The Japan Times spoke to Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) co-founder Many Ameri from New York, the site of last year's academy, and now home to an annual Red Bull music festival. Here are some excerpts from the conversation:
RBMA was originally supposed to come to Tokyo in 2011, but you switched locations after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Looking back, do you think that was the right decision to make?
To be honest, it was the only decision we could take at that moment. It's sort of ridiculous to be talking about our little workshop in the middle of that — but looking at it from an academy cycle, it was during our application phase when that happened, on March 11, and we have thousands of people applying from different countries every year. It was very hard to get a sense of the impact, and getting information and so on. It was clear to us that the right thing to do was to say that we would change the location for the academy, and get a better sense of the situation.