Asian Import Guitars: The Up-Side

So far I’ve written about Zen Guitar and several about its application to my practice/playing, Asian/American guitar & bass players, connections between guitars/music and motorcycles… so are there any other crosscurrents between Asia and the US?

Of course! Starting with the connections between East & West manufactures. The reasoning for US builders branching out to include Asian versions of their instruments varies. Most simply want to add a lower cost version of their instruments that appeal to begginers and the budget minded. Larger companies such as Fender add that having guitars built in several Asian locations enables them to meet production demands around the world.

Many Asian versions of American models are very high quality. Most are reasonably priced– usually around half what their original American made versions sell for. The lower prices are usually atonable through use of lower quality woods, parts, and the lower cost of manufacturing usually through subcontractors. For instance, World Musical Instrument Co, in South Korea is one of the worlds largest manufacture of guitars. They are a subcontractor for all the big names such as Fender, PRS, Gibson, and many other companies. Cort and Samick are also Asian makers of the three who claim to be the worlds largest. Either way, these factories produce far more instruments than are produced in the US. And this is good news for beginners, the budget minded, or anyone who wants a nice guitar at a lower price than an American made guitar.

Among the more popular Asian/American imports is G&L. It’s the company founded by Leo Fender (founder of Fender guitars), and the last place Leo worked before his death in March 1991. G&L recently added a line of imported guitars under the “Tribute” banner. These are guitars built in Indonesia to G&L’s specs and fitted with American made G&L electronics– which is one of the things that sets the Tribute series apart from its competitors. Typically the Asian import models from companies such as Gibson, Fender, and PRS, feature electronics that are “designed by” the parent company. This means the quality of the guitars electronics are a far cry from that of the parent companies.

Surfing YouTube’s collection of head-to-head videos shows that the Asian models are very close to the quality of the US versions. Here are a few such videos– some results are very surprising!

USA vs Inport G&L comparison (great history & info, less-great musicianship in this video)

Click here to view the embedded video.

G&L Tribute L-2000 Bass review

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another US manufacturer, Music Man (a division of Ernie Ball) also have an Asian import series which are marketed under the name “Sterling by Music Man.” These basses have received quite a bit of praise as well:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Gibson guitar company has been building guitars and basses in the US for many, many years and are considered among the leaders in the production of musical instruments. Their Asian import models are marketed under the “Ephiphone” moniker.  There have been a lot of issues with Gibson in the last 10-years or so that call into question the quality of their US made instruments. This video compares the US made Les Paul model with an Asian made Les Paul model. Again, the results will surprise you (musicianship is much better with these guitarists…):

Click here to view the embedded video.

US Gibson vs. Asian Ephiphone “Slash model” comparison

Click here to view the embedded video.

All of this is the up-side of the Asian import guitar market. Stay tuned for the dark-side… coming next~

 

Friday Ozeki: Question #15

For my final Ozeki post I am going to attempt making an interesting post using one of the 15 questions posed on the Madison Public Library handout. Mainly because I can’t think of anything else creative. Is this saying that I’m giving up? No. I am one of two or three people in the world who really did not care for the book and after my last three Ozeki posts have exhausted my creative flow.

“Imagine that you had a notebook like Nao’s diary and you wanted to communicate with an unknown reader as she does. What would you write about? Would you be as honest as Nao is with us? What are the benefits and risks of writing such a document?”

To answer the last question first, Evergreen philosophy professor Bill Arney asserted several times last (Fall) quarter that there is always a price to pay for your writing. I risk further isolation from my classmates who loved the book (one went so far to say that “it was like sweet nectar”) by writing anything critical of it. The other side of the coin is that my writing might empower someone else who didn’t like the book to speak their mind.

Back to the first part of the question, I don’t have to imagine having a notebook like Nao’s; I have written– and continue to write in notebooks intended to communicate with unknown readers. The difference is my writings are songs and poems. I started writing in these notebooks a long time ago. The intended reader was the listener. The unintended reader was myself! As I look back on some of my writings I am often reading them 10, 15, 20 years later. I am a very different person now compared to then.

