Live show at Louto in Hiroshima & thoughts about the city...

A lovely show today,
The first of three with Naoto Kawate...

Kuniaki-San and Yukie-san put us on in their beautiful little gallery, Louto, in central Hiroshima.

Naoto's prepared his guitar with metal twisted around the strings (like bottle caps on bike spokes), giving it a percussive buzz...it sounds great.
It's been a couple of years since I've seen him live and it's been worth the wait...

We arrived a little late as watering Naoto's allotment took longer than planned. Gomen nasai, Kuniake-San!

It's my second time in Hiroshima:
the first time I came I went to both the peace museum and the former trade promotion hall which is below the epicentre of the atomic bomb dropped on the 6th August 1945.
Due to some principle I don't yet understand and need to research, that building survived (or most of it) and I remember being really affected by it but didn't quite put my finger on why...
I'm no wise, wizened old traveller but I've been a few places, seen a few things, read a few books and papers - the killing fields in Cambodia were harrowing, seeing a man in Bristol have his throat slit was horrible, having my nose smashed by muggers with a baseball bat was a pain in the nose; there's a longer list here, but when you enter into Hiroshima, it's like any modern Japanese city - there's no way you could tell it was completely razed at the end of WWII- it bustles and it's impressive and it's full of colourful people and it's also ugly and has too many cars; it's somewhat generic and typical of any city.
And that's why it's so affecting to stand by that monumental ruin - to think that the city was also alive like this before it got flattened and then rebuilt.
Not by some immense and uncontrollable force of nature, not by an army of men, but by one small and incredibly powerful bomb, artificial and completely lacking in discrimination, obliterating people, objects, flora and fauna.

Kyoto, sunny day, tour preparation and news...

It`s a sunny day in Kyoto,
I`m staying at Naoto Kawate`s house and am excited about our tour together which starts tomorrow...

• 
  28/4 @ Louto gallery, HIROSHIMA
• 29/4 @ Noconico cafe, Nokono-shima, FUKUOKA
• 30/4 @ Carre, MATSUE

Hear Naoto below via soundcloud or at his bandcamp:

He`s my favourite guitarist, witty and experimental, and he`s a kind and thoughtful friend.

Hear me here (my latest release):

And a short video of today, practicing kora in Naoto`s house overlooking Kyoto:


I`m very happy to have been asked to play some shows with Harada Ikuko-Sama,
so I`ve extended my stay in Japan until the 22nd of May.
There`s a show in Tokyo on the 3rd, I don`t yet have the full details,
and one in Fukuoka at circle festival on the 19th. Tanoshimi!

Here are some photos from the last few days:

Here we are 45 cafe, Toyama with our friend Kanoko Inoue...

Last nights show was another great one -

our friend Kanoko Inoue (have a look at her beautiful website here) who`s been living in Bristol has recently returned to Japan,

and we played at her mother Wakako`s cafe - 

Here we are 45 cafe.

Kano is a great saxophonist and has played with Rachael a lot in Bristol - 

so it was lovely to see that again in Japan,

and at the end of the night we all played together - steel pan, kora, clarinet, saxophone...

Last night we made a new friend - Momo, she drew this picture of us playing our music and joined in on the piano...          Thanks Momo!

Here`s another video from piñon-pinon that Rachael shot of me playing a kora instrumental:

Pinon-pinon and the happiness it brings... 21/04/12

Last night was my favourite gig of this tour so far -
at piñon-pinon, run by our friends Jun and Kite-san -
kite-san is also a member of the wonderful band POPO,
I`ve spent countless happy hours cooking in my kitchen and driving between towns listening to them.

The last time I came to Japan I played here and was overwhelmed by the atmosphere -
cosmos flowers everywhere and kamakiri (praying mantis) hiding amongst them;
it was my first time meeting these insects in the wild and I couldn`t wipe the smile off my face...

This time the cosmos were just beginning to sprout and there was no praying mantis to be seen,
but it was just as friendly and welcoming. Jun told me Tsuruga ia a windy city and it was,
the same hut we performed in is where I slept and it rattled all night...
In the morning I ran to the coast, through pine trees, and came back to practice some music whilst the rain fell and the wind rattled around me...

The song, a cover, is by Josephine Foster - I don`t generally play it live,
but like to sing it alone in places where I`m a guest and feeling welcome -
"I am a guest in here...":

 

Cafe yugue show in Kyoto

Yesterday and the night before we stayed in Kyoto at our friend, the guitarist Naoto Kawate's house... He lives in a beautiful house at the foot of the hills - lush and green with lots of temples and shrines nearby.

I've not had much spare time in Kyoto before so it was good to spend the day wandering about - the city has a calm feeling to it, spacious and close to the green hills. A bit like Bristol in England if it's not too tenuous a comparison... Onimichi in the south gave me a similar feeling, so perhaps it's just the buildings on hills and proximity to water?
Still, Kyoto has an exciting buzz to it whilst managing a sense of calm, and that's one of the reasons I love Bristol so much.
A hilly, wooded walk to start the day; blossom, jelly-like fungus and forked paths which led us eventually to the top of the art college which spans the declivity with its modern and impressively tree-sensitive architecture.

We played in cafe yugue in the evening:

Run by our friend Dai-Chan, who makes the best bagels in Kyoto (or possibly the world)... It'd be hard to tell it was a cafe if you didn't know about it - it's inconspicuous from the outside and has a weathered, unfussy feeling, Dai is always playing something great on the stereo and everything tastes inordinately delicious.

The homeliness of yugue always makes for a great show - relaxing - I think this is my fourth time playing here and I've loved it every time...

Irukaike video: Jam session on kora, pakhawaj and violin...

Close to the beautiful lake Irukaike near Nagoya,
we had Hanami by the riverside followed by this jam session -
Japan meets India meets England meets West Africa...
Tetsuya Kaneko on Pakhawaj, Yuki Kaneko on violin, Will Newsome on kora.

Cafe jaaja (16/04/12) and the incredible Tet-San on his pakhawaj.

Cafe jaaja is run by members of this incredible band jaaja:

They tour around the world by hitch-hiking and have appeared in the back garden of the house I used to share with Rachael in Bristol before...

So Monday started with some brilliant songs from Jaaja,

after which I played my solo set,

and then - ICHI, the night before, had introduced me to his old friend Tet-San, who plays the pakhawaj, a large two headed drum which predates the tabla, and needs an uncooked chapati to be placed on the bass end to reach the required depth of tone...amazing instrument and Tet-San is an incredible musician  -picking up rhythmic phrases from the kora, echoing and elaborating on them, and generally being extremely sensitive with his art...

Here`s a photo expressing how I felt about playing with him - like he was feeding me with some kind of raw musical energy...

Yesterday was also spent with Tet-San and his wife Yuki; we had Hanami (a picnic celebrating spring) by a river -side not far from Nagoya, but far enough to not hear any cars. Yuki plays violin in Indian style, so we all had a jam session together in the sun - clarinet, violin, steel-pan, pakhawaj and kora.