Musical Intermission: Yoshida Brothers

Took a break from costuming (only mostly) yesterday to go see the Yoshida Brothers, a shamisen playing duo at Yoshi's jazz club in San Francisco. I found them by stumbling on this Youtube video some time ago. Then I heard that they were playing this week and figured they were worth seeing after listening to some of their other songs. They have some surprising influences in their songs, including blues and rock, for an instrument that sounds very traditionally Japanese. My current favorite songs of theirs are Storm (the song in the video above), Kodo, Rising and Indigo.

I'd never been to Yoshi's in SF before. The performance area was intimate and people were crammed in at small cocktail tables on several tiers. The sign outside said it can hold maybe 400 people, but it felt smaller than that. Last night, the brothers were accompanied by a really good drummer using a wide variety of percussion instruments from snares and cymbals to bongos and what looked like a set of chimes. Clearly they'd been working with him before because their point-counterpoint exchanges sounded dead on even with their complex syncopation. Everything in the performance seemed very exacting, even down to the timing and shape of the lighting that went with the music. Watching them play, their fingers flying over the three strings, made my fingers hurt. Afterwards, they were available for CD signing so we added their Best of CD to our collection.

I have a feeling I'll be sewing to the sounds of shamisen in the next couple of weeks.