Much like Nao, I mostly wrote about things happening in my life, what I was feeling, desires and aspirations… sometimes just riffing on something that inspired me to write. Yes, I did– and continue to–write honestly. Though if I am trying to express a feeling (opposed to an event) through music I embellish and write in a way that serves the imagination. It remains honest– perhaps differently, but it is still genuine. One difference that I’ve noticed in my writing between then and now is that I am more aware of the potential reader now than I was at Nao’s age. Words have meaning. Even more so when put to music as it communicates on a deeper level than simply words on a page. As such my writing tends to be more… intentional… now than it was before.

The benefits to writing such things can be like those interviewed by Densho. When writing about things that weigh heavy on one’s mind, the benefit is often the feeling of a heavy weight being lifted from the persons shoulders. A weight many people don’t realize they are carrying until they speak about it– or in this case, to write about it. Another benefit, especially when I’ve completed a song, or finished performing it, I often feel reinvigorated. To quote bluesman Elwood Blues, “…no pharmaceutical product could ever equal the rush you get when the band hits that groove; the people are dancin’, and shoutin’, and swayin’; and the house is rocking’!”

 

Mississippi Massala

“Africa is for Africans. Black Africans.”

This quote really resonated with me and I say this because I feel as though this is the struggle that people like me have had to deal with throughout my life. How, no matter how much we may love our current country that we have called home, at the end of the day, if we look any different from the major race of that country then we truly cannot call that place our home.

Home is where the heart is though right? Well, yes and I agree with this to a certain point but for me, home is where I can lay in my bed, home is where I can walk down 4th ave and recognize members of the community. I can only how devastating of an experience it would to be kicked out of a place you call home because of the way you look. For me, what happened to the Indians in Uganda was very similar to the treatment of Japanese Americans in the United States during WWII.

I can understand how it’s understandable how Mina’s parents were opposed to her dating an African American possibly because of the history that they had with Africans in the past because my Japanese family reacted very similarly to my father when my mother first introduced him to the family. My mother said that if her father had been alive, he would never allow for her to marry my dad because of my grandfathers experience during WWII.

 

Final Influence

Within the American cartoon world, there has always been cartoons that don’t show enough female representation. If there is female representation, it is either societies overexageration of feminity or the representation is  very far and few. Throughout the 1990′s, most cartoons had a predominantly male cast with one to four (if we are lucky) different female characters. The lack of representation doesn’t lie within just cartoons but throughout our modern American pop culture.

Cartoons are a thing made predominantly for children but just because it’s catered toward children, it doesn’t mean that cartoons are not important to the development of a child’s brain. Cartoons are one of the first things a tiny human being is going to see. It is important from a young age to teach girls that they ARE strong. That they don’t need to be rescued like their Disney princess counterparts.

Forgive me for incorporating Beyonce into this, seeing as Beyonce doesn’t have much to do with anime, but I wanted to quote the woman who was featured in her most recent song “Flawless” and I am going to use this lens as a way to compare the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her lecture “We Should All Be Feminists” with Sailor Moon.

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.” 

What Sailor Moon has taught me was to NOT make myself small. This show was one of the first in which it told me that I can be just as strong as any boy because Sailor Moon and her female soldiers were risking their lives and the safety of the world rested on THEIR shoulders and no one else’s. They fought battles on a daily basis and received cuts and bruises like none other, and even to the point of taking on missions where they KNEW that they were most likely going to be killed, yet they went into the mission with their heads held up high and came out victorious.

“We say to girls, ”you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man”

One of Sailor Mercury’s biggest dream was to be the best doctor in the world. When she wasn’t fighting crimes, she was constantly studying and always made sure to never forget her studies because she understood that in order to be a successful doctor, one needs the best education that they can get. With this dream of hers, no one ever questioned her gender. Not even the men that would rarely appear on the show, as a matter of fact, most of the men applauded her brains and her effort.

Tuxedo Mask is the only male character who is featured as a main character and while this character occasionally helps with missions, more often than not, he turns out to be the damsel in distress and Sailor Moon has to save him quite often. He never questions his masculinity either and instead is grateful for the Sailor Soldiers in helping him.

“Because I am female I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.”

