Sunday, January 24, 2010

At One With Brazil

Amanojaku's Yoichi Watanabe and Isaku Kageyama are now in Brazil to share the joy of taiko.
"Kizuna" was co-written by Watanabe and the late Daihachi Oguchi of Osuwa Daiko for the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil, celebrated June 21,
2008 by a performance of 1,000 Brazilian taiko drummers.
The first four minutes of the piece is trademark Oguchi, and then the song breaks into Amanojaku-style taiko that is totally and distinctly Watanabe.
Below is video of a group in Brazil performing "Kizuna" in December:

And this is the same song performed by Amanojaku and students in Japan:

Amanojaku traveled to Brazil 6 times during 2004-2008, teaching more than 600 Japanese-Brazilian youngsters.
The performance was attended by 37,000 people, including Crown Prince Naruhito.
"Kizuna" means "bond" in Japanese _ what is in our heritage and our blood that transcends boundaries and the passage of time to connect people in spirit.
Amanojaku has continued to go to Brazil to teach in 2009 _ and now in 2010.

4 comments:

睡覺 said...

nice to know you, and glad to find such a good artical!.........................

Yuri Kageyama said...

Thanks for your comment. Music brings people together. Do you play music?

StevenJB said...

I have read with interest your articles on the Toyota recall. Do you suspect industrial sabotage?

Yuri Kageyama said...

Hi Steven JB
Thanks for your interest.
Do you suspect that?
This is my email if you would like to share your thoughts:

ykageyama@ap.org

Looking forward to hearing from you.