Biography
Nori Awaya entered the world on 12 August 1907 in Aomori, Japan, and left it on 20 September 1999. The daughter of a prosperous draper whose enterprise collapsed during her late teens, she enrolled at Toyo College of Music in 1923, beginning with piano before turning to vocal training. To cover her tuition she posed nude for art students and painters. In 1929 she joined Polydor Records, the first popular singer to hold a diploma from a traditional conservatory. Her move to Columbia Records in 1931 coincided with her debut success, the hit ‘Watashi Konogoro Youtsuyo’ (‘I’m Feeling So Down These Days’). Subsequent releases including ‘Wakare No Blues’ (‘Farewell Blues’, 1937), ‘Ame No Blues’ (‘Rainy Blues’, 1930) and ‘Tokyo Blues’ (1939) earned the soprano the title ‘Queen of the Blues’. She later cut sides for Teichiku, Victor Records and Tohiba. These so-called blues were in fact slow pieces in minor keys set to melancholy texts, bearing scant resemblance to Western blues and belonging instead to kayokyoku, once Japan’s dominant style of popular song. Awaya’s singular, playful appropriation of the term became inseparable from her name, and she remained active into her mid-eighties.