Shows will always have some sort of layer of problems. It’s really  hard to avoid and to try and please everyone is sometimes impossible. I am more than happy to admit that Sailor Moon does push for an aspiration towards marriage whereas the other shows produced for young boys during that time did not have the same message. Yet there are other characters in this show like Mercury, Uranus and Neptune et cetera who do not have the same aspirations as the other soldiers do to marriage.

“We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments which I think can be a good thing. But for the attention of men.”

I couldn’t agree more. In Sailor Moon S, with the introduction of Neptune and Uranus, everyone is competing to find the “purest soul” and it’s either for  themselves or for the safety of the world. Very rarely does this show showcase the soldiers fighting for the attention of a man, and on the occasion that this does happen, it is always featured in a fill-in episode and is not of huge importance to the major plot of any season.

I know for some people they find shows like Sailor Moon disgusting and that it showcases underage girls wearing school girl uniforms with their panties flashing and over-sized breasts but I feel as though this is a very shallow way of viewing this show in particular and other cartoon shows that might feature something similar to the Magical Girl fgenre. Sailor Moon was catered specifically for young girls. Not for men (although all are welcome to watch). This may seem like a harsh opinion but for me it is the men who take a show as innocent as this and make it into a pedophiliac fantasy. I say this because I identify as a feminist, and I have the right to behave however I want, I have the right to wear whatever I want and I do not want to live my life where I am constantly being policed on how I behave simply because I am a woman and Sailor Moon has played a major role in my influencing who I am and what I stand for today.

Sailor Moon is more than just school girl uniforms, it’s about strength, and the unity that comes with friendships. This show is devised of an assortment of characters and all of them are very different from each other, but instead of focusing negatively on their differences, they utilize that difference and work together to overcome either the antagonist or conquering something within their own personal lives. This is so important for the development of a young girl in this modern age. There are more cartoons with the damsel in distress trope than there are of empowered women in cartoons. Don’t even get me started on the lack of women of color in cartoons. (As a side note, because I don’t want to get too heavily into this but just to let everyone know, Sailor Moon is not white.)

In conclusion, shows like Sailor Moon has influenced our pop culture in the United States. With shows like The Powerpuff Girls, or My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic  it is very obvious to me on how these shows connect with each other. Whether its the Powerpuff Girls fighting crime or the My Little Pony gang coming together in building a strong friendship despite their differences.

Thrusday Ozeki: Daisuke-Kun’s “Now’s The Time”

Very little is known about Daisuke-Kun.

What is known is that he attended school in Tokyo Japan, and was bullied by a transfer student from America. Though it is widely reported that he recorded many songs, this is the only one known to exist. Rumors abound regarding the reasons why. Some say Daisuke-Kun sold his soul to the devil at the Shibuya the way America’s great bluesman Robert Johnson did at the crossroads. Others say the 2011 Tsunami which destroyed his home town also claimed his life. Another, more reputable claim is that Daisuke-Kun retreated to a temple precariously located near the top of Mt. Fuji and is only accessible at great risk to life and limb.

It is very likely that the songs blues stylistic influence came from the American transfer student for whom he was madly– yet secretly in love. The details about the song, and the whereabouts of its author again, are shrouded by myth and legend. What we do know is that Daisuke-Kun left us this song which has become the best selling Japanese blues song of the year:

“Now’s The Time”

How many roads must I travel
How high must the mountain be
Before I call on her
The one who only my heart can see

She came from far away
Yet she began so near
From the time departed
And returned in fear

Shunned by those around
Hopes dashed and future bleak
She is the other part of me
Beaten down but not as meek

She sits and contemplates
Writes in a book
That she didn’t make
Her fingers bleed, her pin
It shakes, and another
Life she surely makes

Followed her home
And to my surprise
A knife to my throat
Something she did
Or something she wrote?

