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Music I Like From Japan

I like a lot of things from Japan. I could go on and on about the elements from Japanese traditional and pop culture that I enjoy. But this is a post about music I like. Music like Minyo Crusaders, Blue Hearts, Number Girl, Uchu Nekoko, and Miyavi.

Minyo Crusaders

This Tokyo group preserves minyo, hyper-local folk songs, through hybridization with world beats. Personally, I’m a fan of the percussive beats and call-and-response of straight tradition in Japanese folk music. Two of my favorite live music experiences were seeing Taiko at Benaroya Hall and attending a Japanese folk music performance at Meany Hall in college. But Minyo Crusaders certainly provide an interesting take.

example from the bandcamp kawaii post

Blue Hearts

In their day in Japan, the Blue Hearts were considered punk, but they sound like a poppy garage band to me. I don’t have quite the nostalgia for them that many of my Japanese contemporaries have, because I only learned about them years later. Their biggest hit, “Linda Linda Linda” became the title of an absolutely charming movie about high school girls forming a cover band for their school festival. I tracked down the Blue Hearts’ CD and . . . I might have memorized the Japanese lyrics to “Linda.”

And I can’t resist sharing the climax of the movie.

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Number Girl

I’d never heard of Number Girl until I read about them in an interview with punk band Otoboke Beaver (whom I’ve previously mentioned). They’re not on Bandcamp, but I dug around and found a couple videos. It turns out, they’re the kind of shambolic rock that made up most of my low-cover-charge Friday nights in college. They are also from Fukuoka, where I lived and worked the summer after grad school.

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Uchu Nekoko 宇宙ネコ子

Like Gorillaz before them, dreamy shoegaze duo Uchu Nekoko appear only as cartoon characters. It’s not even clear if the kawaii characters captured in the pale colors and soft lines of their shoujo-style videos are meant to be the band. Relax and enjoy.

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MIYAVI

I was researching a touring Broadway show for a work assignment and MIYAVI was on the venue calendar. The artist photo showed a cool-looking Japanese guy with a guitar, so down the rabbit-hole I ran. MIYAVI is the stage name for Takamasa Ishihara. Although he got his start in visual kei, he’s known for his guitar playing. So I had a listen of his latest album No Sleep Till Tokyo. Overall it was not really my thing, but I really liked his guitar playing. Sometimes the dub-steppy bits sort of sounded like they might be guitar instead of electronics, which would be a cool concept.

Strangely, I couldn’t stop listening, even as I kept thinking to myself, “This is not my thing.” I went back an album, to Samurai Sessions, Vol. 3: Worlds Collide (the title is a conceit – there are no Vols. 1 & 2 that I can find). It still sounded more like something my kids would like than my music. But this one had more of the traditional guitar sound I lurve, and more lyrics in Japanese, which I find interesting. It also includes a song in support of refugees, featuring Afghani rappi Sonita, which pretty much cemented his place among Japanese musicians I like.

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View From the Top

When I was in Qingdao, China with my daughter, we got lost a lot. Maybe because we navigated by the strange Ghibli-faced monsters that rose above us on a hill. Eventually, we made our way to that hillside, and discovered that they were towers you could enter, like the Space Needle except shorter, to get a view of the city. Except the glass was dirty and there was no air conditioning. Anyway, here is the view from the top.

(By the way, I keep referring to these as Ghibli towers, but there is no actual connection between the Japanese animation studio and these buildings in Qingdao. They just look to my eye like something Hayao Miyazake would design.)

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Seattle Dance Collective Premiere on Vashon Island

It’s not very often you get a chance to witness the birth of a new arts institution. But when I heard that Pacific Northwest Ballet principals Noelani Pantastico and James Yoichi Moore were starting their own off-season dance company, I knew it was going to be something special. Even though I usually keep my arts adventures close to home (living in Fremont, I there is more good art than I can consume within 3 miles of my house) I gladly took the ferry to Vashon to see Program One of the Seattle Dance Collective.

Seattle Dance Collective

As founding artistic directors Pantastico and Moore are quick to make clear, Seattle Dance Collective (SDC) is a side hustle. They are both in a place to be thinking about their post-PNB careers, but neither of them is ready to move on yet. Instead, SDC is intended as a summer season company.

With only ten dancers, the company repertory will necessarily comprise smaller, contemporary pieces that don’t use the principal/soloist/corps structure of classical ballet. But with eight of the ten dancers recruited from PNB (two work with Whim W’him) you can still expect it to be ballet. The small size of the organization and the facility also necessitates recorded music rather than the live orchestra of PNB. SDC makes up for this by using non-orchestral music and introducing a lot of verbal narrative to the dances.

Vashon Center for the Arts

Although “Seattle” is in the name, SDC has found a home at the Vashon Center for the Arts. I confess that although I’ve lived in Seattle since 1992, the first time I ever went to Vashon Island was three years ago to pick up my daughter from her middle school orchestra retreat. So in my mind, Vashon was already associated with the arts.

The Vashon Center for the Arts opened in the summer of 2016, a $20 million arts facility in a community of 10,000 people. This was my first visit to the Center, which is a small but lovely arts venue. There’s a gallery in the lobby (and judging by all the red stickers, performance venues are a great place for artists to sell their work) with really interesting work on display. The stage is just the right size for a small dance company like SDC, and the auditorium is comfortable and intimate. Even when I get the really good tickets at McCaw Hall, I am never as close to the stage as a person sitting in the middle of VCA.

