On August 27th, 2023, at Los Van Van’s outdoor concert on Nokonoshima Island in Fukuoka, I handed out uchiwa (Japanese fans) printed with a photo of Los Van Van’s bassist Juan Carlos Formel, who had passed away on May 26th, and asked many people to wave them.
Behind the plan for those uchiwa fireworks were three things: that my friend Yoshiko passed away the day after Juan Carlos; my friend who had been diagnosed with malignant lymphoma, who paid half the cost of the uchiwa; and one more thing.
On the day I learned that Juan Carlos had passed away, and that Yoshiko had passed away, I asked myself a question.
“If you were to die in the near future, what would you regret not having done?”
What came to me, without hesitation, was to give my thanks to the writer Ryu Murakami.
In 2000, Ryu Murakami wrote, in the e-mail magazine he publishes, about my 1999 project — sending popular songs from the Second World War to 3,500 nursing homes for the elderly across the United States. (Words from Ryu Murakami)
He was the only person who understood the deep meaning of my project.
I wanted to tell him what had happened to me, what I had been through, and how much I had been held up by Ryu’s words and his presence.
Words like “thank you” are easy to say. I decided to write Ryu a letter — the story of my life. I settled on 280,000 characters, because a friend told me that “28” is a “perfect number.” 280,000 characters, apparently, comes to about two or three books.
I decided that, once I had sent the letter to Ryu before Los Van Van’s concert in Fukuoka on August 27th, I would set off, for Juan Carlos — who had made me realize all of this — the “uchiwa fireworks seen from heaven.”
I hadn’t asked for permission, so there were various problems along the way. Even so, I’m sure it reached Juan Carlos in heaven.
At that concert, there was another task that mattered to me.
I entrusted Armando Cantero (Mandy), Los Van Van’s vocalist, with delivering the Spanish edition of Ryu Murakami’s “Almost Transparent Blue” to my best friend Luisito, who lives in Cuba.
Some people may have wondered why I was running around so frantically. This was my reason.
Yesterday, I sent Ryu Murakami an email about a separate matter. I asked whether he might consider releasing for streaming the album “You Don’t Know What Love Is” by Xiomara Laugart, which Ryu produced in 1993.
An hour after I sent it, a reply came.
“That’s fine with me. — Ryu Murakami”
I believe Ryu will begin looking into streaming Xiomara’s album.
I was very, very happy.
On that album, José Luis Cortés of NG La Banda — who was very close to Ryu and who passed away last year (2022) — took part as flautist, arranger, and music director. It was a wonderful work, full of the sincere energy of its musicians and producers and their respect for the American standards. That, too, is something I want to tell him about again.
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