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DREÁM May 16, 2023

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When I talk, play, improvise, compose and perform music with my friend Akinori Fujimoto, we visit a place that exists in a kind of shared psychic reality, a blend of memory and imagination so swirled together that it feels as real as the air I breathe. We travel together, at once creating and exploring its landscapes and towns, the skies and seas. We learn the traditions and rituals, we work the land, plant seeds, and build a home. We have agency in this world, but we are not gods there; there is always something bigger than us and we are in awe of it, we respect it and are grateful for it.

Our portal to get there, like Alice’s rabbit hole, the wardrobe that leads to Narnia, Dorothy’s tornado, or Sun Ra’s home planet, is our music - our instruments and our bodies in space: flute, taiko (Japanese drums), bells and voices. We can improvise without a plan, we know when to start and finish, we land on the same spontaneous paths, rhythms, airways and structures, because we are the air and the earth in the same place and time, which is everywhere, and every-when, all at once.

Akinori is from Osaka, Japan. I am from Hereford, England. We collided in London in 2003. If we drew a Venn diagram, the overlap between us would be the world of Zashiki Warashi, our lived experience and our personal / cultural heritages. Our Japanese-Celtic roots are important to us (language, tradition, philosophy) but we are not bound to them. We know we rise from the water, and before that from energy and light, vibration and resonance - sound. We are shining a light on our roots, deep deep down, while stretching ourselves towards the sun. This world we create and inhabit is a place of symbiosis in an ecstatic dance of work and play.

After twenty years of forming and exploring this place, I believe it has become more vivid to me now that we have begun to sing into it, using a playful hybrid language that derives from Japanese, Old English and imagined language.

Our most recent song composition is an example of this. The words Eor and Ear (tree and sea) come from old English, as do Són and Dreám (sound and dream). Sodate is Japanese, used when encouraging someone or something to grow. These words carry natural power, but we invest ourselves in them, imbuing them with our intention-magic which becomes doing-magic and music-magic. We are the earth dreaming, its heart and breath our taiko and flute.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this work we do together is this: neither one of us can fully go there alone. Maybe that is what our music is teaching us. Our differences merge to make a stronger force together that can transform time and space, for us and our audiences. When we open our eyes, back in the rehearsal room or on the stage, we are two friends in a room. An infinity pool comes to rest, the last ripples from our final notes settle. We pack our instruments into our bags and set off back to our lives, our children, our day jobs. Who is dreaming our story? Who is singing us into existence? Whoever you are, wherever you are, we strike our drum, we sound our flute, we sing back to you.

Sodate.

Dreám.

Ura-Matsuri 2022 at St. Margaret's House in London Dec 19, 2022

Zashiki Warashi | 座敷童 was invited to perform at this year's Ura-Matsuri at St. Margaret's House in November.

Ura Matsuri started back in 2016. It is a one-night festival of live performances & installations by Japanese & other East Asian artists, showcasing works which celebrate both East Asian cultural heritage and contemporary British culture.

Aki performed the opening piece with Yuko Tsubame, whom Zashiki Warashi has performed with at Mortio, Hackney back in May this year, to kick the night off in the lovely garden of St. Margaret's House in East London. After a few acts in the garden, it was us, Zashiki Warashi's turn to take the event in to the indoor performance space where we performed a short set to a lovely group of very engaging audience.

It was great to see some people who we have not seen in a long time and also to share our music with some new people.

Thank you Ura Matsuri (https://www.facebook.com/uramatsuri)

We have a full-length theatre show "The Rainmaker"!!! Nov 15, 2022

Photo: Thanks to Shige Uehara (https://www.facebook.com/shige.uehara or @shige.df)

We did it. We played our first ever full-length concert. "The Rainmaker", the brand new theatrical concert we created.

Huge thanks to Samad and Poplar Union for hosting us and creating the opportunity for us to take this big step forward and thanks everyone who came along to share our special moment with us and made the night even more special on the 22nd of October.

"Dear Special Audience of Zashiki Warashi at Poplar Union

Our beginning as Zashiki Warashi was some 20 years ago as a 'Drum & Flute Duo', when Aki was performing with the western drum kit.

It has always been our vision to create a magical world that we and our audiences can travel to together.

We feel that we really began moving in the direction of discovering our Zashiki Warashi sound-world when we became the 'Taiko & Flute Duo' in the summer of 2018; a world that bridges our imagination, the magical world, and the real world.

As Mikey mentioned after the concert, we have had opportunities to briefly invite people into the world of Zashiki Warashi in the past, but our concert at Poplar Union this Saturday was a huge step for us in the next chapter in finding the magic. Being able to present our first ever full-length show "The Rainmaker" to all of you who came along was an absolute pleasure and we are very happy that we could share the special night with every one of you. Thank you for being there to share the moment with us.

The mischievous Zashiki Warashi spirit was in the house on Saturday: nobody saw the programme notes we had prepared for you that night. We have attached them to this e-mail as a pdf for your enjoyment.

If you would like to spend more time in the world of Zashiki Warashi, please connect with us, follow our footprints and our paths will cross again. Instagram: @ZashikiWarashi_Music Website: www.taikoandflute.com

The piece, “Rainmaker / The Spell” from the show is available to stream on most streaming platforms along with other recordings we have released. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1e0R6p2teWDJjLaJFbYo6O

Please tell your friends and family, neighbours and strangers about Zashiki Warashi and we hope you will bring them with you when you visit us again.

Our Daruma-Doll now has a complete pair of eyes, we go on to give an eye to the next Daruma-Doll.

Where laughter goes, good luck follows...

With best wishes Aki and Mikey"

Tickets on sale now for our " The Rainmaker" show on Saturday 22nd October at Poplar Union Sep 9, 2022

Zashiki Warashi is excited to bring you our very first ever full-length show "The Rianmaker" to Poplar Union, London this October.

Tickets on sale now.

Please share with your people and join us. See you there.

New Release: Tosagata-Bushi Sep 7, 2022

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十三の砂山 / The Dune of Tosa is a bon dance song that is said to be arranged from a sea song / boat song called 酒田節 / Sakata-Bushi. "十三 (Tosa)" is written as number "13" and is located North West side of Tsugaru Peninsula in Aomori, has a lagoon "Tosako" created by 13 streams of river flowing into it, now known as "Jyu-san ko".

During Edo period, this port town used to be a very vibrant place with a lot of sailors and tradesmen.

This is our improvised take on this folk song, imagining "The Dune of Tosa" that quietly contains all the stories of the place from the past.

New Release: Shimotsui-Bushi Sep 7, 2022

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Shimotsui is located in the south part of Okayama prefecture, facing the Seto Inland Sea. Back in the day, Shimotsui was a vibrant port town where people heading to visit Konpira Gongen (the god of merchant sailors) enshrined in Kagawa would leave the mainland towards Shikoku island. People from Osaka heading towards Hokkaido through Seto Inland Sea and Shimonoseki would also stop over at Shimotsui.

A song called "Tokohai-Bushi" that used to be sang around port towns of Seto Inland Sea was later rearranged and became Shimotsui-Bushi.

We improvised over the melody of Shimotsui-Bushi for this particular recording as the very first piece of our "Japanese Folk Song Series" that we planned to release time to time in the future, imagining the vibrant port town where the party would go on all night over drinks and music.

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