Music in Tokyo

Heard the other day at Gamuso, a cool artsy dive in Tokyo where I have read poetry with music a couple of times, Samm Bennett on the diddley bow, a one-string instrument made of a marron glace box, speaking a million words with a single string, his voice and his heart.

Goals to go for

What I found and was happy to find from taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama and what is the dream of all arists:

I wanted to play at the highest possible level that was humanly imaginable.
I wanted a feeling that somehow the music I was playing was “my own.”

PS to Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (2)

P.S. to Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter Part Two:
That is not to say that an artist isn't confident of one's value.
If you aren't sure you're worth godzillions of dollars, then you can't be an artist.
You would need to believe that to go on.
Yokoo tweets you just do what you do and then someone comes around who thinks it's great and pays for it.
He started out as a commercial artist and was extremely successful.
And then, in the 1990s he turned his back on all that suddenly and decided to become just an artist.
That's partly why his Twitter pronouncements about getting paid for art hold special meaning.

Annette Borromeo Dorfman

Annette has been my friend for a long time because we used to ride the Chuo Line together to go to high school in Tokyo.
She is also a great artist.
This is one of her recent works.
Doesn't it look like someone went back in time and was there to take a photo of "Madonna and Child" and painted inspired by that photo like a magical-realist/photo-realist?
Isn't it a quirky but an absolutely sublime mix of old and new, the profound and the everyday?
The faces in her paintings are self-portraits as mother/woman/believer/goddess/artist/
because all art is about that.
This painting already got sold.
But there are others, which can be seen on her Facebook link.

wise words

DO YR ART D WAY U WANT
ANYWAY U WANT
ANY WANGOL U WANT
ITS UP TO U/WHAT WILL WORK
FOR U.

_ from "Catechism of d Neoamerican Hoodoo Church," a poem by Ishmael Reed.

taiko vs hip-hop

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 with bon odori tune "Hokkai Bon Uta"


Taiko with "Waterfalls" by TLC


Taiko with Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Ain't No Fun"

who is the poet? a poem by Yuri Kageyama

who is the poet?
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

poets who pause to pontificate
poets who write for grants
poets who count syllables
poets who admire texture of words
i work and have no time
and i have no time for
poets who have all the time
poets who find poetic moments
poets who teach laureate poetry
poets who chatter on Facebook
it is blood in the veins
to kill and give birth and die
i am the true poet, not you
i am the true poet, not you
poets of the revolution
poets weeping tears at bars
poets who don't write lyrics
poets of pure soundless music
angels of suicide
bridge of neon, cliff of ice
we are the true poets, not you
we are the true poets, not you

winning and losing

In sports, career, dating and other games people play in life, there is always a winner and there is always a loser. Most people spend their time and energy trying to win because winning is crucial to basic needs like survival. The fight of life is about reducing abuse and getting ahead. But how deceiving life can be. It is not really about this kind of winning vs. losing at all. Each and every life holds potential for being a different kind of win that produces no losers at all. Think about the certainty of death and think about what you value the most _ what gives you truest and purest fulfillment. Life is about yourself _ and only yourself. This kind of winning is about winning for yourself. It is a win that cannot be handed to you. It is not being defined outside of yourself. People can win the game of life, hoarding riches and status and empty feel-goodness and turn out a total loser in finding the meaning of life. When you create that music, that poem, that story that feels just right, and when you feel so very close to the meaning of life in that moment, that is a win. When you find that love with no reason except that you love, whether it's for your lover, your child, your protege, your art, the people of the world, or all the generations of humankind that come after you, that is a win.

Life is good

LIFE IS GOOD.

