As I fish my increasingly puzzled brain, trying to suss out words for Amahoro’s Flowering Of The Spirit (いのちの花), I go back to just how unlikely of a story and of a pairing these two came to be. You see, if you didn’t know who was behind the music, you wouldn’t think it was the product of two Japanese musicians. If you didn’t know the era it was released, you’d think it was released just yesterday.
If these two musicians – Hiroyoshi Kawagishi and Takashi Kohgo – hadn’t met in the unlikeliest of places, well, the story wouldn’t exist.
Luckily for us, our universe connected the dots and now we get to their truly heavenly fourth world music. It’s a conversation between two distinct instruments – kora and esraj – with distinct traditions (African and Asian) coming together in a new kind of harmony.
If you remember the names: Hiroyoshi Kawagishi and Takashi Kohgo, it’s probably because we’ve encountered them before. Think back to the last time I spoke about the gorgeous music being created and released by Hideaki Masago’s Awa Muse record label. It’s within that roster that you’d find them forming part of that motley crew of musicians exploring the fringes of world music, trying to foster new territory in the realm of “healing music” where they could mutate “foreign” affectations with new form electronic instruments, deep folkloric rumination, and spiritual searching.
It was in that second Awa Muse compilation, しおのみち (SHIO-NO-MICHI) Vol. 2, that we first heard Takashi explore the carnatic sounds of India and its esraj transmute into new creations of his own volition. It was there we got to hear the haunting African-lilting melodies of Hiroyoshi’s African harp, the kora.
The road to Amahoro wouldn’t start in Japan but in Gorée, Senegal. It was in 1993, in that African island that the two first met, completely floored to discover another Japanese citizen into the same kind of music and musical studies. What began as a stint living in Senegal, working in an African orchestra together, would spin off into a separate group that wanted to explore new realms of non-traditional music.
Hiroyoshi and Takashi would settle on naming themselves after the Kirundi word for “peace”, Amahoro. Symbolically, this name meant that whatever this exploration was, would reconcile two seemingly distinct traditions with music that forged its own respectful identity outside of them. As Amahoro, those traditional instruments would also co-exist with other collected instruments like the kalimba, drum machines, samplers and synthesizers.
Flowering Of The Spirit (いのちの花) would be privately recorded and released on Hiroyoshi’s own Amahoro label (with help and guidance from Hideaki Masago who’d go on to design it’s artwork). Immediately from the first track on, you get transported back to that Awa Muse magic, for lack of a better term, where soothing sounds and awfully meditative music leave a deep imprint on you when you have it on.
“めざめ (Awakening)” combines wordless melismatic vocals and kora with absorbing field recordings that create their own imagined world. Hiroyoshi takes center stage on “ウララ (U-la-la.)” singing over a beautiful track that features a wonderful interplay between his kora, Takashi’s esraj and a chorus of kalimba and vocals, all building to a memorable, heartfelt, chorus (a rarity for such fourth world-esque music) that’s simply transportive. “波の舞 (Nami-No-Mai)” then follows with a hypnotic dance song that slips Takashi’s esraj in and around the increasingly dreamy kora melodies from Hiroyoshi.
As a signpost, Amahoro labeled this music as a “healing vibration”. The more I listen to it or go back and remember their ruminative music, I’m still struck by just how beautiful it is. There are no pretenses, no awkward attempts to be au courant, no pondering. Its: let’s find our space together. So, songs like the title cut or “星に祈りを (Prayer To The Star)” change the atmosphere of the room they’re played in.
Rather than being stuck in between two speakers, you’re by the seashore or surveying the greenery in front of you. Amahoro’s Flowering Of The Spirit (いのちの花) will remain timeless because, it seemed those two, created music that absconded with time and place, they settled on their spiritual music – music for a new age (even if that age is still, forever, our greatest mystery). I’m just glad we have a recording of their musical conversation for life’s fleeting memory.
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