KAGERO

(Interviewed by Noel Ramos)

It's a hot summer day, so hot in fact that everything wants to melt together into one inseparable mass. The heat rising off the ground is so thick and dense it is literally visible. You can't see clearly what it is that's coming at you, because it's obscured by the heat haze which is bending the light into a blurry, confused image.

What I have just described is "kagero", the Japanese word  meaning heat haze; shimmering of hot air; mirage. I have also just described Kagero, the Japanese Gypsy Rock band out of Brooklyn, NY. You can never quite make out what will be coming at you next throught the shimmering air around this band. They take disparate sounds and melt them together into a seamless thing. To call their music hot, is only scratching the surface.
I spoke with Kaz Fujimoto, the enigmatick world traveler that is the engine of Kagero. I asked him some questions that I thought might give us a better look, through the haze...

IM} You are Asian by birth, but you moved to London when you were
still very young, how did you eventually end up in New York?

KAZ} Well I'd come to New York before I lived in London. And when I was in London I realized I was already in love with New York,so I had to come back although I enjoyed living in London as well.

IM} Where exactly were you born and raised?

KAZ} I was born and raised in Iwakuni city within Yamaguchi prefecture, southwest of Japan.

IM} How did you discover your musical talent?

KAZ} When I was 3 or 4 years old, my grandfather used to have a half inch reel tape recorder and he would have me sing to it whatever the songs I learned off some Japanese TV shows. When I saw the other memebers of my family enjoy it as we played it back, I knew I was a recording artist. And I found a joy in doing so, too.


IM} How did you and Rob meet and what convinced you that you should
form a band?

KAZ} Well, Kagero existed before Rob came. We had a bass player but we needed someone funkier. And Rob came though an ad I put up in New York Press. In fact, he was the only one who responded to my ad which I didn't tell him until later. But luckily he was great and he got the job.

IM} How did you come to name the group Kagero?

KAZ} When I formed this band I had a drummer also from Japan. One night we were on the phone trying to come up with the band's name. I wanted to have an English name but he insisted we get a Japanese name because it would be more unique. After a couple of hours on the phone, we came up with the word we both liked, which was "Kagero".

IM} Can you describe your specialty of "cultural confusion" for us?

KAZ} Well we used the word "confusion" to sound funny. But it's not that we are clueless about different cultures. We are like musical chefs at a world fusion restaurant and we test different combinations of two (or more than two) cultural flavors to see if they work. Some combinations come after a lot of research and some come just by coincidence. But some combinations are not accepted by the people from each side of the cultures because they are not authentic and there may sound strange. Like combining "Tango" from Argentina and "Flamenco" from Spain is not always a good idea to those who are emotinally attached to each genre, and of course it depends on how you do it too. But sometimes we take a liberty of enjoying the new mix.

IM} Can you describe your songwriting process for us?

KAZ} 90% of the time, I come up with a melody first. Then I try to add the right beat to it and then lyrics at the end. The lyrical content is important but finding the right sounding words for the melody is more important to me. Basically, I just need words to sing my melody, it can be any languages as long as they sound good. I had this song with nice Asian melody once and I tried to write the lyrics in English first, it didn't work, then in Japanese, didn't work, so I ended up writing in Mandarin and it finally fit.

IM} Do you gain fulfillment from your music? Do you perform for the
sake of the art?

KAZ} If someone asks me "what are you?", then I'll probably answer "I'm an artist". But I don't really think of an art when I write songs or when I perform them. Writing and performing are two different things. The most exciting part is, I have to say, when I get an inspiration to write a song. I'm in such joy when I write it down. It's also nice to see it being well-received when I perform it.

IM} What are your favorite pastimes? Do you have hobbies or other
interests besides your music?

KAZ} I have so many favorite pastimes. When I was a kid, with my gang of boys, we used to come up with new games every day to play outside. We would play until dark, we would never go home, our parents had to find out where we were and drag us home. My hobby is hanging out in a bar, socializing with other people from different backgrounds.

IM} What is your favorite thing about having fans?

KAZ} Good question. I mean who are they? And who am I? They would never talk to me if I didn't play music. We would have never met if I didn't travel to deliver my music to them. I give them the vibration and they give it back to me. It's so great!

IM} What is the best part of touring and performing live for you?

KAZ} Again, meeting new people and getting a different vibration from each town.

IM} What are your goals for Kagero?

KAZ} Conquering the world!

IM} What drew you to the Millennium Music Conference?

KAZ} Well, there are so many music conferences nowadays and we applied for them most of the time because we want to be a part of what is going on right now. And MMC was the first one that accepted us. Thank you, guys!

IM} Is this the first year you have attended MMC?

KAZ} No this is our second year.

IM} What about the conference most appeals to you?

KAZ} Well, as we all know that the conference is not all about your performances. There are different perspectives to this show business which is changing more rapidly than ever and the speakers and counselors they invite seem to be the people who are well aware of what is happening right now. 

IM} What sort of show do you have planned for the MMC attendees who come to hear you perform?

KAZ} We will give you the beats and the melodies that you never heard before. It's a journey and we will guide you through. So have yourself a nice drink and feel the good vibration.

Watch for this eclectic band at the thirteenth annual Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Their showcase will take place at Suba, on Saturday the 14th.

What is Japanese Gypsy Rock? 

It's not what one would imagine, combining Japanese 'Enka' music and gypsy music based on rock music.

That's cool. It's been done and I've heard it. I like some of that stuff. But it's still limited.

What Japanese Gypsy Rock really is is unlimited styles of music combined together. You can say it's 'world music combined with rock', well it sounds very vague and boring. Today, world fusion is a common cuisine, and you can go to a French restaurant and order sushi, or vice versa. You call your restaurant a 'world fusion' and it's nothing new, but if you call it a 'Japanese Gypsy Restaurant', wow, suddenly it's more interesting and intriguing. And you can be very creative and serve almost anything. Whatever you create is a Japanese Gypsy dish.

So here we are taking a liberty of calling our music "Japanese Gypsy Rock" and hoping you will enjoy our new dishes on the menu.

Kaz from Kagero (7/17/2008)