The hassle of the ferry means that it’s tempting to “make a day of it” when you see something at the Vashon Center for the Arts. But there are worse things than spending the day on Vashon. The cost of the ferry means that tickets at VCA are not as affordable as they seem at first glance, but the space is worth the added cost for shows you really want to see. For me, that will definitely include future programs of Seattle Dance Collective.  

In a Minute

Program One officially comprised six short contemporary ballets, but the performance began with an unannounced piece. Pantastico crawled out from behind the still-closed curtain to perform In a Minute by choreographer Penny Saunders. Unlike the dancer in the video below, she her costume and facial expressions evoked a creepy doll.

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

The 90-second dance was simultaneously unnerving and a delightful Easter Egg that clued us in to not expect much in the way of traditional presentation from SDC.

Program One

Even if I try to keep my comments short (and you know how good I am at that) I have too much to say about what I saw at Program One to fit it all into this post. So I plan on writing about the dances themselves separately. But for the record, here is what was on Program One.

The Grey Area

(an excerpt)

Choreography: David Dawson
Music: Niels Lanz
Staging: Rebecca Gladstone
Costume Design: Yumiko Takeshima
Lighting Design: Bert Dalhuysen

Cast I Saw: Elizabeth Murphy/Miles Pertl

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

Shogun

Choreography: Ivonice Satie
Music: Milton Nascimiento, Fernando Bryant
Staging: Liris do Lago
Lighting Design: Ivonice Satie

Cast I Saw: James Moore, Ezra Thomson

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

Sur Le Fil

(By a Hair’s Breadth)

Choreography: Penny Saunders
Music: Mike Wall, Moon Dog, Yann Tiersen
Staging: Jacqueline Burnett
Lighting Design: Ben Johnson

Cast I Saw: Liane Aung, Angelica Generosa, Jim Kent, Elle Macy, Elizabeth Murphy, Miles Pertl, Ezra Thomson, Dylan Wald

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

Anamnesis

Choreography: Bruno Roque
Music: Nils Frahm
Text: Noelani Pantastico
Lighting Design: Alex Harding and Bruno Roque

Cast I Saw: Noelani Pantastico

Frugivory

Choreography: Bruno Roque
Music: Dead Combo
Costume Design: Noelani Pantastico
Lighting Design: Reed Nakayama

Cast I Saw: Liane Aung, Angelica Generosa, Jim Kent, Elizabeth Murphy, Miles Pertl, Dylan Wald

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

Mopey

Choreography: Marco Goecke
Music: CPE Bach, The Cramps
Staging: James Moore
Lighting Design: David Moodey

Cast I Saw: James Moore

Angela Sterling photo c/o SDC

Next Up

Seattle Dance Collective has not announced specific plans for the future yet. It’s uncertain when Program Two will take place, or how many programs they hope to perform each summer. It’s possible that we’ll have to wait until next year for a follow up. But you can be certain that I will be there.

{I attended Program 1 courtesy of SDC and Vashon Center for the Arts. The tickets were theirs; the opinions are mine.}

ByGD

Taxi Game

Taxis in Qingdao were unlike those in any other country I’ve ever been. Cab drivers avoided the hassle of dealing with foreigners. Sometimes a dozen cabs would drive right by us before would stop. Then, half the time they would refuse our fare when they found out where we wanted to go. I would show them the card with the address of our destination on it, and they would shake their heads. They all had GPS, but were rarely willing to leave the neighborhood. I asked Lily, the hotel clerk where we were staying, about it, and she said, “I know right! Qingdao taxis are so strange!”

None of that affected my daughter very much. She just loved that the taxis had video games in the seat backs, like on a airplane.

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Music I LIke On The 2019 Doe Bay Lineup

Last weekend I was at TimberFest, but I’m writing about that experience elsewhere. In the meantime, let me talk about Doe Bay Fest, which is coming up in a couple weeks. Doe Bay Fest is a very special music festival. Just like Eistnaflug, it feels like a family reunion. I try to go as often as I can. Last year I missed it for Pickathon, and while I don’t regret that experience one bit, I also missed the Doe Bay experience. This year I got Doe Bay tickets for Christmas, and the 21-band lineup includes a lot of music I like.

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Annie Ford

Doe Bay always involves a lot of music discovery, and the first time I heard of Annie Ford was when I read this year’s lineup announcement. I notice the Bandcamp page is listed as Annie Ford Band, while Doe Bay says Annie Ford – that might mean a solo set. But I hope not because I really love the swinging full band sound on At Night.

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Beverly Crusher

Okay, their last two releases, including Scared, were only singles and they haven’t released a full album since 2016. But they’re totally new to me, and even if it’s a set of mostly older music, this riffy rock’n’roll is perfect for a summer afternoon on Orcas Island.

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The Burned

I never heard of the Kurt Baumann solo project The Burned before they released the Doe Bay lineup. But they’ve been on near-constant rotation. He’s got a voice that could give early The National a run for their money; tells stories like Nick Cave; plays guitar like nobody’s business. Even my country-averse husband can’t get enough of The Burned. This is our top musical prospect for Doe Bay this year.

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Treepeople

When I was younger, I side-eyed all the middle aged baby boomers forking out big bucks to see the reunion tours of the bands that were cool in their youth. But now that I’m in my forties, I’m looking forward to seeing Treepeople at Doe Bay. This Built to Spill precursor wasn’t much on my radar back in the day, but it turns out the nineties still sound good.

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Versing

I always have a hard time describing bands like Versing. It’s like the scene in Spinal Tap where the band try to describe themselves and basically come up with “generic rock band.” But even if I can’t find interesting words about good old rock and roll, listening to it is never boring. And just like human voices, no two rock bands are every actually the same. I look forward to hearing this one live.