Welcome to Big Ears conversations about music.
I'm your host Sarah Gilletti. Today on the podcast, we're
exploring bloodlines interwoven with flutist and taiko drummer
Karu Watanabe. Watanabe is a master of Japanese
flutes and taiko drums. A self-described regular
American kid from St. Louis, MO, he's the son of
Japanese immigrants and symphonic musicians, shaped by
two years on a remote Japanese island, years of touring with a
taiko ensemble, Kodo, and collaborations with Yo-yo Ma,
Laurie Anderson, Jason Moran, Andre 3000 and the Silk Road
Ensemble. In 2024, with support from the
Mellon Foundation, Log Haven Artist Residency and the Aslan
Foundation, Watanabe launched Bloodlines Interwoven, a multi
year project exploring heritage, immigration and diaspora.
It begins with family history and grows into shared creation,
bringing together musicians and storytellers.
At Biggers 2026, the project unfolds across various venues in
downtown Knoxville. No one is better suited to this
conversation than veteran journalist and music critic
Larry Blumenfeld, who has followed Bloodlines since its
inception. Blumenfeld was the perfect
person to speak with Karu about where it began, how it has
grown, and how it takes shape at Big Ears.
Let's listen in. Karu, I know that in Knoxville
this year at Big Ears 2026, you will be leading a residency of
the Bloodlines Interwoven project, which will unfold
across several performances. This is something you began in
2024, and what was the idea then?
So I was approached by Baryshnikov Arts to curate a
quote UN quote world music festival.
And for anyone who knows me that it's kind of the a phrase that I
abhor because the, the term world music instantly centers
who the world is and who's outside of that world, right?
And so I said, yes, let's do something.
And it's one thing to curate these again, quote UN quote,
world music festivals where you have a group from Venezuela and
a group from Japan and a group from Iran playing back-to-back
one after the other. And there's a lot of value in
that. And then there's a lot of people
here in New York who do that very well.
So I didn't feel I wanted to do that.
And because I am a musician and I love to collaborate and I love
especially reaching across to different cultures and different
parts of the world's and different musical styles and
artistic styles. I wanted to figure out a way to
bring together a diverse array of musicians from representing
different geographies and ethnicities and and religions
and, and musical practices and bring them together and find a
way of collaborating. That perhaps is coming from a
lot of my other practices where we don't just come and play
music together, but we actually start sharing our family
histories. I remember you early on telling
me, well, this is a chamber jazz opera ensemble orchestra that
along with music making also deals with storytelling and
ritual. And for me, I've experienced it
as everything from Here's a great ensemble theater company
to here's a great musical ensemble to here's a family
getting together the way families get together.
Now I know a lot of this has to do with bringing, when you say
bloodlines, bringing personal histories and lineages together,
right? Yeah, which gets complicated
very quickly because some people are more comfortable sharing
than others. And so if right from the
beginning I'm saying, you know, share what you want to share,
share what you can share. And that in itself is a very
interesting process. Some people like myself, I can
be very linear, linear like, oh, my grandfather was born in this
part of Japan, moved here when he was a certain age and went
through this and that. And then my parents moved here
at that point, you know, and and kind of speaking very along a
timetable and other people will come in.
I remember Mino Sinalu came. In and the great percussionist.
Great great percussionist played with Miles and and Turby and all
these legends weather Report and he in a beautiful way just kind
of spoke in circles like not no beginning and no end.
Just kind of mentioning time when he went to a club and met
Sting and this happened and that happened.
And then I was playing guitar at one point.
And you just, there's a full spectrum of people who really
brought interesting storytelling, the way they told
the story, the way they expressed their story.
Just very recently, Unia Eddie Kwan came and when usually
instead of starting from the beginning, she put a a small
carpet out in front of the in the middle of the circle where
we're sitting and, and took out a few objects, clearly very
significant, meaningful objects to her and placed them on the
floor and took out a gong and just started gently beating the
gong and just kind of walked in a small circle and, and then sat
down and started, started telling her story.
And immediately, I mean it, it wasn't story time, right?
