We recently connected with Gen Yoshimura and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gen, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I honestly don’t remember exactly when I thought of becoming a professional musician, I guess it was more like a gradual thing. My parents love music, so I grew up listening to music since I was born. I started to play drums when I was 6. My mother was very enthusiastic with making me play music. She recommended me to play either piano or violin, but I refused. She took me to a lot of concerts, I had always liked music but for some reason they never hit me enough to think of playing music – except this one time, she took me to this concert called percussion festival. I saw my first teacher Mr. Yohichi Odagiri playing this percussion called cajon. I immediately told my mother, “I’m going to play that!” In the first day of the lesson, I was excited and came in to the room, what I saw wasn’t cajon. It was huge drumset. And I thought “That’s even cooler!” That’s how I started to play drumset. I had always loved playing drums, it was already a part of my life. When I was 13, my mother took me to this jazz seminar by world-class trumpeter Mr. Tiger Okoshi and the faculties at Berklee College of Music. It was also an amazing experience for me to listen to the world-class performance in person and study with them. Around that time, I slowly started to think of getting in to Berklee for my college degree. That’s how I got into the idea of pursuing music as my career little by little.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As an artist, we all have to be unique, to be successful or to be recognized. I was also trying to find my own way to be unique when I was younger. I would say the trait of myself as a drummer is that I’m flexible. I mainly play jazz. In jazz music, there are lots of improvisations and musical communications. I always try to pay so much attention to what other band members are playing, and respond to them, or give them new ideas – in addition to what I’m supposed to play. I think that is the most important but the most difficult skill for jazz musicians. I’m also trained to be able to adjust my playing depending on – size/instrumentation of the band, what the clients want me to play, how other musicians approach to the music, and so on. I think that’s how I get calls.
In addition, I mentioned that I mainly play jazz, but I also have knowledge/techniques to play other genres of music such as pop, rock, R&B, and especially South American Music and Caribbean Music. So many people, including professional musicians generalize those music as “Latin Music” but there are so many different styles from different countries. My mentor, Mr. Mark Walker who I met in the jazz seminar – he is not only a world-class drummer, but also can play so many styles of music. He brought me into South American and Caribbean music. Now I’m still studying world music everyday, the journey never ends. Anyways, I guess that’s how I get calls from many different styles of bands.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think art has a special power to move our emotions. And that felling we get from art is very specific, nothing else can give us the same feeling. So as an artist, musician, I feel so much joy when I see audience’s satisfying faces after my performances. So that I can re-confirm the possibility that art has. And that is the reason I perform for people, instead of just playing in my room for fun.
Also as an educator, I like sharing my knowledge to the next generations. To me, education is not like “teaching” because we all are students for good. It is more like helping by sharing what I know. So I feel joy when I see my students finding ways by what I share.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I’m not a instagramer or YouTuber, social media is not my main thing at all. So I would say I’m not doing anything special or specific for my social medias. But at the same time, these days you can find so much information online. And our scene is very competitive. So it would be an advantage if people can find you easily, see what you are doing, how you play and so on. So I make sure that I post my performance videos as a reference, show what kind of performances I’m doing. I sometimes get students through social medias as well. But it shouldn’t be the priority in my opinion, we artists have to make sure the quality of our art itself first and keep working on developing. However, I would say it definitely will be some help for your career to build a good social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.genyoshimuramusic.com/
• Instagram: gen.yoshimura

Image Credits

First and the Last one : Akira Tanisugi
The Rest : Erin Crowley