FGM Turns 200! with Haruka Fujii - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 210: FGM Turns 200! with Haruka Fujii - Part 2

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week's episode, we continue FGM Turns 200!, a mini-series where we talk to Ensemble for These Times' members and past guest artists. Today, we continue our conversation with E4TT’s guest percussionist Haruka Fujii, who we spoke to in April 2025. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Haruka Fujii, check her out here: https://www.harukafujii.com/.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/19269857

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Sam Mason, Christy Xu

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Haruka Fujii. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:27

I want to circle back to two things that you were talking about. One was you don't have to give us your 90 minute masterclass if you don't want to, but I am really curious about that marimba history and how it became so important...

Haruka Fujii  00:43

Sure, sure, yeah, there are several key factors, like how it became such a popular instrument in Japan.

Nanette McGuinness  00:53

mmhmm

Haruka Fujii  00:53

As I started studying in jewelry, art, all my percussion friends are, you know, they, I often face the question, why are there so many good Japanese marimba players, like female marimba players, and if you look at the all the, you know, international competitions, like Japanese girls wiping out all the prizes, really, that was like, especially when I started, like, '98, 1998 to like 2001 I also checked out few competitions, but it was like the winners were always, you know, Japanese girls, and it's not only girls, actually, yeah, like that, both male and female players doing really well. And then I saw I started, you know, like asking around, and especially my mother's, and she actually has done extensive research of how Marimba came to Japan, which is a really amazing story, that interesting history that everyone knows how Marimba's ancestor comes from Africa, but then keyboard percussion instruments, whole another stream that starts in Southeast Asia, Java to Indonesia,

Nanette McGuinness  02:07

Right.

Haruka Fujii  02:08

And it goes through, yeah, goes along the Silk Road, Silk Road paths, and into Korea to China, to... comes to Japan, these keyboard instruments that you know different shaped and then over the time it changes the forms and shapes and materials also but then this small boat shaped almost like a tiny furniture looking thing that could sit on the table bolt shape, and then was with wooden keyboard comes into Japan from China, while we were close, like we have a few 100 years of close to time that the export and import were not possible, but there was only one port that was open for the government to import and export, and this little instruments arrive from China as a gift, and then people, so thought this is like a main, like really such a nice instrument that major entertainment device of that time, instead of Spotify, we had this thing called Kabuki, which is the traditional theatre form.

Nanette McGuinness  02:54

Right.

Haruka Fujii  02:56

That's... that's like everyone's entertainment to go, go see it's like a musical right, so some of the artists took this instrument to make a play, and that became a huge hit that everyone saw it, which still is one of the standard repertoire they play now, it's called Tenjik Tokube, so this, the play, the story is about this guy who travels all around the world and then comes back to Japan, and then tell them the story of what he saw, and then it accompanies with this xylophone, so, and so this xylophone became a thing that is like what is this, so that was the beginning of it, and then, like, you know, moving a lot forward, hundreds of years, there are a few factors that Japanese government designated xylophone as the education device for teaching music in every elementary school.

Nanette McGuinness  04:24

Yeah.

Haruka Fujii  04:25

So how we learned Do Re Mi was through getting the xylophone, like a tabletop xylophone. Every school had it. I even remember, remember growing up and then going to elementary school, and then either harmonica and melodica, recorder, and xylophone was one of the instruments that was designated, and then also after World War II, there was this famous missionary group who came from America. To spread the Christianity along with classical music bands, including like brass bands to harp bands, and then one of them was a marimba band, and a marimba band was four female players, and then one that the boss of this missionary group called Lawrence Lacour.

Nanette McGuinness  05:22

Okay.

Haruka Fujii  05:22

And then he traveled all over Japan, north tip to south tip, and giving more than 100 concerts.

Nanette McGuinness  05:29

Wow.

Haruka Fujii  05:29

A lot of people thought this is it. I want to be like that. And within that is Keiko Abe, who has become the goddess of marimba developments, and not only in Japan, but globally known, like all percussionists knows her name. So she started developing the instruments more now that not only xylophone, but then the sound of marimba came from America, and Japanese manufacturers who used to make war plane propellers.

