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Nobuko Miyamoto
This is an edited interview conducted by InMotion magazine, an exchange partner of our e-zine. Check out this multicultural democracy site . There is another part to this interview not included on this site.
Great Leap
My name is Nobuko Miyamoto. I'm from Los Angeles. I'm a third generation Japanese American and I deal in the performing arts. For twenty-one years, I have run an arts organization called Great Leap which is a multi-disciplinary arts organization that creates work that opens boundaries between different communities, diverse communities.
Most of this work is done in performance. We do different kinds of performances, several different kinds. One is a show that we call "A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens" which is performed by three or four artists who have individual stories about their backgrounds. The show tours colleges and performing arts centers. We also we have a children's version in Los Angeles that tours the schools and reaches about 50,000 kids a year. We have several other shows. I have a one-person show called "A Grain of Sand". We have some music projects that we also tour.
How It Began
Great Leap started out as an Asian American performing arts company. My work started around 1969 when I became involved in the Asian American movement. I was already a dancer and into music, singing, but the work drastically changed when I became involved in the Asian American movement. The music that I did reflected the Asian American movement. I worked with two other singer songwriters. Chris Ijima and Charlie Chin and the three of us started doing music together, two guitars and three voices. We, somehow, in the '70s were the first group that was doing music that reflected the Asian American expereince. We made an album that became the first album of Asian American songs in this country. By some chance. Just being together. The work that we were doing in the communities. Moving around from New York, our base at that time.
Then we moved around the country to all the Asian American communities, East to West coast and became like griots. We would see what was going in one community and take it to the next community.
As a matter of fact, we are doing a reunion tour and we find that the same thing is true. We become the storytellers going from one university to another, and speaking of what is going on in other places. Recalling the history that we've lived through. Seeing and comparing what was going on then with what's going on now. How much has changed, and how much hasn't changed.
From that work came Great Leap. I moved back to my home in Los Angeles. I put my roots there. I was teaching dance at Senshin Buddhist Temple which is a very active Japanese Buddhist temple. I began to create work in that temple based on custom, traditional music and dance performed by the community in the summertime at the Obon Festival.
The reverend of that temple asked me if I would write some music for
Obon based on the tradition of doing this circular dance that helped
us remember our ancestors. That started me on another journey of working
with community and creating with community. Some of these songs that
I've written with them and the dances we created go on every summer in
the communities. Not only Los Angeles, but other places in the country
too.
.
Nobuko Miyamoto has been a model Asian
American activist-artist for three decades.
