Japan and its culture have always caught my attention. I guess like for many people, it all started with Dragon Ball and anime in general.
In my case, that passion evolved around music. I started playing guitar because I loved the distorted sound of Punk Rock and Thrash Metal.
I started writing songs for my punk-rocker project Deployed, later I would form Stomp From The Grave and finally Ronin. These last two bands with influences from heavy metal and Thrash metal…
In my player I always listened to bands of that style (The Haunted, Death, Lamb of god…) but little by little I added other lighter and alternative records (Placebo, Charlotte Hatherley, Ivy…).
Listening to the latter and surfing the net I got into the Japanese Go!Go!7188.
They were a big change in the way I saw Japanese rock music.
They managed to evade me in a unique way and awaken, even more, my curiosity for the Japanese country.
It was then, in 2013, when I decided to travel to Japan to see this band live.
It had been several years since Go!Go!7188 had broken up but I discovered that shortly after leaving the band, the leader and vocalist formed another group called Chirinuruwowaka (チリヌルヲワカ ).
I got the tickets in advance and traveled on an adventure to discover new areas of the country and experience a 100% Japanese concert.
If I remember correctly, the concert was held in the month of June, in a hot Tokyo inside the very neighborhood of Shibuya.
I was lucky enough to attend with a Japanese friend that I made on that same trip. It was a great concert, where we could enjoy a great show and performance.
A few days later and thanks to my new friend, I met a few Japanese people on the terrace of my hotel in Ikebukuro. And it was there, talking with them about my passion for Japanese music when the shamisen appeared….
In a cultural exchange of music videos and anecdotes, one of the Japanese showed me a video of a live performance of a young Japanese couple playing a strange instrument that I had never seen in my life. She told me that they were very popular in Japan, that they played the shamisen and that they called themselves the Yoshida Brothers….
As soon as they started playing along with the rock base, I was hooked. The fusion was perfect. It sounded fresh, powerful and innovative but at the same time very familiar. It took me back to everything I loved and at the same time opened my ears to a whole new world of music.
For three minutes it managed to evade me and make me pay attention to nothing but that pair of shamisens resonating with great power and personality….
Who knew that song would bring me here?
Fortunately, you can still enjoy that video and perhaps, understand why just a few months later I would return to Japan to bring a shamisen to Spain… but that’s another story that I’ll tell you another day 😉
Jose