Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto: Koto Performer and Teacher

Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto is a California-based Koto performer and teacher, and she also created “Hidden Legacy”, the story of the Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the American WWII Internment Camps. In this episode she performs some incredibly beautiful koto music, and there are wonderful stories with each piece. Like all my episodes, this is available as both video and podcast, and for those of you watching the video, you’ll notice that Shirley generously re-recorded one of her performances of a very special piece. If you want to jump straight to some music, or different topics in our conversation, you can use the timestamps. However, I encourage you to listen to the whole episode, with Shirley’s engaging insights about family and identity.

This is also a video, and you can also read the transcript; everything is linked in the description to my website where you can sign up for my newsletter and get exclusive sneak peeks for upcoming episodes: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/shirley-kazuyo-muramoto

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Hidden Legacy film: https://youtu.be/HDqKDexQRSg Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:33) the koto with demo (08:13) intro to Sakura, Kimio Eto (12:15) koto music Sakura (16:47) more about Kimio Eto (18:31) playing jazz and different styles on the koto, traditional koto schools, Destiny Muhammad (25:56) making different arrangements for koto for students (29:06) koto music, Maboroshi o Oute by Chikushi Katsuko (34:12) Japanese culture: music names in Japan (37:35) Japanese Internship camps during WWII, “Hidden Legacy” (54:21) learning Japanese, going to Japan (01:00:55) college and school years (01:03:21) intro to Tsubasa ni Notte, Shoko Hikage, Kazue and Tadao Sawai (01:09:29) koto music Tsubasa ni Notte by Sawai Tadao (01:19:28) notation (01:22:10) benefits of improvisation (01:24:45) Japanese traditions, Brian in Japan (01:29:52) teaching koto