I mean, we were just talking, but immediately we were just
completely drawn in and transformed and the space was
transformed. And that really stuck out to me,
sticks out to me. This is just a bit beautiful.
Everyone is so personal. How how people embody their
their lineage. Now, as someone who Once Upon a
time edited a quote UN quote World Music magazine, I share
your discomfort with that term. But I know we both embrace A
borderless aesthetic. And even as someone who's
written about jazz for decades, I know that word comes with its
own baggage. And I know that we're both very
invested in a term called creative music that is both
beautiful but maybe diffuse in its associations.
But in all those things, when you really get down to the music
and the musicians, it is a sharing of lineages and stories.
So I want to delve more deeply into the Bloodlines concept and
its history so far. But maybe we can start with your
bloodline, and by that I mean both literally and maybe
musically and aesthetically. So you were born to Saint Louis,
correct? The son of two classical
musicians who were born in Japan.
Correct. So the Yeah Walk, can you walk
us through a little bit the musics that entered your life
and when and how that started to coalesce?
Yeah, my parents were both born in Tokyo.
They were born right around in the middle of World War 2, so
they grew up in post war Tokyo. My father was a violinist, my
mom was a harpist. They moved to the States in the
late 60s for their graduate studies.
Pretty much right out of college, my dad was accepting to
the Saint Louis Symphony where he spent 44 years.
So I grew up in Saint Louis, didn't speak Japanese back then.
I I grew up in in the 70s and 80s.
And you grew up exposed to classical music at a very high
level. Very high level of exposure.
I, I started playing violin when I was 2, but I, I resisted, you
know, didn't, really didn't find it a passion for it, as I think
is very common amongst kids. And I was much more into
skateboarding and, and just hanging out with friends and,
and being, I guess, for lack of a better word, a, a typical
American kid in St. Louis, MO, you know, So, and,
and I, I'm, I'm referencing the fact that I, I didn't speak
Japanese. I didn't really feel culturally
Japanese or Japanese American even.
This is kind of a, another topic that we, we talk about is
identity and what we relate to. And then I started playing
Western classical flute. So middle school, I was
wondering, 'cause I know you drumming and I know you playing
flute, but it was flute. First flute first.
Although around the same time there was a Japanese taiko
drumming workshop in Saint Louis and I did start playing taiko
drums at that point. I don't talk about it as much
because it was very as just like a after school activity, you
know, recreational activity for kids.
I didn't learn about the actual history and the context and and
proper techniques until much later when I moved to Japan.
But clearly it planted a seed. It definitely planted a seed.
When did your immersion in Japan and in Japanese traditions take
hold? I went to Manhattan School of
Music, graduated in 97. I believe I was in the same
class as folks like Jason Moran and Eric Lewis and Stefan Harris
and Eric Harland was a year below.
So kind of an incredible time to be at Manhattan School music.
You play. I was playing at that point
primarily jazz, for lack of a word, flute, and I picked up
tenor saxophone as well while at school.
And so that was where my focus was.
I wasn't playing taikodrums or any percussion really.
I was a a wind player and just focused on Miles Davis and John
Coltrane. But then you're getting both the
spirit and the practice of improvisation into your bones at
a very high level. Also yes.
Practicing many hours a day, the scales and transcriptions and
doing that whole thing and, and actually something that really
affected what happened right after that was for the first
time perhaps in my life, I realized how music could be
related and associated to heritage and culture.
Because my parents playing Western classical music, they
weren't, they're not from Europe, right?
But that's what they did. I grew up doing the same.
And then I started playing black American jazz music.
And so in, I was pretty late in the, I was late high school when
I first started playing jazz and, and it was just another
form of music to study, you know, do the scales, learn the
transcriptions, learn the tunes. And it was because of my time in
man, high school music. I started to see the connection
with black American culture and wondering if I had that
connection with any other form of music in my life.
That's what really prompted me to to look towards Japan.
When and how did that happen? So because of the these these
thoughts about about my own heritage and where and not
knowing anything about Japan, I did kind of restart playing
taiko drumming, which I left many years before that in New
York City with a local amateur ensemble called Soul Daiko.
