom recording by Japanese Air Lines, JAL 5581-666

In the 1970s commercial use of the vinyl record was at its prime. It was the golden age of the recording industry. Sales were peaking and companies flooded the LP market with whatever they thought could earn them a profit. A handful of record companies issued immense amounts of commercial recordings and turned into billion dollar corporations. But the 1970s also saw many new record companies established while existing smaller labels were able to hold their own. According to my finds at thrift stores many companies that had nothing to do with the music industry whatsoever also wanted to take a bite out of the blooming record industry pie. I don't know how many of the world's air lines produced LPs but in a single day I came home with a record produced by the Italian Alitalia and the Japanese JAL. The Italian one is a football record with commentaries and interviews on and with the 1978 Italian world cup squad, beautifully adorned with the original owner tourist's ephemera such as snap shots, a signed photograph of the airplane pilot, and a picture of the pope. It's hard to listen to the record if you don't (and I don't) speak Italian. The Japanese record (from which I picked the musical example below) is as well documented as the best of the scholastic field recordings by say, the Smithsonian, biased however by the commercial interest of selling airplane tickets. The records has both sounds from places of tourist's interests and music, richly illustrated with pictures, stories, and a booklet full of information. Side A of the record deals with Japan while side B covers some of the countries visited by JAL. The track A-ri-rang that can be downloaded below is from side B. It's a lover's lament sung and recorded in Korea, believed to originate more than 300 years ago. "The song is a dialog between a heartbroken girl and her fickle lover. She pleads with him not to leave her, but his roving eyes have already found another."
01 Lover's Lament.m4a