Mamako Yoneyama makes dishes fly for women

Long before working mothers became so accepted they're TV-drama heroines, there was a gathering of feminists in Tokyo, where pantomimist Mamako Yoneyama performed a piece on womanhood that ended with her hurling paper plates into the air,
luminous white circles flying like spaceships, one by one, from her hand toward us, gifts of strength and hope.
They were just pieces of paper after they fell to earth.
But Yoneyama, with her voice, movement, character and presence, made them undoubtedly artistic statements.
Maybe things have changed for the younger generation.
But back then, when I was juggling job and motherhood, I was treated as an anomaly to be despised, maybe someone who was abusing her child with neglect.
Kids would come up to my son and ask with a straight face: Do you have a mother?
So unused were they to the idea that a mom could possibly be working and couldn't be there to pick them up, volunteer with the PTA, gossip in school hallways, schmooze with teachers.
The image was unforgettable _ a woman tackling a humble stack of dishes _ transforming them with the beauty of movement, a whip of her delicate wrist, into a galaxy of light defying gravity.
After it was over, we gasped in a moment of joyous silence.
I want to read a poem and throw paper plates into the air _ line by line, in homage of Yoneyama.

Connecting

Bursts of myopic but weirdly proud hatred thrive on the Net under the guise of anonymity.
Words are spat out, and, oh, with such venom and total irresponsibility.
Even something as simple and powerless as a poem can touch the nerve of evil to expose an inner darkness.
They will fester in their own ignorance and be destroyed by their poison.
This is one kind of connection, as painful and depressing as it may be.
I have never thought that socializing at parties and dinners produces meaningful connections.
Connection happens when you create something with a musician, dancer, illustrator, someone who is as committed to a form of expression and a way of life as yourself.
I can breathe.
Everything fits.
Everything is going right.
We connect so perfectly with each other in a place where race, gender, age, nationality and other barriers don't matter.
Maybe there is no listener with whom to connect.
But that doesn't matter.

money for art

This is what I heard from a dancer.
But the biggest stars of Tokyo Butoh troupe Dairakudakan, not just the student dancers, don't ever get paid to perform.
Instead, they must bring in money from outside jobs to a pool of funds that has been set up to support the group's performances and other artistic activities.
So they are paying to dance _ never mind worrying about getting paid to perform.
The question has already been answered.
You dance to dance. That's it.
The dance is separate from livelihood _ which must be dealt with outside of dance.
That's why I think Dairakudan performers exude that absolute confidence.
They look at us with disdain because they know they are pure and we are not.

Talking Taiko _ the Movie

Yoichi Watanabe, master taiko drummer, shows his stuff at Bon Odori _ as he does each and every year (with Daisuke Watanabe and Isaku Kageyama of Watanabe-led Amanojaku).
Bon Odori
Conneting with the past
And all that went before us
Connecting with the future
And all that awaits
A poetic moment
Being a poet is seeing so much more in the everyday.
Bon Odori is the closing scene of "Talking Taiko," a movie I'm working on with Japanese director and film-maker Yoshiaki Tago.
He's doing his stuff on a Shibuya pedestrian walkway _ another place where we are finding a poetic moment.

trailer on YouTube

Do we write to live or live to write?
Do we write to remember or do we write to forget?
Do we write to remember or do we write to be remembered?
Do we write so we don't kill or do we write so we don't kill ourselves?
Do we make movies to live or live to make movies?
Do we make music to live or live to make music?
Do we write to live or live to write?
Do we live?
Do we live?
Do we live?

photo by Annette Dorfman

Jellyfish in Monterey
photo by Annette Dorfman.

Amanojaku LIVE at Harajuku Astro Hall

AMANOJAKU Tokyo's Top-Level Taiko
"SOUL BEAT/TAMASHII NO HIBIKI"
Harajuku ASTRO Hall
THU Aug. 20 7:30 p.m. (Admision starts 7 p.m.)
Advance tickets (includes one drink)
4,000 yen; at door 4,500 yen.
For more information, please call Amanojaku: 03-3904-1745.
Ticket Pia P-code: 330-019
Lawson Ticket L-code: 79754.

