CARAVAN (KITARO & PAGES)

There's a bunch of vocal tracks in Kitaro's discography; for example Dream (1992) features lyrics and vocals of Jon Anderson on a couple of tracks. 'Caravan' is however a special case, as it turned Kitaro's original synthesizer music into a radio-friendly pop song. I'm not sure if it entered the charts, but I remember hearing the song on the radio occasionally. I always wondered who is the good-voiced singer since he was never mentioned on the radio. Now as I added this single here, I learned that Kitaro was teamed up with an American group called Pages. The names of the musicians are printed on the cover -- with the strange exception of the vocalist, but some years ago I found out that he is Richard Page, an unfamiliar name to me. His other groups include Mr. Mister, which I have at least heard of, if not listened to.

'Caravan' is based on the track 'Caravansary' -- featured on the B-side of this single -- from the 1983 album Tenjiku (Silk Road IV). Already the intrumental itself feels very much like a *song* in its sincere melodicism. The beautiful, slightly melancholic main melody is simply "sung" by a synthesizer. The vocal version feels like the most natural thing and actually makes one wonder if the composition was right from the start meant to become a vocal song as well. I don't know how the collaboration between Kitaro and Pages started, ie. whose idea it was to record this song. But it's a lovely [non-prog] song. A peaceful, dreamy pop ballad with rather spiritual lyrics. "Caravan, journey in the sky / As the sun comes out from the day / Caravan, we know who we are..."