Saturday, March 14, 2009

Yuzo Sings

There was a flier in the shop where we had the strawberry smoothies. Doc pointed it out. A concert Friday night. I could make out that it said, besides the time and location,
60 minutes
60 years
I figured the concert would be sixty minutes long, but didn't know what the 60 years meant. So last night I went after work - it was close by. J had gone off to Tai Chi and I hadn't expected it to last long. But the music didn't start until 7:30. It was at a house that had a coffee shop attached. There was food and drinks. And I met some Thais my age who were academics and also working on the same issues we're working on.

So, here's the video. Be warned - both the video and the sound are from my little Canon Powershot. On the one hand, being able to capture anything with such a small camera still amazes me. On the other hand, it was dark and the video is poor and the sound doesn't do the musicians justice at all. But you can get a sense of the evening. There's a bit of Dan Bern in the air.

Yuzo sings in Thai, Japanese, and English, though you have to listen closely. See if you can hear him singing about democracy, freeing Aung San Suu Kyithe Burmese (Pamma in Thai) people, and the Tibetan people.

Yuzo is Japanese but I was told he has been coming to Thailand every year for 30 years. He turns 60 this year, so that was the 60 years.

And I put the animation skills I learned last fall to use. It took most of the day, what with my computer pretty full and having to ditch old video to have enough space to save things, even to work the animation in photoshop at times. Anyway, if you look closely - you only get about five seconds - I have a bit of the Thai change into English. But don't blink or you'll miss it.

1 comment:

  1. I was having a hart time keying in on what he was singing about, but the atmosphere got to me-- this reminds me of strolling through Munich and listening to the musicians playing late at night.

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