Hi! I’m Jose, I was born in Barcelona in 1986 and grew up in Badalona, where I currently live.
Japan and music have always been my great passion.
When I was sixteen I started playing guitar , later studied Japanese language but it wasnt until twenty-seven when i discovered the Tsugaru Shamisen.
Below you can see and read a summary of my history with it, I hope you enjoy it!
Jose Luque
Discovering the three strings (2013)
In late 2013, on my third trip to Japan, I had my first encounter with shamisen.
A friend showed me a video of the Yoshida Brothers. It was the first time I had heard them but I was fascinated by their sound.
On my return to Badalona, I began to listen to the Yoshida Brothers and little by little I became familiar with the sound of the three strings.
A year later I decided to return to Japan and buy a shamisen.
It was an important investment, but my instinct told me that I was not wrong.
First steps and Learning (2016/18)
Once I had the shamisen at home, I studied watching many videos online until I decided to create a youtube channel and an instagram channel where I could publish my progress and experiments with it.
My outings to nature with the Shamisen were becoming more and more frequent and I felt it was the ideal place to connect with the instrument. So it was, how in 2018 I composed my first Tsugaru Jongara Bushi….
Learning from an Idol (Kenichi Yoshida, 2018)
During that year I had the honor of receiving classes from Kenichi san (Yoshida Brothers), who had been my idol during the discovery of shamisen.
Even, the privilege of performing alongside him in his 2018 concert at the ESMUC Auditori.
Shamisen Worldcup (Hirosaki, 2018)
In May 2018 I traveled to japan to present my Tsugaru Jongara Bushi at the world shamisen tournament in Hirosaki (Aomori, Japan) It was my first time to test myself on stage with the shamisen in front of hundreds of people but it went quite well….
I participated in the solo and group class. I won the first prize in the group categorie together with my friend Shishido san.
Creation of the workshop and my first Shamisen (2018/19)
Moved by curiosity and wanting to know more about the instrument, I started to make a shamisen. To do so, I set up a workshop at home where I could work on it little by little.
A few months later i was playing my first shamisen. A dream came true and another big door was opened…