Music in Tokyo (again)

Tokyo rocks when Carl Freire picks up his guitar and gets up on stage.
And what a steady hand I have as videographer with my iPhone.
Please admire Carl _ and my steady hand.

Taiko drummers Isaku Kageyama, Yuu Ishizuka, Makoto Sekine at Super Deluxe

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).

More Mother Earth Orchestra

Video/photos by Ryan Bruss.
Mother Earth Orchestera Sept. 23, 2010 at Kuraki Noh Theater
Isaku Kageyama taiko/cajon
Winchester Nii Tete African kpanlogo, odono and other drums
Nata didgeridoo
Cari electric guitar

Mother Earth Orchestra at Harajuku Crocodile Aug. 19, 2010

"Improvisation"
Kazutoki Umezu (sax)
NATA (digeridoo)
Craig Harris (bass)
Winchester Nii Tete (percussion)
Isaku Kageyama (taiko and percussion)

clips of music tonight

Video from my iPhone at links below just to give you an idea of what happened.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9017533

better quality video upcoming soon on YouTube:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9018480

at Harajuku Crocodile in Tokyo Thursday evening Aug. 19, 2010.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9018530

the Music will get better.

music tonight

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.

Amanojaku at Super Deluxe in Tokyo in May 2010

the younger members of Amanojaku a taiko group in Tokyo
from left to right:
Chris Holland, Isaku Kageyama, Daisuke Watanabe, Hiromi Sekine.

Winchester Nii Tete and Isaku Kageyama

Winchester Nii Tete and Isaku Kageyama at Shinjuku Takanoya in Tokyo.
Children of music. Music is power. Music is spirit.

A tribute in Tokyo for Eliazar a great drummer

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 concert

Amanojaku at Tokyo FM Hall
"HARU ICHIBAN (Spring Breeze)"

SUN April 18, 2010
3 p.m. (doors open 2:30 p.m.)

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.

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.

Amanojaku at Sogetsu Hall

Amanojaku concert at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo Dec. 8, 2009.
"Kaiun" by Yoichi Watanabe, performed by (from left to right) Daisuke Watanabe, Isaku Kageyama, Yoichi Watanabe and Hiromi Ogawa.

The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe 2

Isao Tokuhashi and I are working together in compiling an oral history of Yoichi Watanabe, the leader and founder of Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku.
Link to an earlier excerpt, and below another excerpt from the work-in-progress, "The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe _ as told to Isao Tokuhashi and Yuri Kageyama":

Most teachers set a two hour or three hour lesson and charge for those hours.
I don’t do that. When I teach a group, I teach from morning until night. That’s because we are going toward the same dream.
Maybe this makes me unprofessional. But I want to be moved. If the people I am involved with are passionate about the music, and they are moved, then I am moved. If I am dishonest to what I believe, I think people will see that.
And so I don’t think about the hours. It’s impossible to teach or create what I want in two or three hours.
The people who perform with me often break into tears. That’s when a teacher can feel truly fulfilled. That’s what I live for.
It’s the same if I go abroad. It gets very busy when I go to Brazil. There is no rest. We are going to lessons from morning until night. But some of the kids are waiting at the hotel for us to get back because they so much want to learn.
I believe that being a taiko drummer was the best job for me. But I also believe that it was a mission given to me by the heavens.
I needed to write a page in taiko history. I wanted to pave the way for those who come after me.
I needed to be able to teach with confidence or else my students won’t be able to play with confidence.
A professional performance is not a recital for friends.
A professional must be spiritually strong like an Olympic athlete undergoing Spartan training.
But without a relationship of trust, a teacher cannot make a student go through that kind of training. If you have not endured this kind of training, and become truly professional, you will be ignored in the professional world.
It all depends on the person. Some need to be scolded. Some need to be praised. Some pick it up without your having said a word, while others never get it even if you tell them many times.
I created the original music that is Amanojaku.
I never wavered. I was always going straight after that goal.
If the roots of a tree are rotten, then it will never flower. But if the roots are solid, the stem will grow strong.
While others paint in colorful oils, I am taking a sumi brush and painting to find my own way. Once I decided that, the rest was easy

Drumming in 2010

A HAPPY UPBEAT NEW YEAR with taiko drumming by Isaku Kageyama with Seijuro Sawada on shamisen _ all to House DJ-ing _ at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo during the countdown celebrations Dec. 31, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010. Dancing, champagne, music and plenty of multicultural spirit to guide us through 2010.