And then I saw the taiko drumming ensemble Kodo perform
at Carnegie Hall. And that really was just earth
shaking for me. It really just seeing the, the,
the performance on stage and the performers and even how they
walked out on stage and how they took this their time and they
set and, and, and very, very performative, very kind of
ritualistic and hitting with such intensity.
And they're singing these songs. I have no idea what they're
singing about. They're wearing these costumes.
I don't know why the significance of the costumes.
And, and I realized I didn't know the significance of the
drums and the flutes and, and it was a huge mystery, but it also
felt somehow very familiar. So when I first encountered you
and heard you, you were the first American born musician or
person to join the ensemble. And in some ways I guess you
were an ambassador in two different directions.
But there's a very deep study and immersion in between those.
Even just watching and hearing, I can sense how physical and
even how spiritual a practice it is.
But I really had no idea of what did it mean to have a two year
apprenticeship. And I guess on a remote island,
yeah. So I saw that group Kodo at, at
Carnegie and I, I went, auditioned, became an
apprentice. The apprenticeship is a 2 year
program. The the two year program
involves waking up at 5:00 in the morning, whether it's
winter, dead of winter in the snow or in the summer and
burning hot somewhere in Sodo beginning with a Six Mile run
and then from there eating. You know, we all cook.
We take turns cooking for each other.
A lot of stretching and practicing 5 or 6 hours a day,
maybe 5 to 8 hours a day. Not just drumming, but flute
playing, singing and dancing. As much dancing as drumming
easily. We grew rice, we studied Knoll
theatre, Kilgan theatre, tea ceremony, a lot of woodworking.
We made our own drumsticks, you know, we, we got this old style
of, of Japanese thought and living and, and practice then
you might experience if you were a kid growing up in Tokyo, you
know. So even for the other
apprentices who are all Japanese, it was in a sense
culture shock, right? And after two very intense years
of this, of this six days a week training, one or two people get
accepted out of 10. And I was one of them.
And then so I went from being this American kid in in New York
to being an apprentice for two years on this small island
called Sado. I didn't mention that earlier in
the Niigata Prefecture, which by the way, Sado is historically an
island of exile. So and a lot of old traditional
culture still exists there. And so that's why Kodo chose
that place to, to establish their Kodo village.
So two years of living in Japan is is an apprentice and then I
get accepted. The next thing I know, I'm on
stage at Carnegie Hall wearing the Japanese costumes, singing
in Japanese, playing the Japanese drums and and being a
part of that, that whole mysterious world that I'd
witnessed a few years before that.
Now with Kodo, there was a certain amount of collaboration
that happened with musicians from other walks of life, but
then at a certain point you re immersed in New York as
essentially A collaborator, right?
So yes, 2007 I moved back to the States and, and started to
really branch out and I tried working a lot with jazz
musicians with a lot of different types of dancers, a
lot of classical musicians started working with the Silk
Road Ensemble. You know, just I had a project
with Mongolian musicians once and I went to Mongolia, I'd.
I remember hearing you playing a duo with Jason Moran, like the
way after you had been encountered each other in
Manhattan School of Music and just piano and taiko drums.
And I remember Jason was as thrilled with the just the sheer
power of those drums as I was as a listener.
When you started working with musicians like Jason again and
started working with a wide range of musicians in New York,
how did that experience with Kodo affect how you approach
those encounters? Or how did it change your
approach to those encounters? It's an ever evolving process
and both when I was with Kodo and after I left Kodo, it's,
it's, it's been shifting quite a bit in terms of what am I trying
to say? How am I trying to say it?
I've studied a lot of traditional Japanese music, but
I'm not a traditional. I don't play traditional music.
And, and some people may assume because the instruments that I,
oh, he plays traditional Japanese music, which is not the
case. And then so if I don't play
traditional music, then how is the Japanese?
So I'm just constantly kind of pulling and pushing my own ideas
and aspects of what I, what I should be doing, what I need to
be doing, what feels right to me, what feels natural to me.
And so whether it's working with Jason or Laurie Anderson or
Yo-yo Ma, it's like, OK, what am I bringing to the table?
I've been very touched and moved by Thelonious monks music.
Now we can be stark and thunderous 1 moment and
incredibly tender and delicate the next.
