a lot of people probably don't realize this unless they live in certain pockets of latin america, but there is a huge japanese population in brazil, peru, etc. we went to see diamantes in concert today at the redondo beach performing arts center. it was more of a cultural outing. diamantes was founded by alberto shiroma, a third generation japanese descent peruvian. he later studied the japanese language in japan, having not been able to speak it prior, and eventually moved back to his ancestral home of okinawa. diamantes is a japanese group but the members are (all or mostly) 2nd or 3rd generation japanese peruvians who have returned to japan. their music is naturally latinesque. their influences also include santana (los angeles) but hey, who of that generation isn't influenced by the likes of santana? especially if you play latin rock to a slightly older crowd at parties and other feel good occasions, "oye como va" and "la bamba" just seem to be standards. with that said, diamantes does play happy music. alberto is constantly smiling. and yes, even though they are of japanese blood, their hips are latin. you can see alberto do a little dance as he plays/sings.

the concert was to benefit the okinawa association of america, which is really just the los angeles okinawa kenjinkai even though the name sounds nation wide. the money raised is to help fund adding an elevator to the oaa building so that disabled and elderly may access the facilities which are located on the second floor. why they didn't put all the facilities on the first floor and rent out the second floor is beyond me. (the oaa rents the offices in the building that they do not occupy. you gotta be smart about money.) this was the diamantes first concert in los angeles (i believe actually the first in the continental united states) but as alberto has relatives in the area as often performs at okinawan functions, i don't think it was that hard to convince him to do the concert.

personally, i am into hybrids and i don't really dig classic rock. that's partly why i was never really into diamantes. it's too straight forward and unchallenging for me. the other reason being that i hate all japanese singers that sing in a particular manner, (i.e., they overemphasize pronouncing the words and come off sounding like a foreigner). i have no problem with alberto's voice--he can sing--i can listen to him sing in spanish. but i just can't listen to him sing in japanese. he also speaks broken english and sings a bit in english too.

diamantes actually weren't bad. the aforementioned bits that bother me weren't so bothersome today. they tried to do a lot of crowd pleasers. what i liked was when alberto gave a history of the group and described what sort of songs they played at first and the band would play 10-20 seconds as examples. that was a nice touch. i wish that bands who have been together for a long time would do a similar crowd pleasing greatest hits sort of show and give a history with musical examples. one thing that really bugs me about reading music magazines is the description of music without actual music samples. how are you to know what music is like unless you hear it yourself?

the majority of people there were elderly okinawan descent people (some by way of peru). a few non-japanese were there because they married an okinawan. the concert was a cultural outing because some of twiddle thumbs's family also went to the show. we invited them for the latin music aspect and thought the japanese/latin bit might interest them. before diamentes performed, there were performances by local cultural groups. first was a taiko group who were painfully boring, then an okinawan dance by women, followed by dances by a peruvian group. the whole event was hosted by a guy who's on the mexican tv channels, george o of "lente loco" fame. he kept the audience laughing. there were several local shamisen players who accompanied diamantes during their first song, including my shamisen teacher a couple classmates. but to be honest, even though there were mics in front of them, i couldn't hear the shamisens at all. the last song diamantes played was "la bamba" and george pulled up people in the audience who were dancing (including my mom) and then a flood of others (mostly children) joined as well. after that, they were able to persuade diamantes to play one more song.

find my mom for 5 points

at the venue they were selling the usual okinawan goods but also synthetic and real snakeskin shamisen. i was kind of fascinated and horrified by the real snakeskin shamisen and had to touch it. but just for a split second. my mom was actually considering purchasing it because even if you were to buy the real thing in okinawa, you can't bring it to america. (the vendor had papers that let him bring it over.) i did get a shamisen song book though. it's pretty cool because it has traditional japanese notation and western notation. now i'll be able to work on my ear a bit. i had tried to figure out the main riff for "haisai ojisan" and i'm sure i'm wrong but it worked for me. the song is in the book so i'll have to tab out what i had been playing (so i don't cheat) then compare to figure out how off my ear is and if there's a noticeable pattern difference like i'm a half-step or whole-step off each note.

after the show (it started at 2pm) we went to an early dinner at a filipino vegetarian restaurant in el segundo called papillon. lately i had been wanting to try filipino food. i had some as a kid (something with pig's blood i'm sure) when twiddle thumbs was filipina but that was a long time ago and i'm vegan now so it kind of limits my options to try new foods, at least now trying new things isn't about sampling the animals of the world. we started off with vegetarian lumpia, not bad. twiddle thumbs ordered the veggie chicken adobo which was like a chinese sweet and sour concoction. she drank calamansi juice which tasted really close to okinawan shikwasa so i'm thinking they must be the same thing or from the same citrus family. i ordered the el florido which was like vegetable coconut milk curry but without any rice--we ordered rice on the side. my food was good but i couldn't imagine myself eating the leftovers. we got the leftovers to go as a courtesy.

[update 2/7/06: researching into the whole calamansi/shikwasa debacle, i have learned that they are not the same thing. in fact, in japan there are those that are selling calamansi juice as shikwasa and they are developing a test to distinguish the 2. for a basic difference on the fruits, see the wikipedia entry on shikwasa.]