/24-7PressRelease/ - TOKYO, August 14, 2006 - When Danny Bloom was growing up in the USA in the 1950s, learning to speak Japanese or Chinese was the furthest thing from his mind. But now in Asia since 1991, he has penned and composed a song
about ......learning Japanese!
"I wrote the song to help Westerners learn the basic Japanese sound syllabies called hiragana and katakana," Bloom, a newspaper reporter and part-time university lecturer, says. "Just like America has the Now I know My ABCs song for kids, this song is a kind of Japanese 'Macarena' to help people outside Japan learn the 44-sound system that is the foundation of the Japanese language."
Bloom worked for a Japanese newspaper in Tokyo for five years and then moved to Taiwan to work for English newspapers there. The author of several books for children and adults, Bloom plays the piano as an amateur musician and once made a living busking on the streets of Tokyo. He says: "I love novelty songs, and nonsense songs, and a few years ago, I had the idea to write this song about learning Japanese, just for fun."
Bloom came up with the concept and wrote the words for the song, found a studio producer in Los Angeles to turn his words and concept into a song, and the result is "The Learning Hiragana Song," recently featured on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, in an interview with radio host Scott Simon.
DJs have played the song on radio stations in Taiwan and Japan, and the recent NPR exposure was important, he says, for getting the song out to the world.
"My goal is a global dance hit for the summer of 2007," Bloom says. In pursuit of this goal, Bloom has been busy emailing record producers in New York, Tokyo and Paris, hoping to finalize a deal for his half-Japanese half-English novelty song.
Can Bloom himself speak Japanese? "Very very poorly," he says. "That's why I wrote this song. To help people learn Japanese much better than I did. In fact, I wish I had had this song to listen to when I was just starting out in Tokyo. It might have helped me. As it was, it took me three long years to master Japanese, and I say 'master' jokingly. But it's fun to learn a foreign language, and more Americans should. Languages broaden the mind. They make the world borderless.
Bloom, who calls himself a global citizen, says he hopes his song can contribute to a world of peace and international friendship, 61 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski in August 1945. "We've come a long way, Japan and the USA, and it's a good example for other warring nations around the world," Bloom says.
About Gana Hira
Gana Hira Productions is a music company in Taiwan.
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