Another video at this link.

AMANOJAKU Taiko at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo

THE BEAT OF LEGACY - Dentou no Hibiki
AMANOJAKU Taiko Concert in Tokyo
TUE Dec. 8, 2009
Sogestsu Hall
7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)

For tickets, please email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info
Featuring composer, Amanojaku leader and founder YOICHI WATANABE
with HIROMI OGAWA, ISAKU KAGEYAMA, DAISUKE WATANABE, CHRIS HOLLAND and HIROMI SEKINE; guest on fue KYOSUKE SUZUKI.

The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe

Yoichi Watanabe, (photo by Naokazu Oinuma) leader of Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku, is relating his life history and his thoughts on taiko to Isao Tokuhashi and me.
It is a project that has just begun. And a lot of work still awaits.
But it fascinates me for what it promises to deliver in understanding of a great artist, an important era of post-war Japanese creativity and the conceptual and spiritual backbone of modern music called taiko.
Yoichi Watanabe founded Amanojaku in 1987.
But his story _ one man's journey in taiko _ began in the late 1960s, when he was about 10 years old.
He lived through the pioneering years of Tokyo-style taiko, playing with Sukeroku Daiko, founded in 1959 as this city's first professional kumi-daiko troupe.
An excerpt from "The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe _ as told to Isao Tokuhashi and Yuri Kageyama":

To be honest, I am not sure anyone would want to read a book about my life.
Besides, 10 years from now, my thoughts are bound to have changed, and I would need to write another book.
But I’ve always wanted to write down a certain philosophy on life that I have arrived at over the years in my own small way.
There is such a thing in life as the correct path _ a “seido.”
I am no different in having pursued what I thought was this correct path for me.
I have been doing it all my life.
I was in fourth grade when I decided I wanted to be a taiko drummer.
And I have never swerved from that path.
And it was just one path.
It was not an easy path, one filled with thorny bushes along the way.
But I have developed a way of looking at life through taiko.
And so this book is not a manual about how to play taiko.
Please look at a DVD or a read a manual textbook for that.
Everyone starts out with a dream, and then many people arrive at another way of life to make a living.
You may want to be a doctor or a pilot. But if you can’t realize that dream, you may have to settle on a more realistic job.
We are supposedly in the worst crisis in a century.
People are all working hard.
Perhaps they would be encouraged to find I have never gone far astray from my path over all these years.
I don’t have anything all that special to say.
It’s very ordinary. It’s no different from everyone else’s dreams.
If you keep yourself open, then you will realize your goal in all its depth and breadth.
That kind of spirit has been lost, this spirit I have strived to pursue all my life.
It’s human to seek the easy way, but I have stuck to the way even if it meant hardships.
If people tell me to go one way, then sometimes I question that and go counter-clockwise.
I have always been a rebel, an Amanojaku.

Isaku takes a stand

It is so important for a person to take a stand for the music, or whatever else, he or she stands for.
And Isaku really took a stand _ literally on his cajon _ with Winchester Nii Tete and Cari at "The Beat Ahead" at Harajuku Crocodile in Tokyo.
Isaku Kageyama has been playing professionally for years in Amanojaku, the taiko troupe led by his master teacher Yoichi Watanabe, as well as other contexts.
Those situations often required the player to carry out the vision of the leader or pull the whole group together.
A lot of musical technique, hard work and dedication is involved in carrying that out.
But something different happened that night.
Isaku told his own story, holding his own with full accountability for what he stands for _ his own colors, his own music, his own view of the world.
It was a cathartic moment for my son _ and for me.
All the technique in the world doesn't make sense or take meaning without this sense of purpose.
And that's what makes it all _ the pursuit of technique, the years of hard work, the struggles of everyday life _ worth it: That real purpose.
It was stunning to see the transformation before me, although I knew all along someday it would happen.
I forgot to take photos.

more on YouTube

"The Beat Ahead" opened with a rock group led by Isaku's new collaborator Yuu Ishizuka, who hails from Oedo Sukeroku Taiko.
The closing segment was all taiko with Isaku and Yuu collaborating.
It was great to see drummers from different backgrounds share ideas and create new sounds _ something that surprisingly happens rarely in the world of taiko.
There is so much more to be explored.

