Share your experiences below!
- Only 5 of us at Eigakan2nite but great fun. Time to set up the Aug TJS gathering. Am thinking at Jazz Pub Michaux for a souljazz night! — 1 day 20 hours ago
- Tokyo Jazz Society drinks TONIGHT at the Eigakan (映画館) Hakusan-Stn, Mita Line exit A3. 7-10pm, I'll be there round 8ish! — 2 days 4 hours ago
- Blue Note Tokyo now fololwing me on Twitter..umm..have they read any of my site? Oh well, welcome aboard!! — 3 days 8 hours ago
- This Friday, Tokyo Jazz Society gathering at the 映画館 cafe at Hakusan station, Toei Mita Line, exit A3! Be there or be [ ] — 5 days 4 hours ago
- @jonahkeri Thank you Jon Lester for the perfect game..for all us Yankee fans :) — 6 days 22 hours ago
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Syndicate
giggin'
hey, guess i'll make like ichiro and play "sentou battaa" (leadoff hitter)--not that i expect to get such results... lol
been gigging for some years on the side, as an amateur. 3 years on the niigata scene, more recently some years in the kanto area. small venues, few customers, and just enough "gara" (so-called "guaranteed" money) to stop off for some ramen and gyoza post-gig, in most cases...
my impression is that it might not be hard to get a gig if by that you mean ANY gig--i.e., if you're not picky about where you play or how much (if at all) you make on the deal... HOWEVER, the bigger question is how to step up to the proverbial "next level." in my case, i started getting out to tokyo when i couldn't satisfy my jones locally. i hit as many jam sessions as i could and got to know other players, other places, and the folks who run those other places. eventually, after you run into the same folks a few times, things are likely to open up, someone calls your number, or you put out feelers. so far, so good. making general inquiries is fine, and it's what i did, casually, to get my foot (and band) in a few doors. in a couple of cases, i built on what i did in the early going to make demo cd's and handed them to a couple of club owners/managers, but i really don't think that that was very useful (at sometime, in kichijoji, uno-san stressed that, if you're not recommended by a musician who plays there, you're probably not going to get a listen; at jazz spot j in shinjuku, it was more likely a few words in my favor from the night's featured artist--a shout-out to guitarist izumi kato--that got me a gig)... note, too, that getting gigs at bigger, high-level, and/or "name" clubs seems to require meeting a sort of "magic number" in terms of how many customers you pull. a few times, i've been given the impression that 30 customers will get you future gigs--but maybe that was just me...
anyway, in the end, i'd say it's all about footwork, connections, and a healthy dose of "en" (fate)...
oh yeah, about "gara": the conditions vary, but i've often found myself getting 1/2 of the music charge collected on a given night, sometimes a little more. so, if the music charge was 3000 yen, 1500 yen per customer gets kicked back to the musicians. do the math,and you can see why--especially for pro musicians--that's not gonna be very satisfying, in financial terms... (example: a trio, 10 customers-->5000 yen per player)
Thanks, sing-or-die. Really
Thanks, sing-or-die. Really helpful information.
Greg Chako checked in with following (reprinted with his permission from his email)
I`ve lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai too, but of them all,
Japan is the most alien with regard to the cultural and language barrier.
Also, more so than any other place, image as opposed to quality, is paramount.
They respect a pre-conceived notion of image to determine worth, rather than
discerning a substantive difference in the quality of something. To add insult to injury,
there are places I can`t work here because I am white and not black. And, there are
other places that I can work only because I`m white and not Japanese.
Furthermore, unlike the other places I`ve lived, it`s more difficult to do anything
entrepreneurial here. That is, one seems to need an agent for everything, and often,
there are numerous agents for just one gig. So the steady work and functions, weddings
and the like, are controlled by Japanese agents.
The other work that is available, in jazz clubs, is available only at certain places
under certain circumstances, and once one finds a few different places to work at,
one can gig. However, those gigs don`t pay. One gets a percentage of the door charge
set by the club, and there is tremendous pressure to bring customers. It`s not an easy task.
Once your friends and relatives come to one show one week, it`s pretty tough to get them
to come again in the near future. And once you don`t bring customers, the club will not let
you play there anymore. This happened to me at least once, and in other cases, I couldn`t
even get a gig because the club owner was not confident I could bring the adequate number
of customers (and that was a gig with a world-class 10 year sideman of Herbie Hancock).
I think that about covers some of the reasons why I don`t gig more. I have some Korean
English students and they say things are far more friendly in Korea. But, that`s just one opinion.