Amanojaku, led by master drummer Yoichi Watanabe, concocts an emotional and explosive experience of sound, pitting the best of taiko tradition with global ethnic rhythms and modern composition for a distinct World Music narrative that explores Japanese soul.
Amanojaku teaches taiko in the U.S., Brazil, Asia and Europe, and leads workshops and performs in festivals throughout Japan.
Last year, it led the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil in a performance of 1,000 drummers at the samba venue.
Hiromi Ogawa and Mayumi Kawana are founding members of Amanojaku and the best women's duet taiko drummers in the world. They debunk any old-fashioned stereotypes the West may have about Japanese women, inspiring awe with their sheer brute strength and creative integrity.
Also appearing are Daisuke Watanabe, Hiromi Sekine, Chris Holland (from Denver Taiko) and Isaku Kageyama.

poem RE poet

poem Re poet
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

ninja lost in the commuter train
the voice in the urban wilderness
shaman moaning an improvised chant
the word that kills
the thought that heals
being a poet is being told to take a bungee jump
and the rope is "Made in Japan-town"
feeling that fetal taiko-drum beat vibrating from deep within
all the way from my shuddering lips
to my dew-dropping labia folds _ majora and minora
the word that kills
the thought that heals
i don't feel safe:
will the music survive?
standing and sitting and walking and jogging
no different from anybody else
but transforming the everyday into the eternal
adding meaning to the meaningless
connecting with the dead like a radio show
seeing outer space
in the here and now
there is no choice
everywhere
but alone
being a poet
it just happens
the word that kills
the thought that heals

The Empty Library (from Motherhood Notes)

Photo (today) by Annette Dorfman. My column (from way back) in the Hokubei Mainichi:

