Hi!
Under Virginia Chong’s request, I’m talking to you about wapop, my project
I love traditional Japanese music like sokyoku, heikyoku and jiuta
I’m in touch with people who play traditional Japanese instruments and I know these people from Internet, to create the wapop. Wapop (a fusion of the Japanese word for traditional music, wagaku, and pop) is a project focused on contaminations between traditional Japanese instruments and singing styles (utaimono and katarimono) with modern pop music,but not only this one. We want to do original songs, but now I’m writing for an idea to create a virtual tribute cover album for a Japanese unit called Rin’. The unit was active from 2004 to 2009. We discovered this unit in 2015 and we want to do something to make Rin’s music survive.
J The featured traditional Japanese instruments (also in the original songs in the future) are: koto, juushichigen , biwa, shakuhachi and some percussions (taiko and kabuki ones, but not in all the songs). In Rin’s concerts, they played live with their Japanese instruments, along with a background track. We don’t have a studio. We’ll use multitracking and will mix each recorded track. We do this project for a symbolic meaning referred to blindness and art, commemorating blind Japanese players in ancient days (biwahoshi, todoza, goze).
Rin’s member were Mana (koto/shamisen/juushichigen), Tomoka (biwa/shakuhachi) and Chie (koto/shamisen/juushichigen, but she played mainly juushichigen).
In our project there are people who play the Japanese stuff, while people who compose the backgrounds. Most of us also will sing. We do this without a
commercial purpose (money or somewhat related to them).
I am blind and I use a screen reader to use the computer.
The wapop project isn’t only Rin’ tribute, but there are plans to do original songs
We’re organising the work, the project won’t start now, but in 2017. Even if the project is not related to money, some are professional traditional instruments player!
I want to tell you a little story about the members
Disclaimer: as of now, someone has leaved wapop and I will let you updated about member changes
- Sugiyama Yukie
Yukie is an ikuta-ryu koto/shamisen/juushichigen performer, born in Chiba, Japan. I found her here:
sugiyama utaki koto school chiba
Utaki is her stage name. I have a really hard friendship with her! She is a very nice, patient and cheerful person! She wants to experiments new direction within music, not only playing sokyoku - Dominiqhe Houlet
Born in Lille, France, he is not a professional player, but plays shakuhachi very well (I’m not talking!). I found him on another forum about shakuhachi and he accepted to collaborate with us! Anyway, I will search for another shakuhachi players, because I’m not very sure… - Akane OOue
I don’t know almost nothing about her, but I know she is a friend of a friend of Yukie. She plays satsuma biwa and has experience in both traditional Japanese music and new wave
Guests:
- Marthe PIeron
She is a girl like me, 16 years old. She doesn’t came from traditional Japanese music, but she got in love listening to it and will sing a song called “smile on”. She is from Kortenberg, Belgium. She doesn’t study singing - Philip Horan
He’s Irish and he’s a professional shakuhachi player. e’ll play four songs with us - Suyeon
I don’t know her real name. Despite her nickname is kinda Korean, she’s America. She’ll sing with us a song called “kagami tsuki”. She doesn’t study singing