Isaku Kageyama believes taiko must claim its legitimate place in the world of great music. Japanese culture is beautiful. But unless Japan can be part of the world and see its place in the true sense _ with all the duties, responsibilities as well as rewards involved _ it won't work. Art is a way of facing up to that important and universal Question _ and maybe one of the few ways where there is a true Answer. Luis Silva made this multicultural video statement in his gorgeous documentary for WeAllJapan, that says it all. LONG LIVE GREAT JAPANESE TAIKO MUSIC.
Taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama shows he can swing on traps drums as well, delivering the pulse for Keisuke Kato, the guitarist singing his composition for a Valentine's LOVE get-together at St. Blue in Asakusa, Tokyo, THU Feb. 10, 2011. Some buzzing in the first part of the Ustream video but OK otherwise for an iPhone effort. Below, the encore they said they wouldn't do _ so it's impromptu, blog readers and Ben E. King. Thanks for the music, guys. Everybody had a great time.
Click on this, "Midare Uchi" to watch on YouTube in a rare collaboration by drummers from three Tokyo groups plus a kawaii guest. from the recent BEAT AHEAD at Roppongi's SuperDeluxe in Tokyo starring Isaku Kageyama of Amanojaku, Yuu Ishizuka of Bachiatari and Makoto Sekine of Medetai. Below, they join forces on "Bujin" the trademark Amanojaku piece by master composer Yoichi Watanabe. Click on this to see that _ also on YT as the embedding isn't working for some reason.
Not your everyday around-the-corner taiko, this is serious music that challenges the boundaries of ethnic tradition and identity and universal eternal art. Isaku Kageyama with Daisuke Watanabe and Chris Holland of Amanojaku Tokyo's top taiko group led by master drummer and composer Yoichi Watanabe play in a collaborative concert with Yuu Ishizuka, and Makoto Sekine. SUN Nov. 28 6 p.m. at Roppongi SuperDeluxe 3-1-25-B1 Nishi Azabu Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan. TEL: 03-5412-0515 3,500 yen w/advance reservation. 4,000 yen at the door.
Drummer Isaku Kageyama of Amanojaku collaborates with Yuu Ishizuka of Bachiatari and Makoto Sekine of Taikoshownin Medetai to explore new possibilities in MODERN TAIKO. at Super Deluxe in Roppongi, Tokyo. SUN Nov. 28, 2010. Doors open 5:30 p.m. Music starts 6 p.m. advance 3,500 yen. door 4,000 yen. Make your reservations online. B1F 3.1.25 Nishi Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0031, Japan tel: 03-5412-0515 5 minutes walk toward Nishi Azabu on Roppongi dori from Roppongi station (Hibiya Line or Oedo Line). 30 seconds walk from Roppongi 6-chome bus stop (TO-01 Shinbashi >> Shibuya). 1 minute walk from Roppongi 6-chome bus stop (TO-01 Shibuya >> Shinbashi).
Found on YouTube this video of Amanojaku performing "Dotou" at a Tokyo school July 2010. They smoke! A great taiko tune by Amanojaku leader and master drummer Yoichi Watanabe. From left to right: Isaku Kageyama, Chris Holland and Daisuke Watanabe.
from left to right Winchester Nii Tete, NATA, Cari and Isaku Kageyama.
Mother Earth Orchestra brought together instruments from various continents to a Noh Theater to take us on a musical journey that showed great potential of innovation. It showed the music is truly evolving from its launch at Tokyo Harajuku Crocodile just a month ago. Music allows for such development through collaborations that can be more than the sum of its parts. And Music directs us to further fulfillment.
ISAKU KAGEYAMA and the MOTHER EARTH ORCHESTRA at Yokohama Kuraki Noh Theatre
Taiko, African percussion, digeridoo and electric guitar celebrate our time on Mother Earth with organic beats and melodies.
THURSDAY, September 23 6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.) Kuraki Noh Theatre 8-21-7 Okamura Isogo-ku Yokohama 2,500 yen (2,000 yen with reservations: e-mail Isaku @isakukageyama@gmail.com
A 15 minute cab ride from Isogo Station. Or take bus 64 or 78 from Isogo station on the JR line or Byobugaura station on the Keikyu line and get off at Sasabori. Five minute walk from Sasabori bus stop.
