Whereas Gleefully Unknown: 1997-2005showed a youthful kiwi fusion of songs with avant-garde spoken word and instrumental pieces, Fame & Oblivion: 2005-2012 documents me in my late 20s and early 30s moving beyond these parameters.
My approach became less introspective and more journalistic – thanks to new influences from years spent living abroad in Australia, South Korea and Japan. New elements include the banjo, electronica, field recordings, multimedia performances, and touches of traditional Asian music. I also adopted the moniker Dave Black, to differentiate from my earlier works.
The third part of the trilogy, Other Islands: 2012-2018, documents my return to NZ via other Asia Pacific countries, and more recent works.
2011 – year of the Christchurch earthquakes, the Arab Spring, the Fukushima disaster, the shootings in Norway,the Queensland floods… and the Wellington (New Zealand) winter was colder than usual.Acoustic improvisations on guitar, ukulele, banjo, clarinet, piano, harmonica and percussion by The Winter (Simon, Dave and Mike).
In 2011-2012 I lived in Naha (那覇市), the main city of Okinawa Prefecture (沖縄県) in Japan (日本).
The soundtracks to these videos are snippets of live Okinawan music I recorded there, such as eisa drum dancing and shima uta island songs. Spot me on sanshin (traditional 3-stringed banjo) and harmonica in the Iriomote one, and having a drumming lesson in Ishigaki – the two Yaeyama Islands, in the remote southwesternmost corner of Japan.
The Ryukyu Islands are a whole other world from mainland Japan – there’s no Mt Fuji, samurai, sumo wrestling, geisha or shinkansen. They have a different culture, food, climate and music – more tropical and laidback, the Hawaii of northeast Asia, with jungle, sugar cane, beautiful sea and coral – umi to sango wa totemo kirei desu ne – and wonderful people and tragic history.