#gmz

The first time I saw Kaze perform live was at a show with an audience of about a hundred. Advance tickets were sold out. Setlist was comprised of well-known covers and the original songs he was already performing live back then were NaN-NaNw and Choshinochatte.  The immensity of his skills needs no introduction, and whether it be witnessed within videos on YouTube or live in front of an audience, his desire to entertain and deliver high quality enjoyment to the audience is an overpowering one. 

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From that point at the very beginning to the LOVE ALL SERVE ALL Stadium Live four years later, it’s been a long journey of carefully finding ways to introduce the existence known as Fujii Kaze to the world. It’s a process that involved many long discussions, sharing of ideas and working around issues which were all done as a team (Kaze himself included, of course), and it still continues to this day.  I could tell from the get-go through the very first performance I experienced that Kaze already had it all: singing ability, piano skill, audience engagement, you name it. But the more I learn about him as a person, the more apparent it became that he isn’t somebody who can or should be simply thrust to the world, as the chances of it leading to grave misunderstanding is pretty high.  As such, I figured it‘d be wiser to first show people what he is able to offer as a musician, instead of simply suddenly unveiling to the world who he essentially is as a person. It was just a gut feeling I had. 

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Another aspect I had to consider was the fact that he’s been uploading videos of himself performing piano covers on YouTube since little, so anyone who knew him from those would only know him as a cover artist there, as he hadn’t shared any of his own original works. As someone who got to hear his original songs pretty early on, I had to tackle the issue of how and when best to present them, as I felt the initial performances that would introduce him to the world should be centered on them and not the covers that he does.  If a number of people got to hear his music first, then perhaps the time for us to introduce him to a wider audience would come. But would people really understand simply from listening to his music? 

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See, even for me, it took a while before his nature finally sunk in. In the earliest stages, I didn’t know anything apart from what I was able to see on the surface. Even now, I cannot confidently claim that I know everything there is to know about him.   The way he thinks and lives and the fact the he is a vegetarian, I couldn’t help but to stop and ask myself how old this kid really is. Based on physical appearance alone, he doesn’t look particularly out of the norm age-wise, but the moment I got a better glimpse of his mentality, the number my mental calculation came up with was 109. And the more I got to know him, the more certain of it I became. What’s scary is, this was the impression that I got right from the time I first met him and, even until now, it hasn’t changed. I know I sound absurd but even as the depth of his soul seems bottomless, there are also very simple things that he’s somehow managed to remain completely ignorant about. This yawning gap that he has, it‘s pretty astounding.   This is veering off topic a little but here’s a recent example:  Kaze: Would ye mind stoppin by a convenience store? Ah wanna withdraw me some monies.  --At the parking area of a convenience store-- Me: Aite, imma wait here for ya.  --5 minutes later-- Me: (What’s taking him so long? He said he was only gonna make a withdrawal.)     --A wild Kaze then hesitantly appears at the entrance. Looking lost, he shuffles his way back.-- Kaze: Ah couldnae wit’draw nothin. None o’ these cards seem ta work. :((   Me: Wha? Why? It clearly says ATM there on the entrance.  --And so I ended up going in with him-- Kaze: So ah wuz tryna insert mah card in ‘ere... Me: ...this is a Loppi. It’s a ticket machine, not an ATM.  Kaze: Ooooh! No wonder it wuz spittin out tix instead~~!  And this isn’t the only example. Things like this happen a few times on an almost daily basis. Anything that doesn’t bear a significant interest to him, he is completely ignorant about.  

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HELP EVER HURT NEVER was released in 2020.  And in 2022, it was followed by LOVE ALL SERVE ALL.  Both albums carry his core message. It is delivered musically-- embedded within the words, melodies and music videos. According to him, everything he feels he wants to sing about up to this point, has already been sung.   The LOVE ALL SERVE ALL Stadium Live in October is where we wanted to showcase everything Kaze had to offer musically. But just as we were thinking that, in came the docomo future project “KAZE FILMS,” through which the song “grace” was born. What’s even more amazing is that the director, after listening to the song, proposed that the music video be shot in India, a place that bears significant meaning to Kaze, being a big part of his roots. (I’ll be talking more about the music video itself in another entry.)  The origin of Kaze’s mindset, I feel, lies in India, where his family visited while he was still just a foetus sleeping within his mother, and where they went again to give thanks not too long after he finally came into the world.  

When the idea to hold this stadium concert was greenlit, Kaze and I first spoke about making it something that introduces both albums, with an emphasis on LOVE ALL SERVE ALL, and we’d base the infrastructural setup on Kaze’s mindset, turning it into a visual representation of sorts.  All the things that make Kaze who he is: his vegetarianism, his love for animals, and his Indian-based mindset, how do we apply these concepts to this stadium concert?  All other aspects other than the musical one were still only WIP right up until the beginning of September, and while whatever we could move forward with we did, the design aspect was still cloudy so it was absolutely serendipitous that we somehow ended up actually being able to visit the country mid-September.  

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I intend to journalize this trip here someday but for now, I’ll just say that the people who went with us were the film crew who shot NaN-NaNw in NYC, Universal’s Higashi-san, the graphic designer behind all of Kaze’s professional releases and merch so far, Motty Marui-san, the cameraman Ono-san, and the hairstylist-cum-makeup artist Matsuno-san, who was joining a Team Kaze project for the first time. With the creative team in tow, and through the sights that we all took in together with Kaze in India, we were finally able to determine the direction of the overall thematical design to take for the show.  The LASA flag, the staircase leading up, the décor in the SERVE ALL Area, the fresco decorating the stadium itself, the décor in the LOVE ALL Area, the smaller flags and banners, the sounds and the smells.   

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With this, the time where we can finally show to the world Kaze's inherent nature in the most visual form possible is finally upon us.