伝統と創造、和と洋、古来とアヴァンギャルド、様々な要素が交差する独自の音楽性を活かし、コンサートホール、ライブハウス、クラブイベント、レコーディング、舞台のみならず、CM（あいおい損保・新日本建物）や数多くのテレビ番組（SMAP X SMAP、未来図鑑）に出演。
ジャズトランペットの近藤等則、DJ Yama aka Sahib、アフリカン・パーカッションのWinchester Nii Tete、ロックギタリストのCariなどとのコラボレーションに加え、ロックギター、ジャズベースとのコラボバンド「Hybrid Soul」や民謡バンド「Minyo Ensemble of Tokyo」を立ち上げるなど、幅広い音楽活動が高く評価されている。
with Cari (ギター) NATA (ディジュリデュ) ウィンチェスター・ニー・テテ(パーカッション)
please come to the Crocodile in Omotesando tonight (see previous blog post for details). follow Isaku Kageyama on Twitter _ @isakukageyama and claim your free beer tonight: 木曜日に原宿クロコダイルでライブやります。 僕に「ツイッターで見た」と話しかけてくれればクロコダイルビールご馳走します。 http://j.mp/cCTDlM Playing at Harajuku Crocodile from 20:00 on Thursday the 19th. I'll buy you a beer if you make it out! Isaku will be cooking up a melting plot of a hot groove with Japanese sax legend Kazutoki Umezu, master percussionist from Ghana Winchester Nii Tete, bassist virtuoso from the US Craig Harris and a Japanese who plays an aboriginal instrument NATA. No borders for this batch.
Taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama will be among those playing at Summer Sounds at Laputa in Aoyama _ a restaurant, swimming pool and music club all in one in Tokyo _ next Saturday, Aug. 14 at about 8 p.m. The event starts at noon and continues until 11 p.m. Admission is free if you get there by 2 p.m. (if you're into that). The flyer giving samples of artists' performances here. Isaku's take on the endeavor in his blog entry here. So eat, swim, dance, groove, sit aorund, whatever but listen to good music.
Isaku Kageyama's Modern Music Ensemble of Tokyo seeks to break down boundaries, with an ambition inspired by the spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and to show there is only good music and bad music, as the great Duke Ellington said. Featuring taiko drumming(Isaku Kageyama), shakuhachi flute (Yoshinori Kikuchi), Tsugaru-style shamisen (Seiemon Sawada) and regular Western-style bass (Gian), mixing it all up with minyo folk songs, bluegrass, Cuban, pop and original compositions, embarking on a journey that is about one-ness, the "kizuna" of Music, and to claim for taiko and Japanese modern music a rightful place in that universal legacy.
Clip from the May 15 musical tribute in Buddy, Tokyo for Venezuelan drummer Eliazar Yanes, who died Jan. 22. Taiko drumming and singing by Yoichi Watanabe, Hiromi Ogawa on taiko and percussion, traps drums by Takayoshi Tanaka, Katsunari Sawada on shamisen, Morris Reina on guitar and cuatro, Jun Ishibashi on vocals and guitar, and bassist Ikuo Okamoto. Yanes studied taiko, believed music could unite people across nationalities and cultures, and felt a strong spiritual connection with his teacher Yoichi Watanabe of Amanojaku. Yanes used to say he knows he was Japanese in a previous life. When he visited Watanabe for the first time in a kodan danchi in Tokyo, he was thrilled Watanabe, like him, was from the "barrios," so close was the resemblance in the housing complex. Yanes was widely respected as a jazz drummer, but he was also instrumental in introducing taiko in Venezuela. Watanabe learned about Yanes' death when Watanabe was in Brazil, on his international musical mission, teaching Japanese Brazilian youngsters taiko. Watanabe loved Yanes deeply. He wanted to play and sing for Eliazar in Heaven. For that moment, Eliazar was with us _ right there in Buddy. Music is an international language, the musicians said, beyond words, beyond war, beyond death. Wait for us Eliazar, the musicians said, we will be there soon _ well, maybe not so soon but soon enough. And we will play music together again.