"I'm Christopher Robin, and you're Pooh, OK, Mommy?"
Most likely, other 3-year-olds besides ours have the same fantasies. But it is the solitary plight of the non-white in America that the mother must experience a tinge of anxiety about ethnic self-hate. Perhaps she comforts herself that the illustrations of the blond blue-eyed hero in the A.A. Milne classic are black and white ink drawings.
Fortunately I am bilingual, so I can at least resort to Japanese books. Children's books in English that deal with Asian or Asian American themes are few.
The recent "Wings for Lai Ho" by Genny Lim and "Pie Biter" by Ruthanne Lum McCunn _ both well-written and enjoyable _ are set in historical immigration days. The drawings by Andrea Ja in the former contrast favorably to the more typical and stereotypical versions of Asian features _ not only by Caucasian artists, including Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak, but also Asian Americans such as Chester Yoshida for Mei Nakano's slant-eyed "Riko Rabbit."
Some works by Yoshiko Uchida take place in Japan, and a rural out-dated Japan at that. For a San Francisco boy of the 80s, whose primary interests range from break-dancing to comic book superheroes, all the above-mentioned stories are as exotic as they are to average "hakujin."
Gyo Fujikawa is an exception in depicting children in regular modern-day activities such as brushing teeth or climbing the jungle gym, and he draws them with Caucasian, black or Asian physical features. However, aimed for very young "readers," his picture books do not go beyond the visual impact of UNICEF cards that show multiracial children in harmony.
Taro Yashima's tender "Umbrella" is another rare example of a modern Asian American story that does not rest on an exotic "foreign" or historical (sociological) theme.
Yashima and Uchida are both award-winning creators of children's books. Nevertheless, a weakness of language can be sensed in both, that is, in contrast to the power of feeling in the classics of E.B. White ("Charlotte's Web"), Kenneth Graham ("The Wind in the Willows"), Hugh Lofting ("Dr. Doolittle"), Beatrix Potter ("Peter Rabbit"), L. Frank Baum ("The Wizard of Oz") and even the sparse, more poetic styles of Dr. Seuss, Shel Silversein or Margaret Wise Brown.
As a so-called "model minority" that has produced its share of coroners, astronauts and senators, Japanese Americans have never boasted cultural sophistication as their strong point. Who are our equivalents of Miles Davis, Martha Graham, Jasper Johns, or even Prince? Our cultural output is low, both in terms of quantity and quality. Never has the tragedy of our cultural vacuum struck me more profoundly than in thinking of our son's future.
Of course, we struggle. We take him to hear Russel Baba blow his Asian soul out to us through his saxophone. Isaku has already attended concerts by the Nohbuddies, the Asian American Dance Collective, Kei Takei, the Kalilang Ensemble and many others. We are still hoping for a local revival of Philip Gotanda's "Avocado Kid."
Asian American culture exists. But not enough to make it easy to teach a growing child that being an artist is exciting, dignified and meaningful. Particularly as an Asian in a country that is not overly cultured to begin with.
Japanese Americans are rapidly assimilating. We are rapidly losing our cultural ties with our ancestral roots. And loss of a unique language is lethal for a poet. (The potency of black English in poetry, drama and prose proves that "language " here does not necessarily have to be Japanese.) But, instead of weeping over our culture's diluting into the mainstream, we cheer it on as a sign of our success in blending into a smug oneness with monolithic America.
The poet Ronald Tanaka was one of the first to deal with the problem of audience and the resultant isolation of the Sansei artist. Now a father of two daughters, he is busily writing poems and stories for them to read because, as previously stated, there just isn't much that really speaks to them.
It comes to this: If the culture to which we wish to expose our daughters and sons doesn't exist, we have to create it ourselves. Part of my responsibility as a parent is to try to see that my child survives, not only economically, but also as a full human being who is proud of what he is.
The crimes of racism include unequal wealth distribution, askewed employment patterns, disproportionate alcoholism and infant mortality; but the crime of racism is also that it makes us less than human _ not quite human _ for a community without poets (read: painters, musicians, dancers, etc.) is dead.
I am not advocating Japanese American cultural fascism or ethnocentric fanaticism. (Actually such concepts are absurd, given the material reality.) I have not forgotten that America _ the beautiful America _ is multicultural, where each culture enriches the other.
What I want to teach my Nikkei son is the Japanese rhythm of language, the Japanese psyche or spirit, the way we feel, the way we breathe and live. Though I have no easy answers as to what that entails, I believe in my responsibility as an artist and parent because I have to. To me, cultural survival is life or death.

Toshinori Kondo Blows the Earth _ and More

May 13, 2009 was an important day for our son and taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama.
He played with Japanese jazz trumpeter Toshinori Kondo at the Kuonji Temple up high in the Minobu mountains _ a spot close to the sky, filled with green, air and playfully warbling "uguisu" nightingales and looking so much like a brush painting with mushroom-shaped trees you'd expect God to come down any moment.
Kondo takes the crowd on a journey _ part pilgrimage seeking salvation, part exploration of a multicultural artist's emotions, sometimes gut-wrenching rage, sometimes sheer ecstasy.
He plays over several electronic soundtracks that have been worked out in advance for tunes, each of which expresses Kondo's thoughts about the earth's place in the universe, Japan's place in the world of self-expression, and the individual's plight and mission within that planet and place.
Kondo has always explored his Japanese roots and forged a Japanese sound.
But he has also always kept his eyes on what goes beyond race/nationality/genres _ looking for answers in the cosmic.
Taiko with jazz trumpet and a DJ track is a combination that's a bit unexpected.
But it worked _ splendidly.
It was something I had never seen before but yet it seemed the most natural thing to be experiencing.
In one segment, Kondo told the audience he did a collaboration sometime back with artists that included Nobuyoshi Araki and Seitaro Kuroda for an anniversary of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.
He said they were moved that the people of Hiroshima referred to the A-bomb as "Pikadon," an onomatopoeia alluding to the "flash" or "flick" of blazing light and the "boom" or "bang" of its lethal sound.
A Westerner would certainly have injected some outrage or maliciousness and called it what it deserved: a mother-fucking etc. ... Kondo said.
But the people of Hiroshima just called it Pikadon.
"We found this extremely moving," he said.
The Japanese language is filled with onomatopoeia.
That's why some people think the Japanese language is "primitive."
But I don't think so, he said.
The Japanese language is very beautiful and musical, and Earth is a very musical planet filled with the sounds of the birds, insects and the wind, according to Kondo.
And he goes into song.
There is never a dull moment.
And it's never the same.
Isaku felt the joy of sharing such a stage.
Kondo was generous and motioned politely to hand him solo spots. He even told the audience "Kageyama-kun" is nervous and this is the first time we've performed together but isn't he doing a pretty good job?
That evening, Isaku followed Kondo on that journey, every step of the way.
He didn't pull his leg, and he didn't tumble down any crevice.
And he was happy.
But looking back, he wants more, he says.
What he wants now is to grow as a musician so he will be able to add something of his own to that trip.
It's a beginning, and the endeavor will be long and arduous.
But as Kondo says, it is a joy _ just to be born.
And to be playing with Kondo _ that's nothing but bliss.

