Digital music pioneer Ikutaro Kakehashi dies

Roland founder

TOKYO, April 3, (AP): Ikutaro Kakehashi, the Japanese engineer who pioneered digital music and founded synthesizer giant Roland Corp, has died, his company ATV Corp said Monday. He was 87.

Kakehashi, reputed to have devoted his life to the pursuit of live entertainment, had a definitive impact on shaping the sound of electronic, hip hop and dance music.

He founded Roland in 1972, and the company’s first product was the rhythm machine. Since then, Roland instruments have graced the stage of top artists from Lady Gaga to Omar Hakim.

Kakehashi received a Grammy in 2013 for developing MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which digitally connects instruments.

Upon receiving the Grammy, Kakehashi noted how quickly the years had passed since the debut of the MIDI protocol in 1983.

“It is my great pleasure that MIDI played a significant role in their prevalence”, he said at that time on the Roland website. “This year’s Technical Grammy Award is the result of the cooperation by the companies who worked towards the same dream — growth of electronic musical instruments”.

ATV, a company Kakehashi founded in 2013, after he left Roland, declined to give details about his death, citing the family’s wishes for privacy. Japanese media reports said Kakehashi died on Saturday.

“Music literally would not be what it is today without Mr Kakehashi”, said Steven Fisher, now at Yamaha and a former employee at Roland, who worked with Kakehashi on electronic percussion and drum products.

Kakehashi taught him not to plan for something perfect, instead advising him to “take action, follow your passion and respect your competition”, Fisher said on his Facebook page Saturday, mourning his death.

Kakehashi always stressed that the advent of electronic music was not at odds with acoustic instruments, or that it was trying to undermine the rich legacy of music.

Kakehashi

Great

But amplification held great potential, including the possibility to create various speakers as well as present music to far larger audiences, like the hundreds at concert halls, not the previous dozens in old-style chamber settings, he said.

One Roland product he liked to show off was a guitar that was a collaboration with Fender, which could not only play Stratocaster riffs but also the sounds of an acoustic guitar, sitar and 12-string acoustic guitar, as well as instantly drop octaves and distort notes.

“The options have widened”, Kakehashi said of electronic music at a Roland seminar in 2012. “I believe the ways of musical expression have expanded”.

Chicago blues musician Lonnie Brooks, whose relationship with his adopted hometown was cemented by his hit recording of Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago”, died at age 83, his son Ronnie Baker Brooks said Sunday.

A prolific musician known for his intense guitar solos and raspy but strong voice, Brooks died on Saturday night, his son said. Brooks came to the blues by a circuitous route. Born Lee Baker Jr in Louisiana, he was focused on guitar when he was noticed and invited to Chicago by soul singer Sam Cooke more than 50 years ago. He stayed and changed his name to Lonnie Brooks.

He recorded a number of albums for Chicago-based Alligator Records’ “Living Chicago Blues” series including classics such as “Bayou Lightning”, “Hot Shot”, and “Lone Star Shootout”. He appeared in Dan Aykroyd’s film “Blues Brothers 2000”.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1992, Brooks said the blues did not come naturally to him at first.

“Then one night, I saw Magic Sam (Maghett) in a little blues club on the South Side. He went on stage right after he’d gotten into a big fight with his girlfriend, and it was like he was taking it out on his guitar. I seen how it came from the heart, so I went home to the basement, and got into that mood that Magic Sam had been in, and the blues came to me”, Brooks said.

He toured for many years with his son Wayne and Ronnie, who are both guitar players.

“He was a great family man and a great musician and did a hell of a job with both”, Ronnie Baker Brooks said.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called him a blues legend “with a towering talent and soulful style that won him legions of fans across the country and around the world”.

Darcus Howe, one of the most prominent black activists of his generation in Britain, has died. He was 74, and had been suffering from prostate cancer.

Howe was a leader of the UK’s little-chronicled black power movement, which battled institutional racism and challenged the prevailing view that racism wasn’t a problem in modern-day Britain.

Genuine

“He was a genuine radical”, Howe’s biographer, Robin Bunce of Cambridge University, said. “He was at the center for bringing racial justice to the UK”.

Howe rose to prominence in 1970 when he masterminded a campaign to stop the Metropolitan Police from closing down the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill, a hub of black culture. Police had raided the restaurant a dozen times, triggering a backlash that climaxed in a pitched battle between police and 250 protesters.

Howe and eight others — the so-called Mangrove Nine — were charged with riot, affray and assault. But the trial, and Howe’s ultimate acquittal, brought public attention to the issue.

A decade later, he organized a march to protest what activists saw as the failure of police to fully investigate allegations that a racially motivated arson attack caused the New Cross Fire, in which 13 young black people died.

Born in Trinidad, Howe came to Britain in 1961 with the intention of studying law. Instead, he became a writer. At the advice of his uncle, the Caribbean intellectual C.L.R. James, Howe in 1968 attended a congress of black writers in Montreal, where he met members of the US-based Black Panther Party.

He recalled his early days in London in a 2013 column for the Guardian newspaper.