In 2017, the Japanese band Minyo Crusaders released their debut album, Echoes Of Japan (P-Vine, Japan), to great acclaim. The band's reworking and updating of Japanese folk music, or minyo, on a rhythmic bed of Caribbean, Latin and Afrobeat was truly inspired, and perhaps pointed the way for other fusion bands in East and Southeast Asia. The aim was to revive minyo as "music for the people", as quoted by World Music Central.
It turns out that the musicians behind another Japanese fusion outfit, of Tropique! (yet another unique Japanese band name), were paying attention. The instrumental band will release their debut album, Buster Goes West on the Washington-based Electric Cowbell Records on Feb 2.