Whence virtuosity

Poet and novelist Ishmael Reed once said he read to an audience two poems _ one by a Nobel laureate and another by one of his students _ and asked for a show of hands to guess which was by whom.
Opinion was 50-50, which goes to show no one can tell on virtuosity.
After all, a toilet seat becomes art supreme if Duchamp puts it in the backdrop of a fancy museum.
Juxtaposing gems from the amateur with stuck up award-winners is a joy.
It challenges status quo definitions of what is and what isn't _ the basic purpose of art to start with.
The unfortunate thing is: A toilet seat is just that _ a toilet seat, if there is no Duchamp and there is no museum.
That's why it is so difficult and risky to test such waters in art.
But if and when you can pull it off, you will be able to create something unique, almost by definition, because most of what you see in art is about following what went before you and got the stamp of approval that it is indeed art and not just a toilet seat.
I have written before about the live music scene in Tokyo.
Watching the young musicians, who all have other jobs and boast absolutely no technical virtuosity as we know it in the West, made me wonder why that community existed and what it was about Japan that created that _ as well as what that meant as far as definitions of art.
I called the phenomenon the Tokyo Flower Children.
Virtuosity is obviously important in art.
But I also realized it's not as important as one may think, especially in this day and age when razzle-dazzle can be packaged, commercialized and bought with money (relatively affordable) like a Cirque de Soleil show (which isn't really art at all _ at least the old-style circus had the elephants and the clowns).
These peacefully wayward Japanese kids are products of an extremely rigid and conformist society that is rapidly unraveling and no longer promising success for all, even if you follow all the rules to the T and prove you will sacrifice individuality for the good of the team.
They are rejecting the package.
They have chosen to be artists.
And to me, there is no doubt they are really artists.
I must thank them for helping me realize that the most important thing about art is that sincerity.
And they certainly have that.
The choice.
The courage to choose.
The vision to see beyond what is being handed to them.
That is what is being sought among the audience at Tokyo live-houses, who are for the most part just their peers.
Art with a capital "A" is proving incapable of moving beyond the market and the galleries catering to the rich.
Art must reach and be about real people.
But whether this kind of art that throws virtuosity out the window can provide anything more than a psychologically therapeutic outlet for the participants remains to be seen.
Look at me! (for technique) surely isn't enough.
But will anyone look if there is no virtuosity at all?
Can you prove value beyond delivering slices-of-life samplings of anthropological curiosity?
And isn't thinking that you can mold virtuous art out of the everyday _ a la Duchamp _ the most arrogant approach to self-expression?
But I don't think it's dishonest or incorrect.
And arrogance, or at least confidence in what you believe, goes with the territory.

Haiku Revised Again

ちる桜
ここにいます！と
どぶによむ

sakura petals
falling, write "I am here!"
into the ditch