Issue 6
Do music genres and social/political borders have something in common? After talking with Miho Hatori, we’re persuaded to think so. For this issue of HoW we were fortunate enough to be able to chat with Miho Hatori about these and other topics. Hatori, formerly of Cibo Matto, and currently of all sorts of things, is currently at work on an upcoming solo album. We caught up with her shortly after a performance with her side project with Smokey Hormel in the Brazilian music-focused Smokey and Miho. In the interview, Hatori talks about music genres in a persuasive way:
The definitions of music genres exist in order for us to communicate, but I don't have those borders--and I don't want to have them--when I'm creating something. People made too many borders in this planet and I think I want to be a person to erase them with music.
We’ve always cast a pretty broad net at HoW, and although we’re just as liable as anyone to get caught up in classifying music, film etc., we tend to favor those artists who work at blurring lines. The last article in this issue is another interview, with Seattle-based musician Jason Webley. Webley’s work exists in no genre that we can easily think of, and we’re not particularly troubled to try to classify it. Paul Piper asks Webley all the right questions. In between these two interviews, Allen Frost explores the frankly unclassifiable work of W. Lee Wilder, Billy’s older brother. And Barry Brower takes you behind the scenes of an annual bluegrass music convention. Okay, bluegrass is a pretty specific genre, but let’s not quibble, eh? Here’s to erasing borders.