Then I realized
Were not so close
Two time beings
Being in time

Anger and hate
Changed her state
Never really departed
Never said goodbye

Unlike her
I want to live
Live another day
Because I have
Much more to say

Mississippi Masala: Reflections by Demetrius

Girl meets boy, girl nearly ruins boy’s life, girl forces boy to move to another state then secures her position as his business partner. Sound like a typical Hollywood movie trope? Well it is, but with a twist. You see this is what happened to me. My name is Demetrius Williams. I live in a small town in Mississippi. The town has a Piggly Wiggly, a small club with good music, a few Indian-owned motels (no, not those Indians, they’re from India– the country), a liquor store and my carpet cleaning business. Actually I should say it had my carpet cleaning business. You see I’m the boy who’s life was upturned by the girl. The girl’s name is Mina.

Mina was born to an Indian family living in Africa. They were forced to leave their prosperous life in Africa when she was a child, by the country’s ruler Idi Amin. Blaming the country’s problems on the Asians who settled in Africa, Amin expelled all people of Asian decent in 1972. Her family moved to our town where her parents started there new lives and now own and run the liquor store. Apparently they didn’t train their daughter to drive a vehicle very well… no that’s not fair to them– Mina was too rebellious to drive as she was taught. Evidenced by the day we met; she drove a borrowed Cadillac into the back of my van. I thought she was cute, gave her my business card with my contact information for her insurance company, and didn’t think much about it for a while. Before I knew it she’s part of my life. I invited her to my grandfathers birthday party for a meal and to meet my friends and family, who all loved her.

I wanted to get out of town for the weekend, and invited Mina to come along. Hey, I did say she was cute and she was really interested in me. Anyway, the trip turned into a disaster ending with me getting locked up until my brother Tyrone could bail me out the next day. It turned out she lied to her parents about where she was going and with whom. Then some family friends recognized my van, tracked us down and the rest is history. The whole thing was a misunderstanding, but nobody wanted to hear it. News gets around quickly in a small town, and I lost enough clients as a result of the infamous Mina incident that I couldn’t make the loan payments on my business. The bank refused to work with me and gave me a two-week warning before repossessing my van and equipment.

Then the worst thing happened– Mina returned.

While I was out recruiting new clients, trying to rebuild my business and reputation, Mina hunts me down in the same car she ran into my van. Leaving the borrowed Caddy in a liquor store parking lot, she convinced me to skip town in the van and to try making a go of it out of state. She sweet talked her way into my business; “I love you Demetrius…” Man, what a sap I’ve been. Here I am in jail agin thanks to Mina. The car was reported stolen, and to remain in her family’s good graces Mina claimed she was kidnaped. The bank repossessed my van and equipment and pressed grand larceny charges against me.

Girl meets boy, girl nearly ruins boy’s life, girl convinces boy to move to another state and this time succeeds in destroying his life.

Tyrone tells me I should sell my story to Mira Nair, one of his new friends in Hollywood. If I do, they will probably change the story to favor Mina…

 

Tale for the Time Being II

Reading further into the book I can see how communication plays a major theme. I think communcation is shown obviously in the book and in a hidden, magical sort of way. I think it plays an obvious part when Oliver and Ruth talk, when Ruth reads Nao’s diary, when Nao talks to her father, and so on. So in the book, Nao talks about how she taught Jiko how to text so she can talk to her whenever she need/wants to. I found that as an obvious means of communication, also communication through technology. Ruth also encounters technological communication with an email she sends out about Harry.

There is also Nao’s diary, another kind of communation. I think it had both a physical sort of communication as well as the magical sort. As Ruth reads on with Nao’s diary, things in her real time, or world starts happening. These crows begin to show up, Ruth cannot find anything about Nao, and Ruth somehow gets emotionally invested with Nao’s life. There is this magic joy and pain in reading Nao’s diary,which I think is pretty magical that a few words can enchant someone.

Another thing I find a strong source of communication is dreams. Dreams in the book sort of represent this communication between both Nao and Ruth’s worlds. Ruth has these dreams with Jiko in them and Nao has this dream with Reiko. First, Nao has this dream with Reiko and stabbing her in the eye, Reiko the next day shows up with an eye patch on. Coincidence? I think that it might not be since there was no real explanation about it and what are the odds? Also, when Ruth has dreams about Old Jiko, strange things then began to take place later in the book.

