Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi All, I wasn't sure where to post this.

I normally do not ask people to help with donations but my artistic home, La MaMA E.T.C. in New York City is in a fund raising drive to win a $50,000 grant.

Presently, there is a contest where the the top four non-profits that gets the most $10 donations wins the grants.

Why should you be interested? Well, aside from being responsible for introducing me to the shakuhachi, the founding artistic director Ellen Stewart holds the highest medal of honor from the Japanese government for her tireless work in presenting the Japanese culture (among others) through the arts in the USA. To begin with, she presented a young experimental rock group called Tokyo Kid Brother in 1970 that produced an Off-Broadway hit called The Golden Bat. Tokyo kid Brother was in residence at La MaMa at the time. In the group was a young Akikazu Nakamura.



Ellen Stewart was also the first to bring Butoh legend Kazuo Ohno to the United States.  La MaMa E.T.C. is probably the only place in American where one can walk into a show any given night of the week and hear the shakuhachi unexpectedly. Two of the resident house musicians were Japanese and Japanese American and played the shakuhachi often when scoring a La MaMa production. This is how I came to discover the shakuhachi in 1992.

http://www.lamamatapestry.blogspot.com/

Those interested in helping can visit the blog and donate at the right of the screen.  All it takes is $10. It's not the amount of donation that matters here. It's the head count.

In addition, La MaMa directly supports the shakuhachi world today by supporting my group SLANT. Ellen houses our equipment and provides free rehearsal space (those in NYC can truly appreciate this as we all live in boxes and making noise [our work] is a luxury). I play the shakuhachi in all our shows across the USA and beyond.

Thanks for your time.
Namaste, Perry

Last edited by Yungflutes (2008-01-26 16:07:05)