Brian Kobayakawa

Over the weekend I returned to an ongoing project, tracking down boats built by my Grandfather and his brothers at their pre-internment boat-building shop, Kobayakawa Boatworks. This boat, the Carloda N., sank years ago. Armed with a hydrophone and a crew of local divers (one of whom I’ve been friends with since we were kids) I went digging deep for sounds to sample. Some sea lions came to dance to the underwater beats! This boat, like the shop that built it, was part of the dispossession, displacement and internment of Japanese Canadians from 1942-1949. The phrase “enemy-alien” that has recently resurfaced in our news-cycle was used then, here, too. I’ll be processing these recordings (and feelings) for some time; turning it into some new music. I’ve added an older tune of mine here, “Boatworks 1: Sannox” featuring percussion made from my first boat find. Shout-outs to the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society @jclegacies and the Past Wrongs, Future Choices project @landscapesofinjustice for all their support, and to the Hens: @innocent_eyes_underwater @krystaljanicki & @trishastovel (🎥) for taking the plunge.

I’ve wanted to make music for the movies for so long, and somehow, my debut score is for a film directed by one of my absolute favorite filmmakers, Charlie Kaufman, and written by one of my absolute favorite poets, Eva H.D. Jackals & Fireflies screens for the first time this Thursday, at the IFC in NYC!

We’re chuffed to put this song out into the world today. This is called Stone Between the Lips, please add and stream it wherever you get your music! With us on it are @joshuavt on drums, @tsumi16 whistling, and @rgrunwald on piano. The shadow puppetry in this video, taken from the installation, is by @mindofasnail .

These photos are super important to me. I took them at Slocan Lake, in November, with @universeofannie and Kintsugi, the musical art installation we built into my late grandmother’s sewing machine. We’d been driving all day, heading for the Banff Centre, where we would present it at a conference. But, this stop along the way was what the trip was really about, because Slocan City is where the internment camp where my dad was born once stood. As we drove from Vancouver to Slocan, we were never unaware of the parallels between our journey and the one this same sewing machine had travelled 80+ years earlier, as one of the only “chattels” allowed to follow my grandparents from the coast to the camps. After the war, the government forbid a return to anywhere west of the Rockies. Next stop was Montréal, and then later to Ontario, where, in my parents basement, pre-teen me would shoot tennis balls and hockey pucks at the sewing machine for hours on end. It was dark, cold and snowy when we pulled in to Slocan, and we were road-weary from some blizzardy driving. Even though there was no audience, no gig, no exhibit here, we knew we needed to set up the machine. We picked a spot on the beach, where the epic mountains lining that valley could surround it once again. We barely spoke as we pulled the road case from the van and began to unpack it. The next day we took it up the road to Roseberry, where some of Annie’s ancestors had been interned. After Banff, we brought it back to Vancouver, a reversal of course to where its journey with my family began, 80+ years earlier. Since then, it’s been at the @nikkeimuseum and since February on display as part of their exhibit “Umami: Savouring Nikkei Artistic Identity” And, wouldn’t you know it, they chose one of the photos I took that day in Slocan for the exhibit posters! Umami opened in February and runs until September 27. It’s a group exhibit presented in two parts, with Kintsugi featured in both. I’m so glad I can be there tonight, 6-8pm in the Ellipse lobby of the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, in Burnaby, as Part 2 kicks off with an opening event and artists’ talk (and a Cup Noodles ramen bar)!

Released today: this single that I am very proud to have co-produced with @peter_dreams . You might have seen Peter recently playing Bert in SINNERS, the new Ryan Coogler movie! I think Peter and I first met in Montreal, late-night in a park where an impromptu game of adult DUCKDUCKGOOSE had just broken out. It was 2014 and we both had performed at Osheaga that day (he with his band @julytalk and me with @serenaryder ) and had our brains re-arranged by a mesmerizing set by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds that evening. I’m not sure we spoke again for nearly a decade, before getting to know each other the last couple years since he joined 🥩🏒Maet HC, my beloved hockey team. Peter is a gem, and has become one of my favorite artists anywhere, and I’m soooo thrilled that he asked me to not only to play on this Otis Redding cover, but to co-produce it as well. Please check it out!

The first time that today’s news was the day’s news, in 2016, I started writing this piece to express some of what I was feeling. It’s a shout into the darkness, both out of frustration, and towards what’s arrived. It’s hope for something better. It’s called Hang On, You Demons! and I never got around to sharing this video I made for it when I released the album of the same name a couple years later, so here it is now.

I went to Kamloops, but my bass went to Kelowna. Thanks to those involved with finding this orange beast for me so I could still have all the fun that was playing with @jillbarber @drewjurecka & @natehiltz last night!

Last @serenaryder gig of the summer tonight. It’s been a big summer, gonna sleep 🛌 for a week! 🩶🩶🩶 w/ @milesondrums and @matthewmanifould

Our interactive installation Kintsugi is installed and ready in the gallery here in Vancouver: @centre_a ! Feels monumental to have shipped it back here, where my fam first acquired the sewing machine, before internment

🔈🔉🔊🆙🐋🐳🐋🐳🎂🐋🐳🎂🐋🐳🎂🐋🐳🎂🐳🐳🐋🐋🎂🎂🐳🐳🐳🐋🐋🐋🎂🎂🎂🐻‍❄️

New single! TODAY @universeofannie and I release KINTSUGI. The song is called KINTSUGI, as is the art-installation where we built songs and videos into my grandmother’s sewing machine, and made them accessible via magnets and sensors to anyone who activates the pedal of the antique machine. KINTSUGI is a traditional Japanese art form that uses a gold resin to fix broken ceramics. It’s a practice about emphasizing the beauty of the damage and the repair. Our song KINTSUGI is about that too. It’s about the bruise you don’t want to fade. It’s about coming to understand that what makes us who we are is forged through hurt. It’s about trauma, inter-generational and otherwise. It’s about holding our wounds up, proud, for all to see! Annie and I wrote the song together, she sang it, and I played the bass and synths and the drum machine. That’s @joshuavt on drum kit and @rgrunwald on piano and Wurlitzer, and that’s Annie’s dad Craig speaking, a sample captured mid-conversation. Mixing by @joshuavt and mastering by @dreamlands_mastering and shadow puppetry by @mindofasnail and background nature video capture by me, in Slocan, BC right where an internment camp once stood. KINTSUGI the art-installation is in a truck right now, en route to Vancouver, back to where it started its journey, where it will be part of the @powellstfest next weekend! Annie and I will be there too, performing live for the first time, more on that soon

First few hours in Churchill have been pretty wild!