Then, Haruki #1′s letter that magically shows up in the box. Some weird communication between magic and real life ends up bringing Haruki #1′s own hand written letter about the war. The magic that happens between these modes of communication brings Ruth to different assumptions of Nao’s diary and family history. Haruki #1′s note clarified many things for Ruth and eventually, Nao’s family. Ruth has a dream with Nao’s father, in which she talks to him about his suicide and his daughter. How strange to have a dream about someone you never met. It is said that you can see some random stranger and they can end up in your dream, but how strange that she new that this random stranger in her dream would represent Nao’s father. Lastly, as both the diary and magic have their ways of communicating with Ruth, somehow, the diary pages that were once written in have somehow gone blank for a night then somehow end up having been written in again. How? When? and Why? I guess that part had been up to the reader.

Mississippi Masala

According to Dictionary.com “masala” means a mixture of spices. Mina is Indian who lives mostly by American culture since she spent most of her time in America. Jay, her father, is Indian as well, but identifies himself as Ugandan; and lastly, Demetrius, her lover, is a Black man who has obviously adopted the American culture. So here are these 3 people intertwined with each others identities creating the title Mississippi Masala.

Other than the title, I realized that the movie had also portrayed a different kind of racism. There was a scene where Jammubhai tells Demetrius, “If you are not white, then you are colored.” This quote, I think, makes their relationship somewhat stronger in a way that they are both minorities. They both understand the struggles of being colored, or not white. However, though Jammubhai comforts Demetrius with that line Jay, Mina’s father, cannot stand Demetrius with his daughter. After Jay and Demetrius’s little altercation, Demetrius tells Jay something along the lines of his [Jay] skin only being a few shades away from Demetrius [point at his face].

Sadly, before this scene Jay sort of turns his back on Black people because of Okelu telling him that he had to leave Uganda. So I can understand why Jay had this bitter feeling towards Demetrius. Anyways, after this scene where Demetrius points out their skin color, it showed the audience that racism can still be present without a white person. There is still this heirarchy of races and who has the more “whiteness.” I thought that that scene was very important.

Another thing I thought was important for this movie was to move on. Throughout the movie there are scenes beween Jay and Okelu and when Jay had to leave. Okelu was in tears as well as Mina and this obviously bothered Mina because she was too young to understand why Jay and Okelu had never talked again. I understand that they still had their Indian traditions because that will hardly ever change; however, Jay cannot seem to let go of Uganda and the way he remembers it. For years, he had wrote letters for his property in Uganda. He eventually gets to go back to Uganda and it looks like nothing he remembered. He also learns to forgive Okelu, but finds out that he is dead and has been. Overall, Jay’s visit back to Uganda was nothing as he expected it: things changed, it did not feel like home for him, and his best friend had passed away with Jay’s grudge against him. I think that letting things go, or moving on plays a very important theme in this movie.

It relates to A Tale For the Time Being. Time has kept moving and it has been lost. While Jay was in America, I do not think that he understood that even though Amin is not the ruler, does not mean that things have gone back to the way it was. Also, Jay never really got to say good-bye to Okelu or leave on a good vibe. After that, time was lost in-between Okelu and Jay that Jay was completely unaware that Okelu had passed away. Time was also lost between Jay’s constant mind battle between saying his home was in Uganda, rather than spending every moment with his wife, Kinnu, where as he said, “home is where the heart is and my heart is with you.” At least now, Jay can spend his time not worrying about Uganda, but with the time he has in that current moment.

– Ozeki: Thursday p204-304

Communication

After Nao moved to Miyagi, her communication ranges spread more then she had been in Tokyo. She became to talk Jiko about herself, and that made her change. In my opinion, “communication” is most important thing to connect with the other people. Without communication, we can’t know anything. Also, the reason why I prefer communication is because we can share our opinions. In this world, nobody is the same personality. That means everyone has their own opinions. Like Nao, if you don’t talk anyone about your problem, you have to face the trouble by yourselves. Sometime, it’s difficult to solve by yourselves. In my analysis, Nao could sort her head out when she told herself with Jiko and also her family. Before she told everything, she had only one view, but now she has some views against her problem. I assume Ruth in this book is also the same situation. She has communication with Oliver, and to do so, we can find different opinion not only from Ruth but also from Oliver.