HAVANA (Kyodo) Japanese pianist and composer SiNGO held a salsa concert in Havana in July with Cuban drummer Giraldo Piloto to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Cuba.
The 28-year-old SiNGO, whose real name is Shingo Maeda, introduced his own salsa songs, playing piano with vocalist Yukari, whose real name is Yukari Imaizumi.
SiNGO held direct negotiations with his costars on his own, financed the concert and oversaw it as musical director.
He writes lyrics in Japanese because he wants to create a Japanese-language version of the Latin American dance music. "I want ordinary young people to listen to it," he said in an interview.
The concert in Havana was also in Japanese, and it "picked up steam to such an extent as to say language had nothing to do with it," he said.
SiNGO started playing the piano as a child, and when he was in the sixth grade of elementary school he heard songs by Klimax and Friends, a band led by Piloto, on the radio and decided that was the type of music he wanted to write.
He listened to a cassette tape of the band so often that he wore it out.
From May 2007, he lived in Havana for a year, and an album recorded there will be marketed in Japan later this year. His immediate target is to invite Piloto and other Cuban musicians to Japan for a concert.
Normally, he performs live at clubs in Tokyo's Roppongi and Shibuya districts.
He has inaugurated the Koto Ward Latin Promotion Committee with a cafe manager in the ward where he lives to "fight the economic recession with Latin music," he said. He has also set his sights on performing in New York.