And between the drum and the flute, when you make music, I've
been struck by just that range of power to delicacy that's
available to you. Some people ask me because I
play 3 or 4 different types of Japanese flutes and then all
these sizes and shapes of Japanese drums and you know, if
especially kids might say, you know, what's your favorite
instrument? You've played so many.
And what I usually say is as much as emotions and thoughts
and feelings and experiences that we have, I have different
instruments that express different things in different
ways. Having had that path and that
journey in terms of your own lineage, your own identity,
whether it's musically, culturally, in 2024 you launched
Bloodlines Interwoven, a multi year project.
That is, you know, in a way you're commissioning music,
you're rooting yourself and others in heritage, diaspora
storytelling. Let's go back to how that
developed. I remember you were kind enough
to write a piece for Chamber Music Magazine, which I edit
right at the beginning of this. At the end.
Of the first end of the first residence.
Kind of a summary, right? Which I remember you talking to
me about gathering people and before you made music there was
a map. Mm hmm.
And some push pins. I purchased a map that is
mounted on a on a frame and and I brought it into the gathering
and it has pins and I brought in many colors of string and I
asked all the musicians to pin to them significant places.
So for example, for me, it was Saint Louis, it was Tokyo, it
was Sado Island, it was New York.
I think those are the four that I that I put in and, and then I
would tie a piece of string between each of these four
locations. And then other people started
doing the same. And of course, I think we all
for the most part live in New York.
So that was kind of a Nexus. But then we had strings, you
know, stretching all across Europe and Japan and South
America, Central America, and it was just a beautiful thing.
And I mean just literally interweaving our our stories.
And in these strings and Jeff Ziegler, I said, so tie them
together. So tie the different points
together. And Jeff Ziegler, wonderful
cellist, tied his, but he went around the back of the map, so.
We had, we had all sorts of creative types and, and some
people instead of tying it off and, and snipping off the end,
they would tie it off and then let it hang.
And they, they said I like it and how it's, it's kind of
almost like a, a drop of blood maybe or, or something.
I remember that first iteration had this week long festival
Tivoli, New York and a beautiful landscape.
What did you learn from that, both about your fellow musicians
and also about where you wanted this to go?
We had the, the culminating event was in Tivoli, NY at the
place called Cats Band. And that was after about six
months of these gatherings. So the first six months we would
get together, we would share stories and find all these
amazing connections. And, and there was, there was
crying, there was fighting, there was a lot of improvising
and, and people bringing compositions that they they
wrote inspired by the conversations.
And I can go into all these anecdotes that happened, really
amazing stories. But that culminated in a week
long residency at Catspan where we kind of refined all the work
that we've been putting together.
Part of the festival was nightly artist talks where we would kind
of tell short versions of our stories and perform and talk
about our instruments. And then the three main concerts
Friday, Saturday and Sunday on mainstage that were premiering
the works that were everyone brought in.
Well, tell me one of those stories.
I remember Jen Hsu was telling, talking about her parents from
East Timor and Taiwan. Yeah.
Wonderful singer composer whose many instruments are too many to
tell right now. Yes, and Jen mentioned the
Indonesian government invading East Timor and the genocide that
happened there. And this is within, you know,
minutes of her talking about how her parents met.
You know, it went from very personal stories of, you know,
mom was this and dad was this. And then we zoomed way out into
the Indonesian, the genocide that took place and then went
back to Jen growing up. And you know, and so it was just
immediately that was, I remember, that was day one and
it was already almost, I was like, oh, this is what we're in
for. I'm sure half or most of the
musicians in the room are never more than two steps away from a
genocide or something close expulsion in their own.
Lineage another thing and and this is not the second story.
This is aside because of your comment, I was talking to some
other people about this Bloodlines project and one
musician who's white said he was really interested in learning
about and, and hopefully taking this opportunity to learn about.
He has family in the South who were most likely slave owners
and family in Austria who are most likely Nazis.
And so it's that side of the story as well, right?
And the fact that he wanted to acknowledge and, and, you know,
kind of process it 'cause that's also trauma in, in, in many
ways, generational trauma and reckon with it, I found
incredibly brave and, and, and beautiful.
