A singer's mission to bring peace, democracy to Myanmar

NHK3 days ago

A singer-songwriter from Myanmar is giving help and inspiration to his compatriots who dream of peace and democracy in their homeland.

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Mei Semones is the rookie to remember at Fuji Rock

Japan Times

2 days ago

Japan Times

Mei Semones is the rookie to remember at Fuji Rock

Fuji Rock Festival, one of Japan's biggest summer music events, always manages to assemble an eclectic mix of current and rising stars, nostalgia acts, perennial fixtures and a couple of artists chosen seemingly at random from the 'Where are they now?' file. It's pretty much guaranteed that every year the crowd at Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata Prefecture will come away swooning over at least one newcomer playing their first high-profile Japan show. There are plenty of early contenders for this year's informal rookie of the year award, but the most surefire bet for 2025 is Mei Semones, a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter who plays what she describes as 'jazz-influenced indie J-pop.' Raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by a Japanese mother and American father, the 24-year-old speaks fluent Japanese ('fluent enough,' she clarifies) and sings in both of her native languages. Jazz and indie rock are just two of the touchstones for her music: On debut album 'Animaru,' released in May, she combines them with the gentle caresses of bossa nova, the knotty structures of math rock and a dash of early-1990s grunge. It's an unlikely combination that she delivers with quiet confidence, juggling time signature shifts and fluid guitar licks reminiscent of jazz greats like Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, backed by an unorthodox lineup that includes violin and viola. While her earlier songs were written on electric guitar, for 'Animaru' she switched to using an acoustic, further accentuating the contrasts in her music. As she sings on 'I can do what I want,' one of the album's standout tracks: 'I am going to do this the way I wanna do it.' Calling Mei Semones' music 'J-pop' is simply intended to signal to listeners that her music has Japanese lyrics. | Apollo Nava The description she uses for her sound is a product of the marketing classes she took while studying jazz guitar at Berklee College of Music in Boston, which emphasized the importance of keeping it pithy. 'If someone asks you, 'What kind of music do you make?' you can't be like, 'Oh, it's jazz- and bossa-influenced and math rock and indie rock and grunge and all this stuff and blah blah blah,'' she says, speaking over Zoom from New York. 'Like, no one wants to hear you say that, so you have to come up with a shorter version, you know?' Calling her music 'J-pop' — a term that's more marketing category than genre per se — is simply intended to signal to listeners that her music has Japanese lyrics. On 'Animaru,' Semones switches frequently between languages, sometimes in the course of a single line. She says some listeners in Japan have complimented her on the economy of her Japanese lyrics, though she concedes that this is a product of necessity as much as design. 'I don't really have that many other options, because my vocabulary is limited,' she says. 'But it comes across as being straightforward, I think.' She says she's also had positive feedback from listeners who appreciate the slightly off-kilter way in which she wields the language: 'The way that I place words with melody is different than what a normal native Japanese speaker would do.' Semones spoke Japanese with her mother when growing up, while annual trips to Japan each summer — where she would stay with her grandmother in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture — gave her a chance to immerse herself more fully in the language and culture. The music she heard at the time didn't really grab her, though. 'I feel like my exposure to Japanese music was very much limited to the types of artists that you see on 'Kohaku Uta Gassen,'' she says, referencing the annual year-end music revue broadcast on NHK. 'You know, really popular pop music.' 'I think if I had tried harder to look for Japanese music, I'm sure I could have found something earlier on,' she continues, 'but I just wasn't really searching for that.' While Mei Semones' earlier songs were written on electric guitar, for her debut album, 'Animaru,' she switched to using an acoustic, further accentuating the contrasts in her music. The first Japanese artist she properly clicked with was Ichiko Aoba, whose acoustic-based songcraft touches on some of the same reference points. Semones discovered Aoba's music after starting college, when she had begun incorporating Japanese lyrics into her own songs and, she says, 'was trying to find something that felt somewhat adjacent.' Aoba's rise to international prominence in recent years is indicative of a wider shift in the tastes of Anglophone listeners. Singing in languages other than English is no longer the deal-breaker it was once thought to be — and that's as significant for a Japanese American artist who just wants to express both sides of herself as it is for a J-pop act looking to reach an international audience without having to fake it in English. 'I listen to a lot of Brazilian music, and it's never bothered me that I don't really know Portuguese,' Semones says. 'And so I'm like, yeah, why would it matter? Because for me, it's more about the music than about the words.' Her early musical influences came from earlier generations of guitar heroes, both real and fictional. Having taken piano lessons as a child, she was inspired to switch to guitar at the age of 10, after seeing Marty McFly's axe-slinging antics in 'Back to the Future." She started writing her own songs soon afterward. 'They were bad,' she says with a laugh. 'I guess in terms of style, I was really into Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. I don't think it sounded anything like those bands, but I think I was kind of going for something a little more grungy and rock.' At high school, she enrolled in the jazz program and started getting to grips with theory. She discovered bossa nova at around the same time (Joao Gilberto is a particular favorite). Deciding to pursue a career in music, she says, came from 'just realizing that there wasn't really anything else that I was interested in doing.' Fuji Rock will be the first time Mei Semones (center) performs in Japan with her full band: violinist Claudius Agrippa (left), viola player Noah Leong, right), bassist Noam Tanzer and drummer Ransom McCafferty. | Sophie Minello She says her parents were fully supportive. Her father is a lifelong euphonium player and had encouraged her early interest in guitar, while her mother is a visual artist and graphic designer, whose work adorns the cover of 'Animaru.' 'They're not the type of people that are like, 'Oh, you need to get a real job,'' she says. 'They would never say that to me.' Semones will already be familiar to regular listeners of Tokyo-based radio station J-Wave, which picked up her 2024 EP, 'Kabutomushi,' while she also played a handful of solo dates in the capital last year. However, Fuji Rock will be the first time she's performed in Japan with her full band: violinist Claudius Agrippa, viola player Noah Leong, bassist Noam Tanzer and drummer Ransom McCafferty. They're all musicians she met at Berklee, while Leong has been a constant since she first struck out as a solo artist. He helped record and mix her first single, 'Hfoas,' released in 2020, and was the one who came up with the idea of adding strings ('and then that became really a big part of my music,' she says). Coming fresh from a headline tour of North America, the group should be in peak form when they play at Fuji Rock on July 27 — and operating at peak velocity. 'We usually play the songs a lot faster live ... like, five or 10 BPM faster than the recording,' Semones says. 'It makes it a little more exciting.' Fuji Rock Festival takes place at Naeba Ski Resort, Niigata Prefecture, from July 25-27. Mei Semones performs at the Red Marquee stage on July 27. For more information about Semones, visit . To learn more about the festival, visit