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.
Isaku Kageyama on taiko drums will lead his Mother Earth Orchestra, a multicultural celebration of sound, with Winchester Nii Tete on African drums, Kazutoki Umezu on saxophones, Craig Harris on bass and Nata on didgeridoo. It's Great Japanese Music from modern-day Tokyo that follows proudly in the footsteps of the Art Ensemble of Chicago _ an energetic driving groove, where anything goes. It is funky, fun, free. And it's the kind of exhilarating music that makes everything seem somehow a lot easier to bear. At the Crocodile in Harajuku Thursday Aug. 19. Doors open 6:30 p.m. Music starts 8 p.m. 6-18-8 B1 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo TEL: 03-3499-5205. 3,000 yen admission (drinks, food available but will cost you extra). For more information, email Isaku at isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info Isaku Kageyama is an award-winning taiko drummer and a member of Tokyo-based taiko ensemble Amanojaku, and teaches taiko not only all over Japan but also in Brazil and in the U.S. He also plays with musicians of various genres, including Toshinori Kondo, Winchester Nii Tete, Seijuro Sawada, Cari, Terumasa Hino and Yoshinori Kikuchi. He leads his taiko rock group called Hybrid Soul, with Chris Young on electric guitar and Pat Glynn on bass, which is coming out with a CD this year. The point through all this is to cross musical and cultural boundaries to claim a legitimate and respected place for taiko and Japanese-American music in the legacy of modern art and innovation. Isaku, 28, was born in San Francisco and began studying at age 6 with Kenny Endo, formerly of San Francisco Taiko Dojo, who now works out of Hawaii and is one of America's most respected taiko drummers. Isaku began studying with Yoichi Watanabe of Amanojaku, master composer in modern Tokyo-style taiko, shortly after he began his studies with Kenny Endo. Isaku Kageyama now performs with Amanojaku all over Japan and abroad, and has done concerts in Rio De Janeiro, Denver, Honolulu and other cities. He has also taken part in Japanese TV shows with SMAP, Shuzo Matsuoka, Tsunku and the Sumida River fireworks, as well as in TV ads for Aioi Insurance Company. Follow Isaku Kageyama on Twitter: @isakukageyama Listen to his music on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/isakukageyama
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.
ways of saying 'yes' in Japanese a poem by Yuri Kageyama
"Hai!!" That's the correct way of replying when spoken to in Japan for centuries, hai! the way people are taught in school, by their parents, what's right in society _ respect for the hierarchy, yes sir, thank you ma'am, hai hai hai, like hiccups, like hiphiphurray, hai! hai! hai! no pause, no hesitation, no thought, following orders, quick, no questions, grunt it out, soldiers at attention, yelling, spitting, believing, say it with all your heart and mind, hai! "Haa~aai!" That's the way people answer in Japan these says, haa~aai! the way people drop out of school, freeters, parents are just friends to follow only on Twitter _ flattening out the hierarchy, maybe yes, maybe not, haa~aai! like a mumble, like a whisper, a kiss on the ear, haa~aai, innocent, hurt only for others, wind blowing in your hair, smiley faces heart icons in cell phones, improvise, imagine, immaculate, sing it without a care in the world, haa~aai!
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.