And so Japan, I'm, it's a beautiful country for many
reasons, but it, it was, I, I already mentioned how horrible
and atrocious that the government and the military was
in, in the early part of 20th century.
What's the other story? The other story is I wrote about
it in the article that that you graciously invited me to write.
But at one point the composer Duyun was talking about her
coffin building grandfather and in Shanghai and Alicia Hall
Moran, a wonderful singer, had this very kind of visceral
reaction and, and left the room. I remember and, and, and, and
I've known Alicia very, for a very long time and I, I could
tell she was upset by something. I didn't know what it quite yet.
She came back in while we were improvising as it was quite a
bit later and, and we'd finished doing and telling this
incredible story. By the way, her whole story was
kind of incomprehensible things that she went through in order
to, to get to where she is now. So we were improvising a piece
afterwards after her talk and, and Alicia came back in and, and
Duyen was very excited about the music and said, OK, I'm going to
write a, a song and it's going to be a, a funeral procession
and it's going to be about coffins.
And Alicia said, OK, hold on. I'm, I'm going to have to stop
you right there. And she has some ancestors who
were enslaved by medical institutions and built when one
of the main tasks was to build coffins.
And so it really, when Duyun brought that up, it, it kind of
hit her in a very kind of visceral way.
And then the Afrimentin Jenshu also fairly recently wrote a
piece where she would carry a a zither as a symbol for her
father's coffin. And so immediately, these three
women from very different geographic and cultural and
musical backgrounds, they were literally in a circle hugging
and, and almost crying and just, you know, just like completely
bonded over that this strange connection the the coffin.
Like, what is a coffin and what does it mean?
And what does it mean to different people and different
cultures, Right. And there it was, such a
beautiful, kind of miraculous thing to witness.
Right. And if you had a musician from
New Orleans in that room, there'd be a whole nother
dimension, whole nother dimension.
So these personal, cultural, musical, aesthetic ingredients
has worked in many directions. I know in some ways you're
improvising together, but there are discreet and clear pieces
that emerge too. So I've heard you recently
versions of Bloodlines in New York at National Sawdust at
Joe's Pub. I know not long ago you were
engaged at a Mexican festival. So how, in these couple of
years, how has this evolved, both in terms of the music and
the performances? It's a shape shifting project
because it started off with it being a festival and then very
quickly I was thinking it's not just a festival, it's it is an
ensemble. It's a commissioning project.
Also, it's not an ensemble, but it's many ensembles kind of
existing within itself. It's all of the above.
It's a process, it's an artistic process and it's practice.
It's therapy. I'm not sure.
It's a lot of different things and it and, and, and actually
that's something that I'm, I'm still kind of developing.
I'm still like every day. It feels like it's a different
thing and a different beast. As you mentioned, we're
developing Part 2 with with a whole new set of people and it's
it's turning into something also kind of very different in a way
from the first year. The first gathering for of this
year was at my house was here and this amazing drummer Kweku
Sambri, who I just met. He's amazing jazz drummer, but
also grew up playing jembe and going to Africa, you know, all
through his childhood to study with the masters.
And so he like really deep in the.
Roots and which was very central to this last performance in
Brooklyn. Yes so quick was on his way.
He calls. He's like I'm sorry I'm going to
be a little late. I was in a car accident and he
was 5 minutes from the house. He'd skidded on a wet Rd.
He was not injured. His car eventually was up in
flames. It basically blew up.
And he and some police officers were pulling his bags out.
They saved his jembe. They saved one bag.
He lost one bag that had bells from Ghana and music notation
that he'd written when he's studying as a child, all these
rhythms from these great masters.
And when I said, oh, that must have been really painful to, to
lose that, he said, oh, no, it's, it's all in here.
And he pointed to his heart. It's like, no, it's all, it's
all here. I didn't need the paper, you
know. And so that was such a, an
amazing approach to it and stance.
And then and that was the first day.
And then after he says that, you actually deal with those things
that were left in his heart. You're literally working with
those. Yeah.
Yeah, coming through and then us, the rest of us trying to
absorb the rhythms and the sounds.
Now in Knoxville at Big Years, I know that there will be at least
three concerts or or a gatherings, each of which will
be different and each of which will happen in a different
setting, physical setting. Introduce us to the cast of
characters that will be in Knoxville.
Yes. So I'll start with the the folks
I just mentioned. Kweku Sombre has been working
with Emmanuel Wilkins for a long time and he just started working
with Charles Lloyd. Faye Victor, singer,
storyteller, composer, Shahzad Ismaili, multi instrumentals,
bass, drums, electronics, just kind of picks up whatever is
necessary. We have Cyril Baptista,
Brazilian percussionist, played with Paul Simon and yo-yo Ma and
on and on and on. John Zorn.
But he's also, I think, equally known as just this lovable,
hysterical, amazing person. Maybe one of the most joyous
musicians I've ever encountered yet.
When we're sharing our stories, he was, he went really deep and
he really opened himself up and it was so beautiful to see.
Marika Hughes, I mentioned a cellist from New York City, kind
of straddling the worlds of classical music and and jazz and
Blues and singer-songwriter and someone I've known for a couple
decades. We have Unia.
Eddie Kwan, I already mentioned violinist, singer.
We have a a wind player named Gamin.
Gamin is her name and she plays traditional Korean music,
different wind instruments that are both folk and classical
Korean music. Whereas in Unia is Korean
descent, but doesn't really engage overtly with Korean
traditional music. And so even having them, the two
of them together, it's just an interesting dynamic.
You know, there's Bundola as her her kind of her stage name and
the instrument she plays is Bundola.
It's it's kind of a, a banjo slash, ukulele slash guitar type
instrument and and a singer, wonderful singer as well.
And Sunny Jane, the dole player also, he kind of similar to me.
He grew up playing drums, rock, jazz, but then as a young adult
kind of discovered the dole. And the dole being a 2 headed
drum. Thank you from.
From India, he's India, Pakistan and he has a a very acclaimed
band called Red Barat, which my understanding is is basically
wedding music. And so the band is like just
high energy dance music with horns and and but centered
around the dole. So big ears.
This annual event in Knoxville, which at first to me seemed like
an unlikely place, has struck me in my visits to the event as its
own bloodlines. Meaning a meeting place for a
lot of musicians to explore where they're coming from and
what they can do together. But also, even for those people
who come as listeners, who follow their own path to why
they're there and why they're interested in that sort of
gathering, how has that environment struck you or
affected you? It's a dream, you know, walking
down the street during the festival and, and you might run
into Bill Frizzell or or Lori Anderson or Shahzad or, you
know, just walking down the street, which conceivably
happens in New York all the time.
But just to have that concentration of just everybody
around at the same time in, in this concentrated weekend is, is
in, in a sense a dream as well, right?
Besides just being able to hear all these people, it's, it's a
great honor that Ashley decided, you know, that to, to partner
with us. And so we'll be in residency.
Yeah. And.
For me, you're also, you're going up and down mostly gay
street, but up and down to these beautiful old theaters and other
churches and venues that had their own histories.
And now there's this new version of the history that is really,
to a certain extent, about what you're doing with bloodlines,
isn't it? In the conversations, we talked
about perhaps doing something at a museum where it's a public
event. It's, it's not ticketed.
So reaching out to different communities in that way, the
idea of maybe doing it in a bus station, which is incredibly
appropriate for this story, which is all about, you know,
immigration and travel and how. And then there are the theaters
and there's, there's small spaces and large spaces and, and
one thing that we've been thinking a lot about is
performing in the round in a way that makes it feel like the
whole audience is, is all in the circle with us, right?
And so we have to really think about how the staging of that
and the appropriate venue for that and Big Ears is all in on
how do we make these different configurations work and add
meaning to the performance by the venue, the choice of venue,
the layout of the venue. It's another form of
collaboration, I see. My experience at Big Ears is,
well, most of the time you are sitting in a theater or another
space, but we do have this feeling that, hey, you're in on
this on a deeper level. So I wanted to ask you, that
experience you had on that island changed you very much
emotionally, physically, spiritually, and not just in
terms of your musical aesthetic. Now a couple of years into this
project, Bloodlines, has it changed you in ways beyond the
music making? Profoundly, I, I feel like the,
you know, we all have different points in our lives.
