Geinoh Yamashirogumi (#8355)

[Xenofan 29A]

Tenpei Sato said in his SEMO interview that he was once a part of this group. Should he be added to the members section?

[CHz]

Most definitely. I added him in as a former member.

You wouldn't by chance happen to know when he joined and left Geinoh Yamashirogumi, would you? He says in the interview that GY was an early part of his career, so before he started working for Telenet?

[Xenofan 29A]

I sent him off an email. Hopefully it's comprehensible. My written Japanese is not very good.

[CHz]

Nice. Thanks for asking!

[Xenofan 29A]

Okay, here's a rough translation of the reply I got.

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I am unable to separate out when exactly I began and stopped working with Yamashirogumi. I started with them in the 80s, and when I started working on game music in earnest, I stopped being active with them. Since the latter half of the 90s, I perform in the kabuki rock musical "Narugami" and in kecak dance during the kecak festival every summer. But recently, I've been busy with work, and for about 3 years I haven't been able to perform. This summer, I would like to leave work behind and participate in this year's kecak dance.

Kecak dance is an ethnic dance from the island of Bali, where people sing and dance to the accompaniment of a chorus calling cakcak, and since the formation of Yamashirogumi, it has been performed sucessfully outside of Bali.

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So, since the 80s, and then through until he became a full-time game composer, and since then off and on.

Anyway, the main thing to remember here is that this is primarily a performance group, and members will come and go very frequently. They do ethnic music, but with a focus on gamelan and kecak (hence the usage of both in the Akira soundtrack).