Autobiographical Songs, Songs of our Father

Kishi Bashi and the musician Passenger have a lot in common: 1) both use stage names and 2) both have recently released a song about their father.

One of the most popular posts at this blog had to do with autobiographical songs. I know, why do I check my stats? Except for self-doubt, I might not have revisited this subject.

Kishi Bashi (Kaoru Ishibashi) is an energetic Japanese/American violinist. I’m sure he is classically trained but quickly began to experiment with rock violin and beatboxing, etc. He has accompanied artists such as Regina Spektor. He explores soundscapes, building up layers and looping. I first found him when I downloaded “Bright Whites”. I loved the flavor of the exotic combined with up-tempo lyrics. It went into my RUNNING playlist. His latest music is an ode or tribute to his father, an album called Omoiyari and the song, “Summer of '42” abut his father’s experiences during World War II inside an internment camp in the US.

From NPR:

“this is a very important song for me in that it's the finale piece to the symphonic piece I premiered last year. It's a love story set in World War II, about falling in love in an incarceration camp and ultimately losing that love. The significance is that the idea of love, loss, and desire are consistent themes throughout history and help us to empathize with a people in a disconnected past.”

It is no coincidence that many artists who are sons and daughter of immigrants or immigrants themselves have decided to explore the topic of welcoming the outsider and viewing the journey of their parent’s through today’s lens. Meaning the travel bans, talk of walls, heated rhetoric of caravans that dehumanizes.

Passenger (Mike Rosenberg) a solo artist with a “band” name had a big hit with “Let Her Go” in 2014. He is the son of an English mother and a Jewish father who hailed from New Jersey. I know, New Jersey. America must seem like such a complex place. We are this land of democracy, which has Constitutional gun rights. We love and hate in extremes. We went from a president named Obama to someone named Trump. Passenger has recently released a song called “To Be Free” about his father.

Rosenberg’s grandparents were living in France when the war started and fled to Switzerland and stayed in a refugee camp. Later they moved to the US.

[Verse 1]

Vineland, New Jersey, farm land stretching

Far as the eye can see

Not much down there, but sun-scorched pastures in

Nineteen-fifty-three

The war is over, they came searching

For a place to be

They left the Rhineland, they lost their homeland, and

All their family

[Chorus]

Like feathers on the ocean breeze

They went spinning and tumbling 'cross the sea

Never know where they'd come down

Or who they'd be

Like heather on the hillside

They were bruised and they were battered by the breeze

Searching for a place

To be free

Verse 2]

Sun burn summers and frost by winter

Kids were plainly dressed

Left the farmhouse when he was old enough, and

Headed out west

From California to Southern Africa

And all the way to France

And on to England to meet my mother in

Nineteen-eighty-one

[Verse 3]

Now here I am, thirty-three years down

Two-thousand-seventeen

I've seen the Rhineland, I've been to Vineland, I'm

A feather on the breeze

Both of these artists and songs are autobiographical and show how their own father’s journey have impacted their art—and how the circle of generations closes in on us, spiraling ever faster with the passing of years.