(Re)Staging (In)Justice: Performing the Legacy of Japanese-American Incarceration

Artist Talk: Kishi Bashi (OMOIYARI) 

Violinist and songwriter Kaoru Ishibashi travels on a musical journey to understand WWII era Japanese Incarceration, assimilation, and what it means to be a minority in America today. Along the way, he improvises and writes music in an effort to better understand his own identity as a bi-cultural American.

Moderated by Christina Hiromi Hobbs 
 

About the Speaker

Kishi Bashi is the pseudonym of singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Kaoru Ishibashi. Born in Seattle, Washington, Ishibashi grew up in Norfolk, Virginia where both of his parents were professors at Old Dominion University. As a 1994 graduate of Matthew Fontaine Maury High School, he went on to study film scoring at Berklee College of Music before becoming a renowned violinist. Ishibashi has recorded and toured internationally as a violinist with diverse artists such as Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche, and most recently, the Athens, Georgia-based indie rock band, of Montreal. He remains based in Athens.

About the Series

Blokker Research Workshop

The Arts and Justice workshop is sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from Joanne Blokker, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.