Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Daniel H. Rosen was recently featured in a Japanese news story about the Earth Day Celebration in Sado (Western Japan), but what makes him particularly interesting is that he is an American who was put in charge of this celebration after years of involvement on the Japanese arts scene. This appointment also coincided with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that hit in March.

I had never met Daniel H. Rosen when I lived in Japan, but he was there when I was there. Last year in December I got a newsletter from Rosen which made me contact him to find out how he found out about DooBeeDoo. He told me that he found DooBeeDoo via internet just by chance and put us sporadically in the mailing list.

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Gonzalo Rubalcaba (born May 27, 1963 in Havana, Cuba) is a Grammy Award-winning Cuban jazz pianist and composer. He has received 14 Grammy nominations (wining 2 Grammys for Nocturne and Land of the Sun, and 2 Latin Grammys for Solo and Supernova) including four for Jazz Album of the Year (Rapsodia in 1995, Antiguo and Inner Voyage in 1999, and Supernova in 2002), the Palme d’Or from the Music Academy in Paris in 1991 and two “Best Performer” awards for “Suite 4y20″ and “Rapsodia” in 1992 and 1993 respectively. In 2008, Gonzalo was awarded the “Vanguard Award” by The ASCAP Foundation for “charting new directions in Jazz”.

In 1986 he had a chance meeting in Havana with bassist Charlie Haden. Through Charlie Haden he came to the attention of Bruce Lundvall president of Blue Note Records, and thus began an association, first with Toshiba/EMI of Japan, and later with Blue Note in the US, which has resulted in the release of eleven albums. Due to his record releases and popularity with the Japanese ctizens he has had countless performances in Japan. When he heard about the earthquakes and the tsunami he along with other musicans became concerned about his Japanese friends and fans.  Through his concern he sends the above message in Spanish (read the English translation below).

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Text by Sara Dotes

Photo by 稲垣元則

In 2009, .es started out as contemporary multi-media music unit based at “Gallery Nomart” in Osaka, Japan. .es consists of Takayuki Hashimoto (guitar, alto saxophone and harmonica etc), Sara (piano, cajon and dance etc ) and Satoshi Hayashi, modern art director and producer of .es. Hashimoto and Sara are multi-instrumentalists and also Sara occasionally dances with Hashimoto’s sound. Their live music performances all have a different theme and they choose instruments appropriate for each theme. All of their performances are in an improvised style.

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The two members of .es (Hashimoto and Sara) came to respect and play various musical styles such as rock, punk, classical music, flamenco, and increasingly found themselves wanting to express the impulse on principles and unchangeable soul.

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Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Here are 6 Japanese TV commercials that would probably never be made in America. I love how Japanese produce their TV commercials which are very unique, serious but funny/hilarious at the same time, surreal, sophisticated, naive, ironic and sometimes “Zen like”. I also like the out of context use of sound and music contradicting each other. Peter Sellers or Monty Python would enjoy watching them!

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But…unfortunately these commercials can’t be applied or referred to daily life in Japan. In fact life in Japan isn’t as exciting as people here believe. It is unsophisticated and impersonal. In some degrees very boring.  Tokyo for example – which is Japan’s metropolis, the country’s brain and the center of culture and commerce – lost its life power since the start of the recession at the end of the 1980s. Since then no big changes have happened. In fact the recession forced the Japanese to get aware that something was wrong with them. Instead of getting in charge of their own lives they tried to keep their lifestyles of before. Nobody wanted to take any responsibilities. Most people ignored their own deep feelings and anger. By the way did you know that Japan has the highest suicide rate in the world? Doesn’t this say alot about this country?

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Date: May, 2011
Venue: Death By Audio (NY)

Text by Jim Hoey

What should be known about this guitar drums duo is that they are former/current members of Afrirampo and Acid Mothers Temple, 2 hard hitting punk/psychedelic rock bands from Japan. Also to be know is that they are in the middle of a one month tour of the US, and if you find yourself on the east coast or somewhere between NYC and southern California, you might be close enough to road trip over to one of their gigs soon.
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Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

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