Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Goh Kurosawa. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Goh, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Compose life. The fundamental way to allow things to circle is to completely simply believe, not taking anything overly seriously, move to improve, and above all staying true to yourself by being alive; being yourself. As a creative musician, I enjoy waking up in the morning before the sun is out of bed. My current three favorite workout choices other than practicing music… (a) swimming (b) running to the park to do 55 perfect pull-ups (c) morning walk. On a good morning, after my exercising, I cook https://www.composelife.com/diary/k55 a meal, and then review my recordings and videos from recent events and work on crafting my voice, guitar, and compositions. On days without performance gigs, I work on bookings for upcoming tours, or go out to spend time with the communities in Los Angeles. For example, during the pandemic, I started sharing more time and energy at a small local food bank, and am continuing to do that. My name is Goh Kurosawa, international touring musician since 2005.

Goh, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To evolve personally, collectively, globally, and beyond.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

For this question, I would like to refer you to a recent letter I wrote called Blues in Ojai.

Good morning Brent,

It was much fun to meet you in Ojai. Yes, Miroslav Tadic; meeting and studying with him helped me to realize that one can be a classical guitar player and a blues electric guitarist (though at the time, I had little interest in the blues). All of us go through many different phases. During the phase before meeting Miro, I thought I was going to become an orchestra conductor with the ability of a modern classical guitarist; when I discovered Miro, it kinda set me freer. I have always believed, in order to conduct an orchestra, one must be able to make a beautiful sound and must learn to play an instrument extremely well; when I lived in Japan, I conducted, directed, and arranged music for a mandolin and guitar ensemble. I enjoyed conducting music, but it is a much greater joy to be playing music.

Miro invited me to come watch his trio’s rehearsal with percussionist John Bergamo (my teacher later), sax player Eric Barber, and Miro playing a flamenco guitar completely unplugged; and because Miroslav was just as loud as the other two, I was shocked. It was one of the most incredible live performances I have ever experienced. Also, John’s focus and presence in the moment, really made a lasting impression on me. These guys were funny; they told my friend who drove to the rehearsal with me to look for a particular tree that they seemed to be quite familiar with, when giving him directions to the restroom.

Before becoming familiar with Miroslav and his diverse musical dimensions (and dry sense of humor), I believe Roland Dynes was my favorite guitarist (possibly more than Paco De Lucia at a certain phase). I studied with Roland in the US and France. For me, the direction that Miroslav was going was much more fascinating. One of the big things I took away from Miro was the Balkan music’s exotic rhythms and meters; I expanded on the idea especially with my trio Sharp Three like this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bojr8cTlbzw starting in the meter of 15 over 16 with the fourth measure of the ostinato pattern ending with 7/8 (seven over eight) rather than 15/16. The biggest thing I got from Miro was the idea of taking my homeland’s musical traditions (both new and old), and bring those together with the rest of the world; for example, Miroslav is a master with performing Balkan traditional folk songs arranged and recreated with a section that reminds me of modal jazz and harmonic improvisations, rhythmic and metric improvisations, or as far out as free improv.

Paco, Miro, and Egberto… Egberto Gismonti. Guitaristically, these three perhaps gave me the biggest impacts, and were my definite favorites for quite some time. Egberto from Brazil, Miro from Serbia, and Paco from Spain; all global musicians with respect for music and cultures.

That being said, some times we are not completely familiar with what has truly shaped us, or what shapes us; we might want to be loud about it, we might want to be quiet about it. In many situations, none musicians are influences… Bruce Lee, his style was no style.

Here is a letter from Eric Jue:

“As for the number one word / concept that would be my number one…I might have to choose ‘balance’ simply because I always had the tendency to think in black and white when that was never the case (as I have learned living and maturing in Japan). For me ‘balance’ means not being dogmatic. In my case, not being dogmatic about training. All training modalities are superior and none better than the other, they just achieve different goals, but I was blind to not realizing that until years about (approx 2018).”

Eric and I became familiar with one another during the 2020 lockdown when we were doing body weight training (at times called calisthenics) independently of each other in an empty park in the morning before sunrise; he was so disciplined with his training he was doing that I had to give compliment. My favorite exercise is swimming for one to two hours without stopping, and this https://youtu.be/IRd_CoOUsNs is my favorite 21 (7×3) moves to do with 15 of them using the pull up bar.

