Saturday, May 22, 2010
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.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
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.
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.
Up-and-coming stars of AMANOJAKU taiko
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.
More information on Amanojaku and to watch a video clip of Amanojaku.
Isaku's official website.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (part three)
Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter drops names and makes you hungry.
He says Yoko Ohno came by and had sirloin "tonkatsu" in the middle of the day because she is a sizzling greasy hot person, and he himself was a bit worried about heartburn.
He also says Yukio Mishima ate steak at least once a week because he believed that art is about the body, not just the mind, and forgetting the body in art makes you a big-headed wimp.
He says Yoko Ohno came by and had sirloin "tonkatsu" in the middle of the day because she is a sizzling greasy hot person, and he himself was a bit worried about heartburn.
He also says Yukio Mishima ate steak at least once a week because he believed that art is about the body, not just the mind, and forgetting the body in art makes you a big-headed wimp.
Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (part two)
Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter says, if you are doing what you truly believe in, what other people say ("hyoka" or social evaluation/assessment) doesn't matter.
No one really does art to get something back in return.
No one really knows if art is valid or not.
Evaluation/assessment is something that is determined by a commercial market, job contract or social hierarchy.
That's when evaluation/assessment becomes relevant _ and it must be fair and accurate or else someone is getting exploited, which goes contrary to what art is about from the get-go.
But it is important to remember that something monetary, contractual and social is involved in those endeavors in which evaluation/assessment takes meaning.
But art is not a job and has nothing to do with all that.
That is the privilege of art and also the painful difficulties of art.
Art by definition means you will never be properly evaluated.
No one will come pat you on the back and say: hey, your art is great.
Unless it is an evaluation/assessment that makes art commercial, a job or a reflection of social ranking, which isn't really about art at all but something just maybe related to art only in the sense that artists are human and need to eat and pay rent.
That is why doing any commercial marketing activity for your art is a big pain because you have to do it even though it isn't relevant or really meaningful.
At least, even if everyone ignores you and your art, you know you don't care.
No one really does art to get something back in return.
No one really knows if art is valid or not.
Evaluation/assessment is something that is determined by a commercial market, job contract or social hierarchy.
That's when evaluation/assessment becomes relevant _ and it must be fair and accurate or else someone is getting exploited, which goes contrary to what art is about from the get-go.
But it is important to remember that something monetary, contractual and social is involved in those endeavors in which evaluation/assessment takes meaning.
But art is not a job and has nothing to do with all that.
That is the privilege of art and also the painful difficulties of art.
Art by definition means you will never be properly evaluated.
No one will come pat you on the back and say: hey, your art is great.
Unless it is an evaluation/assessment that makes art commercial, a job or a reflection of social ranking, which isn't really about art at all but something just maybe related to art only in the sense that artists are human and need to eat and pay rent.
That is why doing any commercial marketing activity for your art is a big pain because you have to do it even though it isn't relevant or really meaningful.
At least, even if everyone ignores you and your art, you know you don't care.
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