Japanese ‘Blonde’ Kazu strong on stage, real life

‘I get ideas from grooves’

By Cezary Owerkowicz

Her tour of Europe and the US with her group Blonde Redhead kicked off this month. The group members began the tour in Belgium which took them through The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Germany and Greece and will finally play in Knoxville, TN, US on the Big Ears Festival.

The festival provokes media interest and several interviews. Thanks to press interviews which helped me get interested in a very special female musician, her untypical attitude to life and music (for her it is a synonym) and the idea to share it with our readers.

Kazu Makino is a Japanese vocalist, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist born in Kyoto. She was born and brought up there, attended a private school and described her upbringing as very ‘oldfashioned’.

As a child she was trained on classical piano and then at school she was involved in forming and performing in allgirls band as a singer. There she became a composer of first ‘own lyrics’ she described as blues music. ‘When I was living in Japan my aim was to emanate of beauty. Only my feet were too large, my palms too massive and generally I was too tall...’, she remembers.

On popular TV clip ‘Equus’ from the 2004 album ‘Misery of Butterfly’ she refers to the accident which was crucial for the rest of her life. Since early childhood she was a devoted equestrian.

Unfortunately in 2002 she was met with an accident - she fell from a horseback. The horse trampled her jaw and crushed her facial bones, which required massive reconstructive surgery.

Her mouth was wired shut. ‘I was unable to sing, even to speak. I communicated with the others with groans and I was fed through a tube, with painful difficulty I shuffled to the bathroom.’ My body hadn’t known what happened. But it was an essential experience.’

‘I was somehow lucky not to be alone with that. I had the people around me feeding, serving medicines, cleaning. Without it I would have suffered much more. Thanks to them I haven’t felt hopeless.

Owerkowicz

Impossible

‘In the beginning I was even wondering why I felt somehow happy. I found it impossible to worry. I couldn’t speak but I was joking. I was insisting on my twin-brothers to play concerts and wrote on the paper: Now you will be singing!’

‘How I was able to deal with a threat of permanent deformed face? It liberated me. The accident changed me a lot from inside. Physically I was crushed but my feeling was good, optimistic, and stronger than any time before.

‘I thought: as I am feeling inside, it appeared outside. Before an accident it was not seen. I have seen inside the darkness and many problems not ‘proceeded’. I am an introvert squeezing everything inside. I faced always a problem to maintain contacts without obligations with the others.

‘People and their opinions frightened me. As a result I felt I am hiding something in front of the people. After an accident my image became as complicated as my character. It taught me a lot.’

She convalesced for months, using the time to write songs. ‘Long time ago I recognized myself as a vain. The situation proved that I’m not, it is my power. Soon I went to the street, to the people. When I play I disappear myself, I serve the sounds. The beauty fascinates me, I like it but it is not the most important thing. I have much more to offer than an image.

‘I was growing in Kyoto, Japan. This is a separate, strange world even compared to other places in Japan. Kyoto is ancient and its citizens do everything to preserve it. Everything has to be beautiful. Its population grows in the cult of aesthetics.

Ceremonies

‘Since my early age I was taught how to create beauty and to be beautiful. I took part in shows of traditional dance and songs, in ceremonies of making tea. I enjoyed it. I was not so beautiful but I had a hope to be. But (it was) hopeless.

‘It is not easy to live there being an outsider. My mom was from the other region and she was always ‘a stranger’. In spite of years of living there and social participation she was always asked ‘What is your name?’

‘In Kyoto many noble families have settled down to know their centuries old roots, living in the homes of their ancestors and carrying their noble family names. I don’t blame them: they have to be like to preserve their tradition in the constantly modernizing world. I became also somehow a conservative.’

In 1995 she moved to the US because of family problems. The main motive was to go ‘as far as possible’ even if it meant to the opposite pole. Yes, she felt sick ‘but when you move once from Kyoto you have no return’. Also ‘music kept me on the other side of the world. Music is my home, my ensemble is my family’, she says. She settled in New York and studied art. But in the US she started to play also with twin brothers, but this time not with her siblings.

Successful

She met by chance at a Italian restaurant the Italian twins, Simone and Amadeo Pace, born in Milan, but grew up in Montreal, studied jazz in Boston and joined the New York underground music scene. It seems Kazu was the engine and knitted a successful cooperation for a quarter of decade.

They ‘christened’ the band Blonde Redhead after a song on the 1981 EP ‘A Taste of DNA’ by the no-wave group DNA. They play alternate rock composed by Kazu Makino, singing vocal and playing rhythm, guitar with Simone and Amadeo on drums and lead guitar/vocals, respectively.

Their first self-titled album was released in 1995 as well as the second, with Italian title La Mia Vita Violenta. Finally until now they have released nine albums but the most popular is the ‘Misery of Butterfly’ and the last ‘Barragan’.

Their cooperation was amazing: conservative, remaining silent, going straight to the point Japanese and outspoken, tempestuous Italian, considering always and for everything one thousand options.

Their free behavior would be in Japan meddlesome and too direct. However contrasts are joining as complementary, and influence mutually. Even after one tour around Europe Kazu decided to settle in Italy but the Italians stayed in New York. They meet for rehearsals, concerts and recording sessions.

These days Kazu speaks English easier and better than Japanese. “In Japanese I am polite, correct, in English I express myself. You wouldn’t imagine what a difference it is.

Once a producer insisted to record something with Japanese flavor or in Japanese, and I recorded the text in English pronounced backwards with Japanese intonation. Within twenty minutes I found the real Japanese words sounding like English pronounced backwards. ‘What a sense? ‘Sense was ... in music’.”

Kazu Makino is not so tiny or crunchy but very delicate Japanese looks so strong on the stage and in real life. Funny but she said that she had never intended to take music for a career, and that she also suffers from stage fright until now...

NB. Kazu is still an avid equestrian and keeps a horse called Harry. She has stated that she often gains inspiration from horses while writing music. ‘They are so musical in their movements and in the sound they make. Everything they do is rhythmic. I get ideas from grooves — rhythmic ideas — just from riding’.

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His e-mail address is: cowerkowicz @yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@hotmail.com