On a Saturday night in a trendy west Tokyo neighborhood, a cosmopolitan crowd of musicians and music lovers gather in Shimokitazawa Three, an underground venue lit by bright stage lights. As the band Shamanz performs an intense rock ballad, audience members cheer breathlessly or mingle near the back.
This is a typical scene for More Than Music (MTM), an event series and community launched in 2018 by Justin Sachs and Atsuko Sunaga, who wanted to create an environment for organic connections.
“It was just dinner parties at first, us hosting people we knew and their friends,” says Sachs, 38, a guitarist and vocalist originally from the United States. “We’d cook, there were always plenty of musicians. ... Eventually, we had 40 or so people coming.
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