Performance of an ayu song...

[hanabiwings]

My question to all of you out there:

Have you ever performed an ayu song in public?

I have two different performance types:

Karaoke

Real public performance

a.) Karaoke

When I was in Japan in 2001, I went to karaoke many times No, just kidding. I didn't drink. But I did go to karaoke a lot. Even without alcohol, it was a riot. With my friends, I did ayu medleys and sang entire albums in a row. It took an insane amount of time, but it was done. Also, once, I went with some friends to the Tokyo Gas Building to eat dinner. There, they have a karaoke lounge and I sang in front of a crowd. Man I was nervous~ But I sang "Endless sorrow" in front of a bunch of business dudes. It was a little intimidating... Er, a lot intimidating. It was, however, very fun to sing with my friends duets and so on. My cousin's wife and I sang SEASONS on many occassions as a duet.

b.) Real public performances

This happened twice.

In my junior year of high school, we had two exchange students in the choral program--one from Korea and one from Japan. My teacher found a copy of Ahrirang and we were to sing this for the final concert to honor our classmate. She didn't, however, find any songs to sing in Japanese. Besides, it would be difficult enough to learn the Korean song in addition to the other foreign songs we were singing. So, she asked me to find a song.

Meanwhile, my friend got wind of this and was shocked the teacher didn't ask her to sing, too. So she said, "Why don't the two of you do a duet?"

We came back to my house that evening and listened to maybe two dozen songs. Then, she said to me, "I want to sing that song by Hamasaki Ayumi. You know, the one where she's like, 'Doushite naiteiru no?' I don't remember the name."

So we decided to sing A Song for XX during the final concert. My teacher, being the musical genius she is, created a great arrangement to accomodate our voices and worked on making it sound more like the acoustic orchestra version. I did a translation of the song, but unfortunately, she believed the song to be too depressing/dark for the audience and refrained from printing it in the program. I thought this was a big loss and was taken aback. It shocked me very much to know that she believe Hamasaki's music to be too "sad." Isn't music about being honest??

So, we practiced and sang with the choir backing us up. So we had 100 people in the background singing "Oo" during some parts. We even wrote in a little English transliteration for them to sing toward the end. When the time of the concert came, I was nervous because I felt I owed it to Hamasaki to present her music in perfect form. So I practiced any number of times to get the feeling behind the song correct and thought about my own experiences and what she was saying. When the concert came, we did a great job, I think. I watched the performance with the rest of my classmates the next day. It was GREAT. The audience applauded so loudly. Everyone was shocked to hear something so different from what they believed Asian music to be. That was one of my proudest moments as a student and a musician. We stood there in the midst of applause, the last chords ringing in our ears and the words... Those were beside us.

The more you said things like that...

(We used the words from ayu's live concerts, "Sonna fuu ni anata ga ieba iu hodo ni..)

The second performance I did was last year. We have an annual talent night. So, I took my instrumental track with me and sang another ayu song. This time, it was Voyage. I wasn't sure how it would go over, because it's so different from pop music from the States. After all, who has an orchestra with them on stage these days? Very few people. And what's more, the sound is very, very orchestral. Songs like "Love~Destiny~" had violins and so on, but didn't sound so "legitimate" as Voyage did. (I say legitimate to mean choral.)

Due to a time restriction, I had to crop the beginning music box intro. Anyway, the piano played as I stood on stage. I was nervous, still unsure whether it would go over well. But after the first phrase, I really let the music and the message become my focus. With such a mindset, I found myself gesturing on stage. I don't do this when I sing solos most of the time, but something about the emotion needed to be communicated in my mind. I really enjoyed singing it. The song just bumped 5 minutes, I believe. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and I had people coming up to me for weeks afterward saying, "Were you the one who sang that song in Japanese? It was a great song!"

Have you ever performed an ayu song? If so, let me know. If not, what song would you choose if you could and why? Also, have you ever seen someone else cover a song by her or heard a cover of her song somewhere? I'm always interested about this!!!!

De wa mata minna. ^^


(And to the mods, if this needs to go under general chat, feel free to move it. I apologize for not knowing how to distinguish! )