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I was asked to attend a Shakuhachi performance. For those of you who don’t know much about the Shakuhachi, it is a traditional Japanese flute made from a single reed of Bamboo. The performer that evening was a young man, as old as me, performing on musical instruments he had made on his own. When we arrived at the place at which the performance was being held, the setting was an OLD Japanese house (possibly 150 years old), that has been changed into a gallery to sell old Japanese/Asian thingamabobs. The Shakuhachi player is expected to portray the sounds of wind blowing through a forrest, and so, it is supposed to be calm and relaxing.

I did not anticipate what the performer - Sabu-Kun - did in the middle of the concert. In the middle of the concert, he uncovered a record mixer from the 80s, and started stratching it up, and ultimately took off his shirt and STARTED SCREAMING with angry music. He later exlained that his parents are PUNK ROCKERS and have forced him to play the DRUMS since he was a kid. He said that he hated the drums so much, that he always CRIED while playing the Drums. How weird is that? And so, the records were playing samples of his drumming, that he didn’t like. There was an OBVIOUS influence of punk rock in there. And so, the concert was all about expressing anger against establishments. It was SHAKUHACHI-PUNK-ROCK. TOTALLLLLY unheard of, but very expressive. While he wasn’t wearing his shirt and jumping around (BETWEEN THE AUDIENCE WHO WERE ALL SEATED ON A TRADITIONAL TATAMI MAT), the audience CERTAINLY felt the uncomfortableness that he intended for us to feel. So, in that sense, he succeeded in expressing himself through his art, and hence, it was  a successful concert.

I don’t think many of the elderly or traditionalists who were in the concert appreciated his work that evening, but for me - artistically  I felt that my understanding of MUSIC as an art (regardless of genre)has broadened.

Incidentally, the concert happened to be on the same day that marked the 61st anniversary of the United States dropping its Atomic Bomb onto the city of Hiroshima. Therfore, there was a tone of sadness and anger against the establishment called WAR. In the end, Sabu-Kun played the Shakuhachi and Sang along with a recording of some of Bob Marley’s songs. As an encore, he sang a REALLLLLY Punk-Rock-oriented version of a traditional Japanese song called SUKIYAKI.