Music at the Moon Stomp

From left to right: Isaku Kageyama, Winchester Nii Tete, Robby.
The "MoveThatPoem" poets from Spain read after the music at the Moon Stomp in Koenji Tokyo Sunday Oct. 11, 2009.
The music keeps getting stronger.
And the poetry _ read in their Spanish original by the poets, followed by English translations _ was a perfect way to end a multicultural evening.
Isaku plays with minyo musicians tomorrow night Monday, Oct. 12, 2009, at Takanoya in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Interviews with Isaku Kageyama on taiko

Isaku Kageyama, taiko drummer with Amanojaku, has an interview in the latest Metropolis, Tokyo's entertainment magazine.
He is interviewed in Japanese in Moonlix magazine, which has also interviewed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yoko Ohno _ pretty good company.
Isaku is putting on a rare kind of show _ a collaboration of taiko drummers from two different schools _ with Yuu Ishizuka at the Crocodile near Harajuku, Tokyo, Thursday Oct. 22, 2009.
Also appearing that evening will be Winchester Nii Tete from Ghana, Chris Holland from Denver and others.

THE BEAT AHEAD
THU OCT. 22, 2009.
from 7:30 p.m.; doors open at 6 p.m.
Harajuku Crocodile
TEL: 03-3499-5205
ADDRESS: 6-18-8-B1 Jingu-mae Shibuya-ku Tokyo 150-0001.
3,000 yen for advance tickets, 3,500 yen at door.

OTHER EVENTS:
Isaku performs with Winchester at the MOON STOMP in Koenji tomorrow night, SUN Oct. 11.
Starts 8 p.m., doors open 7 p.m.
A good deal at just 1,000 yen door charge.
The following day, MON Oct. 12, a national holiday in Japan, Isaku plays minyo (Japanese traditional folk music) at TAKANOYA in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with singing, shamisen and shakuhachi.
Starts 7 p.m., doors open 6:30 p.m.
Advance tickets 2,000 yen plus one drink at 600 yen.
At door 2,500 yen plus one drink at 600 yen.

Taiko gigs

Photo by Ryan Bruss.
OCT. 4, 2009
AMANOJAKU concert at Kuroiso Bunka Kaikan,
490 Kami Atsu-zaki Nasu Shiobara-shi Tochigi 325-0026.
For tickets, please call 0287-63-3219.
Doors open 1 p.m. Music starts 2 p.m.
2,000 yen (1,000 yen for students).

OCT. 12, 2009
MINYO "LIVE" at Shinjuku Takanoya. 03-5919-0228.
Isaku Kageyama (taiko) with Rie Sakamoto (song), Seiemon Sawada (shamisen), Yoshinori Kikuchi (shakuhachi).
5-2-3-B1 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0022.
Doors open 6:30 p.m. Music starts 7 p.m.
Advance tickets 2,000 yen; at the door 2,500 yen.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

OCT. 17, 2009
AMANOJAKU at DECHIKONKA, annual festival in Ehime Prefecture.
Call Kihoku city hall at 0895-45-1111.
Starts 6 p.m.

OCT. 22, 2009
THE BEAT AHEAD _ Wadaiko "live" at Harajuku Crocodile.
Featuring Isaku Kageyama and Yuu Ishizuka on taikos with Winchester Nii Tete, Chris Holland and other guests.
Call The Crocodile at 03-3499-5205.
6-18-8-B1 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo 150-0001.
Doors open 6 p.m. Music starts 7:30 p.m.
Advance tickets 3,000 yen. At door 3,500 yen.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

DEC. 8, 2009
AMANOJAKU at SOGETSU HALL.
Call Sogetsu Hall at 03-3408-1154.
7-2-21 Akasaka Minato-ku Tokyo 107-8505.
Doors open 6.30 p.m. Music starts 7 p.m.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

JAN 10, 2010.
AMANOJAKU Student recital TENSHONOKAI.
Kameari Lirio Hall 03-5680-2222.
Doors open 2 p.m. Music starts 2:30 p.m.
1,000 yen donation.

JAN. 15-FEB. 8
AMANOJAKU workshops in Brazil.

APRIL 18, 2010.
AMANOJAKU concert at TOKYO FM Hall.
Doors open 5:30 p.m. Music starts 6 p.m.
Tokyo FM Hall 03-3221-0080.
1-7 Kojimachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 102-0080.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info