Musashi by Joe Wu. Source: Mark de Clive-Lowe
I feel like the song “Niten-Ichi” acts like a nice metaphor for your career. Niten-Ichi Ryu is this samurai swordsmanship technique that involves wielding two swords and you could say that about your whole career where you can wield both electronic and acoustic swords proficiently. Is there some truth to that?
Absolutely! I wanted a piece of art in the studio and I hit up my boy, Joe Wu, who is a great painter. I told him I wanted a red samurai in the studio. He’s like, “Cool. I’m going to do Miyamoto Musashi.” That’s how he viewed me. He’s a dancer and a music-head, he comes to the jazz gigs and the clubs gigs and he said it has to be Miyamoto. He did this amazing painting with a samurai with two swords and this big koi fish behind it. It was super dope.
I definitely looked at myself like that. I relate equally and I equal reverence to the jazz world and the club music world. That’s not such an uncommon thing now. You’re getting these melds where Shabaka is doing The Comet is Coming and it’s basically rave music. It’s different coming from London because you’re coming in that eclecticness and that understanding.
More and more, you’re seeing these hybrids and everyone has a different way they balance those two worlds, which is cool.
During our first interview you mentioned you often write songs and just title it “Sketch 9” or whatever. It seems like writing this album was different and you have more of a portrait in mind when writing these songs.
Every single track had this meaning and depth to it.
Is that the first time in a long time that you’re writing within that context?
Probably the first time ever. I’ve had particular tunes and compositions I’ve made that I know it’s really telling and channeling something, but I might not know what. There are other tunes where I’m a little more pragmatic and I’m sitting down writing a tune.
But with this, it was about sitting down and reaching into my heart and feeling my connection to these things and to Japan and growing up that way. What does that feel like? Then writing some music and knowing that this matches the feeling. Some of them I might not have titled at that point, but I knew it was locked. I feel like this music is coded with a whole living subconscious breathing thing that people can connect with because of that.
But then a tune like “Mizugaki” — that’s my mom’s family name. There’s a very deep historic meaning to that where mizugaki is a protection around something sacred like a wall. The music was written that way where you listen to the track and it’s a really modal stoic vamp at the top and that’s the wall. Then it builds to a melody statement, which is like you’re getting through the wall and seeing the sacred thing inside. After the melody statement it gets into this lush head-nod. Then you’re inside the sacred thing. It’s a real consciousness about that.
And the more I talk about the project, I realize it really brings the ancestral connection home to me. So I look at a composition like that and I’m like, “Of course! The mizugaki— that protecting wall — are my ancestors. My ancestors have me, they’re holding space for, and they’re protecting me.” The metaphors and the parallels are really substantial.
In digging deeper, you also uncovered some things about your mom’s family name you didn’t before. Prior to this, you just thought that mizugaki meant “watergate.”
There were two stories because my dad — the New Zealander — was old school and patriarchal. My mother, as a Japanese woman, didn’t have much of a voice in the family home. So his stories were the loudest. He passed now, so my mom and I have these amazing conversations about this stuff.
She knew some of this and she never told me!
She was like, “Yeah… well you know… your father.”
I’m learning and understanding so much. The entire project is an identity quest for myself where I’m coming from, where my ancestors are coming from, so I can know where I’m going to. It’s a compass-bearing check. Where is my true north?
Speaking of your mom, you released Heritage during the week of your mother’s birthday. Have you ever released an album this personal?
No. Never.
What’s the motivating factor, at this stage in your career, to give such an honest portrait of yourself?
I thought the albums I was making were personal. Especially through my London years and as a producer, but there was something impersonal about that. It was more of showcasing a skill set, which was great for me.
When I was younger in New Zealand, before I went to London, I put out a couple acoustic jazz records. Those were honest to where I was at in my life, but I wasn’t ready to make statements.
Even when I started touring in Japan, I had a trio there in 1996, my mom was like, “You’re playing Japan, you have to do arrangements of Japanese songs.”
I pulled out a couple of these late ‘50s Ahmad Jamal style arrangements of these Japanese folk-songs. I was like, “I know how to make this sound hip in a trio!” But it wasn’t about connecting with the actual song and the roots and culture I was arranging. Whereas now, that’s a whole connective thing. I understand how that connects through my life and I think I just had to live a certain amount of life to get to a point.
The first time I performed half the material was at this concert at Grand Performances.
Right. That was 2016? 2017?
That was summer of ‘17. A lot of the material was written for that. I finished that gig and I never felt the way I felt after that.
Sometimes I do a jazz gig and on some level my brain is on jazz mode. If I’m doing a dance floor gig, on some level my brain is on house/broken-beat mode. But this was different. There was no mode at all. It was like, this is me. I’m just trying to share my essence and the [fact] that people are open to that is really humbling. It feels amazing.
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