心技体 (Shin Gi Tai) is a fundamental I make effort to care for and grow little by little. The three characters are heart, weapon, and body. I believe by taking care of these three elements, one has a greater advantage to living a fulfilling life daily. My diary on ComposeLife.com offers a number of things that has shaped me to becoming who I am becoming, at least I think so, and I hope I know so.

The three songs you heard live in Ojai, “Lucky Old Sun” “Sing” and “Lovetap” are influences from different sources and people.

I was touring in Japan last year in 2022 when I came across LOS and I fell in love with the Japanese lyrics. When I came back to the US, I researched and came across Willie Nelson singing it, and about 10 other recorded versions. I did some tweaking to the lyrics and the melody which you heard me sing in Japanese and English; here is the album www.composelife.com/diary/tws that include LOS (track 2). The LOS video of this recording, I will be releasing a little before Christmas this year perhaps.

Sing, I wrote shortly after having a lesson with Adam Levy; Adam is one of the grooviest players who can groove slow… really cool. I studied several years with Bill Lenihan who was a student of Ralph Towner (from the band Oregon). Bill claimed to have written out all possible chord voicings on the piano that required more than 3000 pages to write on manuscript, or something that surprised me like that if not close enough for jazz. One thing that Bill told me that rings bright with me still today is, “Music is math with lots of lots of lots of love.” So I was talking theory with Adam about some chordal movements and voice leadings, and Adam simply smiled and said, “You got to make it sing.” I recorded the following www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ4GFQpzf04 after that experience.

Here is a note from Adam:

“Musically, artistically, I think the word that means the most to me right now is: presence. For me, that means not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow, but just being with the music I’m making right now, being with myself right now, being with my collaborators right now.”

The messages from Eric and Adam were responses to the following I wrote:

“「改善」「生きがい」「やりがい」．．．この言葉をアメリカの方より投げかけられたら、みなさんはどう動くでしょうか？僕は知らなかったのですが、アメリカで「生きがい」は結構使われているとのことです。僕は嬉しかったのと同時に改めて自分はどうに使っているのかと考えるところに動きました。 So, what I wrote above is a question to friends from Japan based on two separate conversations I had with my friends here in Los Angeles. The conversations included Japanese words「改善(kaizen)」「生きがい(ikigai)」「やりがい(yarigai)」and at the time, I wasn’t aware that ikigai is a word that is pretty frequently used in the US culture today… I was moved… “move” is my current number one guide; what word/concept would be your number one?”

Lovetap, here www.composelife.com/diary/lovetap is the story. This brings me to Joshua Lopez; if it was not for Joshua, I may have continued growing out the nails on my right hand as most classical guitar players have been doing since the modern classical guitar strings were invented. It seemed to me that Josh had a solid foundation in various music theories, and he demonstrated to me that two hand tapping was cool; we get to use all that we know with all fingers as if we were playing the piano, plus he said I would not loose any skills I have been using. In spite of the fact I was getting ready for a month long tour in Japan, I was convinced, therefore I cut off my nails right there and then. Josh was a little surprised, but I was too excited not to do so at that point. These kinda surprises, you gotta embrace them in the presence; my right hand eventually did develop calluses tough enough to pluck and strum just as efficiently as I have always have been doing, or perhaps even better.

It is exciting to be a beginner; Joshua told me that my fingers were going to hurt (and/or bleed) like the first time I played guitar, and I wanted that; I only smoke air and I was so naturally high.

The pecan chocolate was good with my lunch the very next day on a Saturday in sunny LA. Thank you for the thoughts you shared with me; it is a blessing to hear from a stranger out of the blue, who was a serious musician and knew Lucky Old Sun; it turned what seemed like a unlucky day for me, into a lucky day. Life is funny like that.

Nice to meet you friend; stay true to yourself.

Shine on,
Goh
;)
https://www.composelife.com/diary/ojaiblues (original diary from my homepage)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ComposeLife.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supportgoh/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/supportgoh/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/supportgoh
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@supportgoh

Image Credits
Sue Morris, Goh Kurosawa, Yasuko Yanai, Mai Nguyen-Tai, Paul Guenette