TOKYO GROOVE JYOSHI is a female groove band formed in 2018 in Tokyo by three Japanese session musicians, Emi Kanazashi (keyboard and vocals), Juna Serita (bass and vocals) and Yuriko Seki (drums, chorus and composer).
Their producer got opportunity to live in NY for eight years in 1980s and 2010s, and he went to around 500 music live concerts. Especially in late 80s, he experienced creative music beyond genres, and he fell in love with groove music. As Duke Ellington said, “There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind”, he strives to produce TOKYO GROOVE JYOSHI as a powerful groove band with music beyond the generations, genders, and genres. They mainly perform at various music festivals and solo live concerts. Most of the time, they get fully booked. Since the band is formed, they have been collaborating with other musicians also.
They made music videos and the video “What is Hip?” became huge hit particularly outside of Japan. In February of 2020, they went to New York and performed at live music clubs such as The Bitter End, Shrine, Suger, Groove, cafe Wha?… Famous music producer Ray Angry invited them for those live performances, and they played almost every night. The audience responded warmly to them.
They’ve been playing cover songs mainly, and finally they have started making original songs from July 2020. In July 2020, the first bassist, Juna Serita, and in October, Yuriko Seki, the drummer, became special support musicians, and Rina Hoshino and MiMi (Mayumi Kawakami) joined as special support musicians. They recorded these original songs in the autumn of 2020. And released a single in September and an EP album in November of 2020. Single “Hot Summer” went to No.1 in the R&B/Soul iTunes chart in Turkey. The EP “Tokyo Groove” went to No.8 in R&B/Soul in iTunes chart in Japan.
After that, their activity was restricted due to the influence of the global Covid-19, but resulted in the development of live streaming, limited live, YouTube program production, music production, recording, and single/EP releases. The new songs “Rise Up” and “Foxy” were released as singles in September and November 2021, and this was followed by a further single and an EP was released digitally in February and March 2022.
