Notes From the Grid is a bi-weekly column about the Columbia County music scene written by Rob. It is featured every other Friday in the "On the Scene" supplement of the Hudson Register Star. See all »

April 29, 2011

Yukari Roja - adopted Hudsonian from Japan

“We started this project to connect ourselves to our homeland, Japan. Each one of you will make one crane. When the total reaches 1000, they will be connected by string and be sent to one of the afflicted areas. Each person who made a crane will be connected together, too. Our goal is to build a strong bond among people.Yukari Hitara
On March 12th I started getting the phone calls “How is Yukari? Is her family okay?A lot of people in the area have been touched by this musician from Japan. Yukari is okay. Her family is okay. She is working hard to bring some relief to the people of Japan, especially in the Northeast where the devastation of the earthquake and the tsunami was most severe.
Yukari Hitara lives in Astoria but she loves Hudson, her playful stage name Yukari Roja references both her Japanese heritage and her Latin musical roots.
“Hudson is my second hometown in U.S”
In case you have missed her many performances in the area, let me fill you in. Yukari Roja is a professional musician who lives and gigs all over the country but mostly in New York City and Hudson NY. She has toured her solo act throughout the United States. On a Greyhound bus. Really.
“It was great, it was horrible. I met so many wonderful musicians to play with, I met so many weirdos on the bus.She laughs at the memories and shrugs. Now I have great stories for the stage.
The stage being the place where she is most at home.
Here’s what a Yukari show is like She welcomes her audience and thanks them for their attention and their attendance. She sings a song in Japanese maybe a happy song, well kind of happy, there’s bit of angst, a little reverie, she peels layers from our emotion onion until the indecipherable syllables become familiar connections. There is a bit of bossa nova, a bit of flamenco and a bit of Japanese pop as well a hints of jazz the beautiful Okinawan folk music of Japan.
It is Yukarian music. Hey, I may have just coined a new genre. During performances she quickly develops a strong sense of simpatico with listeners that grows throughout the performance. Often she will sing a few songs in English, During most performances Yukari will reference this language as a faceted situation by singing a popular English song such as Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in Japanese but in a plaintive manner.
Here’s the Hudson connection:
She walked into my store midsummer 2009 and immediately made me a fan with her earnest love of music and her vast musical knowledge. Yukari just loves to play. Within a day or so she had secured two gigs in Hudson. At the popular bar/art store/coffee shop/bookstore concert venue, the Spotty Dog and at The Performance Space at Musica on North 4th Street.
Yukari gained her comfortable and personal performance chops from serving as a human Karaoke at a sushi bar in Manhattan.
“I had this big giant book,she told me, and the Japanese businessmen got drunker and drunker and there would be more and more requests and I would look up the tunes in the book and accompany them. It was not fun.”

So, she played the Spotty Dog, she played the Musica performance space, she anchored the World Music celebration at the Savoia on Warren Street, braving icy roads and a foggy windshield as well as skeptical band members who wondered what her big attraction with Hudson was. Each visit she embeds herself in the Hudson psyche a bit deeper.
The Yukarian (sorry, I’m on a roll) songs are about love and joy and disappointment. Happy times, happy lives as well as the fear of loneliness and the sorrow of departure and loss.
“As a girl in Japan, until I was eighteen years old, I played basketball. Only basketball was all I did. Everything. My life.
So what happened?
“School ended.It was done. She learned her guitar, studied a bit of music and moved to New York.
Her parents were disappointed. She played wherever she was allowed, she honed her craft, taught music theory and did things like the karaoke gig to pay the bills. Made friends, wrote songs. She gained a following, started to get some positive press, had pictures taken, and began getting better gigs including the celebrated John Lennon Memorial Concert in Central park each December.
“My fingers were so cold,she smiled But it was such a privilege and an honor that I just kept playing and it turned out all right. Better than all right - she’s been invited back for the three years. That experience led to a celebration of John Lennon’s 70th birthday in Hudson last October She is so accustomed now to playing here that her upstate gigs feature a band made up of local musicians. The Lennon birthday gig included Gregory Sanon, known to most of us here in Hudson as Azouke,a musician and composer Haitian native on conga and percussion. Stuart Quimby, a well-known jazz flutist who often accompanies Yukari on her forays into the Hudson Valley. Peter Toigo, a Chatham resident and a professional bass player had met Yukari at the Henry Hudson Riverfront concert series last year.
“Sometimes I think I could live here,Yukari told me after that concert. She had been talking to bassist Meshell N’Degeocello who been rehearsing for a tour and listed numerous benefits of the upstate musicians life style. Yukari remembered a number of close calls concerning Hudson gigs, missing the last train to NY by seconds driving through sleet and ice and once literally jumping out of the train at the Amtrak station and running to the riverfront stage for a set on the gazebo.
Yukari and I are still discussing the possibility of a benefit for an orphanage in Northeast Japan the area with the most damage.
A final Yukarian quote.
Thank you for being there and singing with me! Hudson folks are really warm and great people. Usually people are quiet for a while and I need to say “SING WITH ME !!!” but you weren’t, so I wanted to sing more and more with you…so nice.
Smile

Yukari

http://www.myspace.com/rojalove