The Hippodrome

I honestly spit out my tea when I saw this video. This is Tim and Eric meets Andrew W.K., shamisen style. The best parts are the shots of the refined Japanese gentlefolk nodding in tentative approval. And the breakdown around :50 is priceless.

These guys are seriously signed to Domo, so no drome feature in the cards here. Jokes aside, the shamisen playing is flawless, but seems like an arpeggiator with a “Japanese” patch plugged in. This is kind of a shame when you consider their undeniable virtuosity and the subtlety of the traditional art form.

I don’t really have a problem with the fact that people eat up cheesy music by virtue of one gimmick, but what does sadden me is that The Yoshida Brothers are treated as gods in Japan. They’re far more recognizable than the countless and starving traditional shamisen players who live in anonymity. It’s great that more people will even be exposed to shamisen, but isn’t it a shame that the world works like this?

This entry was posted by Ben Bernstein on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 12:48 am and is filed under The Business, Videos, Written By Ben Bernstein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.