AMANOJAKU taiko drums at SuperDeluxe club in Roppongi, TOKYO. The three younger stars of Amanojaku take their thunderous beat out of the usual concert halls to the hip-hop clubs of Tokyo. The event explores where else taiko can go as modern music. THU May 13, 2010. 8 p.m. SuperDeluxe 3-1-25 Nishi Azabu Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan 4,000 yen at door (3,500 yen advance) ticket includes one drink. Photo (from left to right): Daisuke Watanabe, Isaku Kageyama, Chris Holland. They're all in their 20s, students of Amanojaku leader Yoichi Watanabe, but all play with him in the professional troupe, which just had a fantastic concert at Tokyo FM Hall last week.
what does it mean to be Japanese? what does it mean to be American? what is yellow vs. what is black/white? what is Music? what is art? and what does it mean to be human? no easy answers ever but key questions in life and what being an artist is all about.
Taiko drumming by Amanojaku leader/composer Yoichi Watanabe with drummers Hiromi Ogawa, Isaku Kageyama, Daisuke Watanabe, Hiromi Sekine, Chris Holland, and guests Kyosuke Suzuki on fue flutes, Katsunari Sawada on Tsugari shamisen also Amanojaku Hozonkai.
1-7 Kojimachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo TEL: 03-3221-0080 3 minute walk from exits 1 and 2 Hanzomon station on the Hanzomon Line. 6 minute walk from exits 1 and 2 Kojimachi station on the Yurakucho Line.
Advance tickets 4,000 yen Same-day admission 4,500 yen
For tickets, please call Amaonojaku TEL: 03-3904-1745 Ticket Pia (from March 30, 2010) Pコード：103-507 TEL:0570-02-9999 No reserved seating.
Terumasa Hino with Toshiko Akiyoshi at Lake Biwa in 1986.
Sometimes there are moments in life that make an artist feel it was all worth it. It helps when an older and more experienced artist is willing to give of him/herself and encourage a younger and less experienced artist _ giving assurance there is nothing to be afraid of, that all you have to do is be yourself. Isaku felt just that last night _ with trumpet legend Terumasa Hino, of all people. At a benefit for Haiti earthquake survivors, Hino casually picked up his trumpet, started playing his horn impromptu, its ring like a greeting, surprising Isaku from behind, but joining him in music, playfully chatting with Isaku's drumming, telling him there is nothing to be afraid of, that all you have to do is be yourself. Unlike some aspects of life, dictated by shallow rules of winning vs. losing, where petty minds pursue a zero-sum game, and the whole and the sum of its parts only negate each other into shameless nothingness, music is the pure joy of life, where the sound that is wholeness is far more beautiful than the sum of its parts. For just a few fun moments, jazz and taiko met.
Poet, writer in Tokyo. "The New and Selected Yuri _ Writing From Peeling till Now" Ishmael Reed Publishing Co. 2011. "Peeling" I. Reed Press. Poems, stories, essays in "Y'Bird" "Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience _ Short Fiction from Then to Now" "San Francisco Stories" "On a Bed of Rice" "Konch" "Breaking Silence" "Greenfield Review" "Beyond Rice" "River Styx" "Other Side River" "Yellow Silk" "Stories We Hold Secret" "MultiAmerica" and other publications. Read with Ishmael Reed, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Geraldine Kudaka, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Russel Baba, Seamus Heaney, Shozu Ben, Winchester Nii Tete, Eric Kamau Gravatt, Takenari Shibata, Toshinori Takimoto, Teruyuki and Haruna Kawabata, Keiji Kubo, Yumi Miyagishima, Carl Freire, Abel Coelho, Yuri Matsueda. "Talking TAIKO" a film by Yoshiaki Tago documents her poetry. "A Back Alley Asian American Love Story of Sorts" by Niccolo Caldararo of her story was shown at the San Francisco and New York Asian American film festivals, won awards at the 1986 Palo Alto Film Festival, 1987 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1988 Onion City Film Festival. Magna cum laude Cornell University, M.A. the University of California Berkeley.
