Fish Nor Fowl
Years ago, I was discussing 21st Century challenges in the music industry with my mother. At the time, I was still playing quite a bit of Irish music, where my two main markets were The United States and Japan. Either place, with a name like Hanz Araki it’s a tough sell. She said well, you’re neither fish nor fowl. Not Irish enough, and not Japanese enough, that is. I have never—not once—played a show where someone hasn’t asked me how someone like me got into Irish music. My pat answer has always been well, my mother’s Irish as if that somehow explains it. And that it needs explaining.
This is on my mind a lot as I make my way to Ireland for the European Shakuhachi Society’s Shakuhachi Summer School in Dublin. After more than 25 years of playing Irish music in Japan, the shoe made the great migration to the other foot.
Shakuhachi was my first instrument, and it’s where I got my start as a professional musician at 17, which was a late start in my family. In my first lesson with my father, knowing I was a huge Simon & Garfunkel fan, he wrote out the tune for Scarborough Fair in the ro-tsu-re notation for shakuhachi. Putting an unfamiliar system to a familiar melody made learning the terminology nearly instantaneous. A few minutes later he had me playing El Condor Pasa before moving on to my first piece of Japanese music, Kimi ga Yo, the Japanese National Anthem.
Despite having Irish on my mother’s side, Irish music was not a family tradition. Growing up in an ethnomusicological family guaranteed a broad spectrum of different sounds in the household. Strains of Javanese Gamelan and Indian ragas seesawed with tunes from The Chieftains; all of it working its way into my childhood soundtrack. In high school, my friend Mike Cody introduced me to The Pogues after hearing their album Red Roses For Me on KCMU (the antecedent of KEXP) in ’85.
During breaks in my shakuhachi practice I started to teach myself Irish melodies on the shakuhachi. Eventually I got a penny whistle and after I came back to the States, Mike and a few friends from high school and I started a pub band doing the songbooks of Makem and Clancy, Dubliners, and The Pogues.
The unholy union: shakuhachi and bodhran (Irish frame drum), Dingle, Co. Kerry.
Seattle had a remarkably strong Irish and Irish music scene at the time, and I fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of jigs, reels, slides, and polkas. I also discovered how much I enjoy singing. I joined a band from Canada and toured all across North America and met even more amazing musicians. I was so deeply absorbed in the world I was caught up in that I didn’t pay much heed to the constant barrage of you sure don’t look Irish! nonsense.
At a festival in Spokane, Washington for instance, an American woman asked me what gives you the right to play our music? I’ve had grown American men twice my size threaten me with physical violence shouting you’re not f••king Irish!! And I’ve had friends—close friends—suggest that maybe I’m just being overly sensitive and that I shouldn’t let it get to me.
The fish nor fowl conundrum is a very big part of the Irish American experience, but it isn’t exclusive to the US. In 1999, I was a part of the first wave of Irish musicians traveling to Japan. Guinness had entered a partnership with Sapporo and Irish pubs sprang up all across the country. There was a massive nationwide launch coinciding with Halloween that year and there were more gigs than we knew what to do with. At one point, every station on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line had an Irish pub. Over the years, as more and more Japanese people became proficient on a wide range of instruments, my reception there cooled, and not because interest in Irish music was waning. I was no longer Irish or Japanese enough for Japan.
with Colleen Raney (bodhran) Genta Fukue (guitar) Fukuoka, Japan
Ireland, however, was never a place I went to tour. Instead, it was always a place I went to sort of recharge. To remember why and how much I love this music. I was never asked why I played Irish music in Ireland. Between those visits, I’d get beaten down again, with the 90% rejection rate for festivals and concert series, and the thinly veiled or overtly racist comments. Inevitably I’d ask myself what the hell I was doing.
Outside the Crane Bar, Co. Galway.
I remember doing a radio interview as a member of a trad’ Irish music quartet. All of us were US born but curiously, I was the only one with an Irish parent. That didn’t stop the host from pointing at each of my bandmates saying well I know why you play Irish music, and why you play Irish, and why you play Irish music…before landing on me to say but why do you play Irish music? The implication was clear, and this was not a new or isolated experience. Once again I was being asked to justify my own existence.
The most exhausting part of all this is the question of authenticity. Authenticity is at the apex of traditional music no matter the tradition. In the pre-Titanic days, Irish music was a little more meritorious; good music was good music. Irish music was particularly refreshing because it was somewhat immune to rock-stardom. There was respect shown to musicians who carried tradition, but not because of where they headlined. At a session, you might sit between a world-renowned fiddle player and a farmer who also happened to play accordion. Respect for the music superseded everything. When you started to hear things like The Jimi Hendrix of Irish fiddle it was already too late. What was considered real Irish music in the collective consciousness had become something else entirely. At least in America. (And Japan.)
If not for the pandemic, who knows what I’d be up to. Because once the music industry shut down, I realized in its absence how much I didn’t miss it—at least not having to answer for my otherness. I missed playing, but more than that, I missed my friends, and playing music with friends.
Obviously, through lockdown, if I was going to play music, it would be solo. Playing Irish music by myself only worsened the feeling of isolation; I found myself reaching for the shakuhachi more and more often. Sifting through the pieces my father taught me in order was cathartic (I think at some point I even played Scarborough Fair though that was pure nostalgia). By the time I had revisited every Kinko-ryu honkyoku (literally, the “original music” of shakuhachi), I felt a surprising peace. The serenity and joy of playing shakuhachi, my first instrument, had been renewed.
I also realized just how much the Irish music tradition doesn’t need me. It needs those every day people who gather to share stories, songs, dance steps, and tunes who learned their music from friends and family. Japanese music and Irish music have that in common: it must be shared more than taught. The personal connection is the lifeblood of the music.
I’ll always love Irish music from the very bottom of my heart, but the only time I find myself wanting to play it is when I’m with friends. If it happens on stage, great. If it happens in the kitchen, also great.
But most of all, I found that when I play shakuhachi, I didn’t question my own authenticity. While it can make me heated to hear people disparage my father, or to try and downplay the contributions of my grandfathers, for myself, I’m comfortable with my place in this tradition. My father and I haven’t played together in over a decade, but he continues to inspire me to keep improving; to grow and refine as a player and teacher. Hopefully before my time is through, I can impart some of the knowledge that has been handed down to me and help keep this tradition alive. And if you think I’m not Japanese enough to do that, I couldn’t possibly care less.