We were lucky to catch up with Kai Kubota-Enright recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kai, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve most often heard people talk about the craft of composition, which is certainly worth thinking about, but for my work and what I specifically do, I think I would rather frame it as learning the craft of sound, with composition just being one facet of how that practice might be expressed.

Sound is an experiential medium, it envelopes us, resonates through us, and spiritually speaking becomes intertwined with our existential fabric. As such, it follows that the craft of sound begins with listening. I think developing a personal practice of listening was probably the most pivotal development in my artistic work. With sustained and careful listening, you develop awareness of the inseparability of sound and space, how it lives breathes and dies like an organism, and the subtle personal affects and memories that sound contains, not unlike fragrance, lighting, and physical textures.

I think my training and classical background sometimes held me back from these understandings. At points I was presented with very narrow perspectives of how music should be made and understood, and I often felt alienated and confused. It took time to recenter myself, and gain deeper confidence and faith in my aesthetic and conceptual goals. I wonder now if there was some unnecessary stress, and mental blocks that if removed sooner would have lead to finding the place I’m at now sooner. But in the end, your path is your path, and sometimes you can develop just as much standing in opposition to ideas as having your worldview validated from peers and teachers. These experiences lead me to having integrity and security in my creative vision that I might not developed otherwise, and it’s not something I linger on.

I developed this framework of listening, inspired by many that did this work before me of course, and felt community in the various sound practices and philosophies that fall under this heading. Considering and expanding my listening was a practice that was developed over years and is ongoing, it exists not just for the purpose of creative output, but is an inseparable part of how I understand and move through the world. I listen to “noise” and “music” in much the same way, and find comfort and intrigue in the vibrations that we are constantly immersed in.

In terms of my artistic work, it’s lead me to operate from a framework of creating sonic environments—sound based works with an intimate and considered approach to space, with an appreciation for the ritualistic, subconscious, and deeply affecting qualities of sound, spinning webs of personal and secretive sonic textures.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Kai, and I am a sound artist and composer / performer, working in a variety of sound based genres and practices.

My work is created by different modes of listening–imagination and careful attention, both to the physical properties of sound but also its cultural connotations as well as its potential for transformation.

My practice affirms the power of sound as ritual; organization of sound in the form of instrumental and/or electronic music in both closed and open forms.

Formative experiences in sound and aesthetic philosophy from my culture, such as Japanese esoteric (shingon) buddhism—drumming, bells, chant, and horagai, are influences in my approach to melody, harmony, and time.

I create more open sonic spaces that invite and engage performers and audiences as participants, and interact with the pre-existing ambient sonic environment of the space to create cohesive and interconnected ecosystems of sound. This includes concert music, fixed media, as well as live improvisational performance integrating soundscapes, acoustic sound, and live electronic processing.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between artists and audiences, and particular about the notion of an “educated audience”. I’ve felt an impression in my communities that there is a feeling overall that a lack of educated audiences has made a difficult environment for creators, which I’ve found I basically agree with.

It’s very much not anyone’s fault: apart from the obvious lack of appreciation and support for artistic education, we are inundated with short form content, technologies developed and designed only to steal our attention at any cost, dulling both our feelings and our spirit, and an apparent acceptance that all creative work should be subjugated totally by capitalistic commercial pressures. I think that the people that orchestrate these societal shifts would be happy for AI generated slop to fully take the place of the mass market content that people consume on the internet and beyond, and at best simply don’t care about the power, understanding, and depth of lived experience that would be ripped from our society if this became our dominant mode of cultural “discourse”.

This being said, I’m very much an optimist, and I don’t particularly worry about the replacement of real art by new age algorithm technologies. I think art exists foundationally as a point of connection between people, and as humans we will always seek connection, to traverse the illusory veil that separates us and makes us forget that we are all interconnected and interdependent.

So when I think about an educated audience, I don’t really mean an education in an intellectual or academic sense, though that does have its place. I think what society, as in regular individuals, can do to support artists is to search for the artistic expression that they love, become obsessed, and sustain the people that make the art that they love, with no embarrassment or shame. Find the stuff that you love and love it. Deepening your interests and developing your aesthetic sense is real work, but so enriching and worth doing. I think that is an ideal “educated” audience for me. A group of people who have genuine passion for what they are experiencing, and are willing to accept the risks inherent to that.

Sincere interest, and the cultural and financial capital that comes with that, is probably the most affecting gift that society could give artists, and in return would make their own lives more interesting, strange, and wonderful.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I knew more about the resources within myself. A lot of the things I was searching for and felt I was lacking were actually with me all along, and just required me to develop a deeper sensitivity to gain awareness of them. I think beginning the process of cultivating this connection with yourself is an important part of being an artist, and the sooner that process begins the better.

In terms of a creative journey, I think one of the main goals is not about developing a fixed aesthetic or skill level, but the process of developing trust in yourself as an artist and creator. Building a relationship with your fleeting instincts and connections made on the fly, knowing that the messiness you find yourself will lead you somewhere, that the disparate pieces you’ve buried yourself in will form something artistically coherent in the end. Put simply and oft repeated, trusting your process.

And perhaps more importantly and more difficult, accepting the stillness of the in-between times, of uncertainty, knowing that you haven’t lost anything and giving yourself the space to rest. For dreams to be born you must first sleep.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kubotaenright/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kubotaenright/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kai-kubota-enright/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kubotaenright
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/kubotaenright
• Other: kubotaenright.bandcamp.com