I was watching the Red and White festival the other night. It’s an annual 3 hour music festival that is aired in Japan every New Year’s Eve. All the popular artists in pop and enka genres are divided into men (white) and women (red) and perform, oohing and awing the crowd. At the end of the show, the public and audience members vote on who they thought was the better side. This year the bragging rights went to the white side.
It was quite an interesting show as I managed to finally put a face to the names of the many artists that I listen to. I managed to catch some familiar names and was mildly entertained from it.
For female performers, I thought Ayumi Hamasaki’s Fairyland performance was less than perfect with her wavy tone and pitch throughout her performance. I thought BoA’s performance was better although not perfect. Koda Kumi’s song was probably one of the better ones in my opinion as I felt she knew what she was doing on stage – not to mention knowing how to dress with that rather unique outfit! I listen to Natsukawa Rimi now and then because I like her voice. I was happy to hear that familiar voice on stage. Doricamu (Dreams Come True) was still performing after all these years and while I thought Yoshida Miwa’s performance wasn’t at her peak, the duo still managed to pull off a good song that evening.
I don’t remember too much on the male side, other than the fact that SMAP’s rendition of Triangle wasn’t all very impressive and didn’t really deserve to be the last performance of the evening. KimuTaku is probably one of the better singers of the group – and I’m not saying that because he has the same name as me. There were too many rap and hip-hop performances on the male side to my liking so they didn’t really impress me all that much. I wonder why they won to begin with?
A notable performance was the Friends of Earth song sung by 4 people in Beijing. A Japanese female singer, a Chinese female, a Korean male and an English singing male made for an interesting ensemble. I have to say though, that the green coloured cheongsam the Chinese singer was wearing was absolutely beautiful. An A+ in my book!
I’m kind of surprised I even knew so many people in the show. The younger female emcee of the evening was the ever so popular YankumiGokusen (at least I think that’s it) that I watch a few months ago. She was elegant that evening with her 4 or 5 wardrobe changes throughout the night.
The show is no longer available here in Toronto on basic Cable. You can only see it if you have satellite TV, which I don’t have. So it’s kind of a shame that there are no sponsors to bring this to cable TV. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting 3 hours to spend once once a year. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to catch it again next year!
Have any of you seen the show? What did you think about it?