And as I said earlier, I, I went from being American to being
basically Japanese. I so when someone asks about my
entity, I think I'm, I identify as both Japanese and American
and not necessarily even Japanese American, which is kind
of a, a different. It's, it's its own thing.
People whose, whose relatives or were in the internment camps
and, and multi generation, you know, Japanese descent in
America. And so it, it really helped
transform how I thought about myself.
This project. A lot of the the artists are old
friends and many of them are brand new to me.
I think Matt Garrison last year put it really nice.
Matt Garrison was part of Bloodlines last year and he the
bassist. Wonderful.
Son of the bassist Jimmy Garrison.
Correct. Which by the way, while we are
in Tivoli, NY, last year for the Bloodlines festival, Jimmy
Garrison's bass was delivered from Jack D Jeanette's house to
the venue and Matt played it on stage during the festival.
And so that Matt was talking about last year's Bloodlines and
said it it's a molecular repositioning of how hearing
each other's stories and then kind of seeing yourself through
other eyes and seeing each other through different lenses has
been profound. Alicia Hallmoran, who I
mentioned earlier, processes her own culture and her own history
and her own ancestry and has been doing that work for many
years, found that now she it's, it's a little bit more of a
global perspective. It kind of pulled back the lens
in in many ways for her and and I found that to be also true for
myself. Now, remember the first time we
talked about this and when you were kind enough to write about
it For me, your last paragraph landed on There is something
about proximity to smoke and fire.
And then the last time I heard Bloodlines, there was a piece of
yours that I believe draws on that for its title.
So what is it about proximity to smoke and fire?
And how does this drift in and out of what you're doing?
One thing we've been talking about from the beginning is my
partner UDA, who's a, she's a trained chef in Kaiseki style of
Japanese cuisine. She's helped me develop a lot of
these ideas and concepts. And, and one thing we thought
think about besides music and rhythm and history and, and
sound and religion is food, food culture.
And we talk about the idea of having a, a bloodlines cookbook
because it's such a significant part of all of our stories.
And UDA cooked for the ensemble last time when we're in
residency together and cooking based on many recipes that each
person brought in. Right.
And so that's, that's one form of smoke and fire.
All of the instruments that we play.
I mean, maybe I'm being a little bit too broad, but are made with
smoke and fire, ink brush, you know, the calligraphy from
Japanese and various traditions. The ink is coming from ink,
smoke and fire and, and, and water.
It's very elemental in many ways, and I wrote that Article 2
years ago, but it was when Queku came to my house for that first
time and showed me video of his car and there was a cloud of
black smoke going 30 feet in the air, pitch black smoke.
It was those sort of connections that was really profound to me.
It's like, and the fact that he had just experienced that and
was then 20 minutes later sitting in my home eating lunch
with us and breaking bread, he was like, he came and we ate
together and drank together and started sharing stories.
And it's the work of almost of not to be too dramatic about it,
but life and death, right? And, and what are we trying to
say and leave behind? Like these are the conversations
we have in our music. What are we forging, you know,
in our in our. In our artistry and in our
careers and what are we trying to leave behind?
I have a 12 year old daughter and I think about that all the
time. What is?
What am I leaving for her? And also, what do we want to
celebrate? And what are we celebrating?
Yeah. Karu sitting here with you,
talking about this, in a room with the map and the connected
threads behind you, surrounded by instruments from a few
different continents. All this takes even clearer
shape and resonance for me. Thank you so much for this.
Look forward to Knoxville. Yes, thank you, Larry.
It's been a pleasure. You can catch bloodlines
interwoven at Biggers 2026. For remaining tickets and daily
schedules, visit biggersfestival.org.
Big Ears Conversations about Music is a production of Big
Ears Festival. I'm your host Sarah Gilletti.
The show was produced by Matt Marowitz.
This episode was edited by Alex Arif.
Ashley Capps is the executive and artistic director of Big
Ears Festival. Thanks for listening.
And until next time, keep those ears wide open.