While my guitar gently (s)weeps - Intervista a Naia Izumi (2/2)

ENGLISH VERSION

The first question happens to be very plain and, at the same time, very complex. What, exactly, has brought you to adopt such a composite style? Why blending together soul, hard rock and math rock, crisscrossing different cultures and mingling them all along a decennial span of time?

Simple answer... I hear something in my imagination and create it. And ask questions later. Authentic creativity can be hit or miss, but you will always catch gems every now and then, and when you do, if you use scientific processes and relativity to things pre existing sources to study them, you can recreate them in different colors, sizes and even add subtle differences... True Imagination has no catogories. And that’s where my style comes from.

Which artists – in a wider sense, not only guitarists, obviously – have influenced you the most, concerning your style, your tastes, your way of playing your instrument?

I really have absolutely no influences I can single out. I've always had a sound in my head and everything that I've heard in the 32 years I've been living in this world has assisted me in finding concrete ways to express what I've always heard inside. It's not an acceptable anwser to most people, but it's the most honest one. I've been compared to guitarist like Robert Fripp, Jeff Beck, Adrian Belew, Allan Holdsworth and, of course, I get the inevitable Jimi Hendrix and I've lied many times saying that there were aspects of style from, but I've been doing what I do before I'd ever heard of any of them.

Two EPs of yours have been digitally released in the first three months of the year. What is to come next? Have you already planned to press your releases?

I'm releasing 4 song EPs every two months this year and I plan on doing some phyisical releases on vinyl and CD at the end of the year of the favorites from the EPs I'm releasing, if I have the founding.

It’s almost inevitable that this question will be asked a multitude of times: how do you feel to be a black woman, playing alone her guitar in a world of white-men-virtuoso-instrumentalists based bands? Does this perspective acquire a strong political meaning, even unforeseen, not overt?

I don't know... your answer is as good as mine... I'm just borrowing a body to express myself and be a part of this thing. I don't put meaning in gender or race. I just do what I do. <3

Actually, you do have your band, Utena. How and when did you girls first meet and what has lead you to get together? Are you going to record something together?

The three of us meet online in January and I posted a status on Facebook saying how cool it would be to have a band again and it just happend and we clicked... Yes, we are working on doing some alternate versions of some of my solo stuff  and working out some new stuff together, little be little.    

We’re impressed by the way you keep catching videos of yourself playing and jamming by the streets of L.A. Why do you do so? What kind of feedback does it give to you?

It's more fun than watching someone sit in a bed room alone. Busking and selling my music is all I have to support myself. Paying gigs in L.A. are hard to come by because so many people wanna be stars here. I could session but I don't wanna support stupid generic music. This is it for me, float or sink, I either make a living with my music the way I want to make my music, or I starve and die... No fucks given.

Your popularity has been skyrocketing since your EPs began circulating on the internet. What do you think of this kind of support listeners from all over the world can give to the artists? Should music be available to all, even without paying it?

I think the support really rely great and it allows musicians like myself the freedom to create the music we really want to. Musicians certainly can't and probably wouldn't keep making music if no one paid for it.