Japanese blues guitarist Shun Kikuta, a regular fixture and fan favorite at Taipei’s annual Blues Bash, returned to Taiwan last week for a run of shows that concludes tonight at Riverside Cafe (河岸留言).
Kikuta forged his career in the blues capital of Chicago, where he currently lives and has spent two decades playing at clubs big and small. He has shared the stage with a who’s who of blues legends that include Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, James Cotton and BB King.
As the Tokyo-area native’s mastery of the Chicago electric blues style grew, so did his reputation. Kikuta was sought out by legendary singer Koko Taylor in 2000 and he served as her guitarist until she died last year at the age of 80.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHUN KIKUTA
Kikuta says his tenure with the “Queen of the Blues” taught him to always “play like it’s the last time and give everything that you have to the audience,” noting that Taylor continued to perform on stage despite her ailing health, which included struggles with diabetes and high blood pressure.
He remembers Taylor fondly for treating him and his fellow bandmates like “sons” and for providing an important boost for his career.
“Now I miss her big time, of course, but at the same time I was really honored to be with her for nine years. She took me everywhere in the world [on tour],” he said in an interview after arriving in Taipei last week. “Through Koko, I met so many people like BB King and Bonnie Raitt, and you name it, I met them. So that was a great experience. Working with Koko, I was at the top of the scene.”
Now Kikuta is stepping out on his own. In addition to weekly gigs at several long-established blues clubs in Chicago, he has been making more frequent trips to Japan to tour and to teach at guitar workshops. He has his own group, the Shun Kikuta Band, and is working on a new CD.
Kikuta says he intends to bring more past influences into his own music. He started out in classical guitar, grew up on a musical diet of Led Zeppelin and Van Halen, and studied jazz at the Berklee College of Music before embarking on a blues career.
He says Chicago blues has “changed dramatically” since he first moved to the city in 1990.
The swinging 12-bar shuffles pioneered by artists like Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon have given way to a “funkier” and more rock-oriented sound, as many of the city’s early generation of blues musicians have died, says Kikuta. He says the blues standards of today among younger bands in Chicago are likely to include songs from the likes of James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and the Ohio Players.
These changes are generally a good thing as they reflect the current generation, Kikuta said. “Otherwise, the music is going to be like museum music.”
Kikuta, 44, regards himself as part of this younger generation trying to push the blues in new directions. “People might look at it and say, ‘It’s not the blues.’ But to me, you have to be honest with yourself and I don’t want to limit myself to just 12-bar, three chords — that’s great, that’s beautiful blues — but sometimes I want to go beyond that.”
Tonight’s show is the only chance for blues fans in Taiwan to catch Kikuta this year, as he won’t be able to make the Blues Bash next month because of his touring schedule. For guitarists, he will also hold a guitar workshop tomorrow afternoon at Riverside Cafe.
Performance notes
What: Blues guitarist Shun Kikuta
When: Performance tonight at 9:30pm, workshop tomorrow at 2pm
Where: Riverside Cafe (河岸留言), B1, 2, Ln 244, Roosevelt Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路三段244巷2號B1). Tel: (02) 2368-7310
Admission: Entrance is NT$500 tonight, NT$100 for guitar workshop tomorrow. Tickets are available at the door or online through www.riverside.com.tw or tickets.books.com.tw. Contact venue for information on the guitar workshop
On the Net: shunkikuta.com
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby