Yoshida Brothers

One advantage of being an idle monkey trainer, as opposed to one regularly and gainfully employed*, is the abundance of free time which allows me to attend concerts oddly scheduled on a Friday afternoon.

Yoshida Brothers (吉田兄弟） put on just such a show on May 2, 2008 at the new ACT Theater in Tokyo's swanky Akasaka district. The small theater was opened in April along with an office tower and shopping and restaurant area. This being Japan, of course every shop and restaurant opened on precisely the same day and at precisely the same time.

Given the time the concert started - 2:00 p.m. on a normal Friday - it was perhaps not surprising that the audience would be older. By my own rough estimate (monkey trainers, by the way, are remarkably accurate at gaging percentages in large crowds and can easily recognize numbers up to five) approximately 80 per cent of the audience was above the age of 60. It was also predominately female. I counted five Westerners.

Of course, another explanation of the audience's demographics could be the relative lack of interest in the shamisen, the traditional three-stringed Japanese instrument the Yoshida Brothers play. Traditional, however, is not how one would describe their music.

Some of their songs are played only by the two brothers, seated at center stage, with their shamisen hooked into amplifiers. On other songs they were backed up by taiko drums and a traditional flute. On yet others they were backed by a full drum kit, bass guitar, violin, electric guitar and keyboards.

Over 90 minutes, they played approximately nine songs, including a two-song encore of what are arguably their two most well-known songs: Rising and Kodo. (See below.) There was also a ten-minute movie that provided a bit of humor and a chance for them to go from jeans and t-shirts to more traditional kimono (as seen in the video).

For those unfamiliar with the Yoshida Brothers:

Rising


Kodo (This song was also used in the brilliant Nintendo Wii commercials in the US.)