Nanette McGuinness  06:02

Right.

Haruka Fujii  06:03

Like, they, the war is done, their business is done. What do we make? Oh, I hear there are like school designated these instruments, the marimba or xylophone, as a school elementary. There's, you know, like required instruments. Everyone started making that, so we had like several companies started competing to make who makes the better marimba.

Nanette McGuinness  06:24

[laughs] I love it.

Haruka Fujii  06:26

Crazy. Yeah, Yamaha also was one of them, and Korogi, which is in my studio, which I shipped it from Japan. This is this is from a Japanese company, one of them who started making in that era, and still going strong, and run by this small family-owned master craftsmanship, and one of the best sounding marimba, so on, so on, so that's just like a small key factor of it, but there's this really interesting stream that's other than you know, marimba coming from Africa into Central America and goes to North America, that's the main past, and then there is this interesting keyboard, another keyboard percussion, you know, coming from Southeast Asia, and so Japan happens to be the place of another big development of this instruments, marimba, and my mother happens to be one of them who really dedicated to really, you know, that to what's the word, make this instruments as, as the shape of what it is now.

Nanette McGuinness  07:37

Yeah, yeah. No, that's fascinating. Thank you. [laughs]

Haruka Fujii  07:40

[laughing] You're welcome.

Nanette McGuinness  07:42

Yeah, so as a percussionist, you play a lot of different instruments. Most of us, you know, if you're a keyboardist, maybe you play organ and piano and harpsichord, or maybe you only play one, but most of us, and maybe you know, you play flute, you play bass flute, regular flute... but percussion, you have more instruments at your disposal, as it were, than any of us. Do you have a favorite child?

Haruka Fujii  08:10

Well, because of, you know, my... my past with my mother, of course. Marimba is one of my favorite instruments, and grew up with it, but I'm, yeah, again, because of like how I grew up, like my mother was devoted to this instruments, marimba, and then I always had these pressures, like what is going to be my instruments other than marimba as a percussionist, and that used to be a sort of a kind of like a pressure, but I think it's now it is was a great pressure that really had me really open to like any other available instruments, and I was so interested in hand drums, I was so, so interested in orchestra percussion, all sorts of percussion, and I was always a little bit nervous, like I still haven't figured out, like, which one is the one.

Nanette McGuinness  09:14

[laughs] Right. Right.

Haruka Fujii  09:14

And I have to say, I still don't know, meaning I love them all, and my approach to being percussionist is... it's percussion itself, actually, that the history of it, as it became a part of classical music instruments family, it's just around 100 years old or so, it's still very young as a solo percussion, a solo category of classical music, and it's still evolving, it's a living form still, and I love pushing the boundary of what can be called progression, like the piece I did with Vivian from... through your group, which was an amazing experience of really, you know, experimenting everyday, everyday materials that's around you, and then in the house, and then living space, and the salad bowl with water filling that changes the pitches of the salad bowl to, yeah, like rice bowls to anything that you can find, I love working with composers who has the open ears and open heart to really explore what percussion could be, and the defining of what, what, what percussionists can do is really boundless and unlimited, you know, possibilities of making anything into instruments. I've performed like I said, like Tan Dun has the paper concerto. I would be playing 25 different kinds of papers, not even like, yeah, touching any production instruments, quote unquote, you would think of, but that is still music, and it really depends on the artist who is using these devices to make them into the musical instruments, and so my garage is full of interesting things that you would never think of it as an instrument, car junk parts too.

Nanette McGuinness  09:14

[laughs]

Haruka Fujii  09:14

[laughing] Yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  09:14

I love it.

Haruka Fujii  09:14

Really, like toys to, yeah, the ceramic pots, to so many things, yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  09:14

Yeah, yeah, Vivian Fung's Sparkle and Shimmer, the two pieces she wrote for us that you played beautifully, they were such cool pieces.

Haruka Fujii  09:14

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  09:14

And you did a wonderful job with them, and yeah, I mean, I think of if music is sound in time, which is how I kind of, as a big definition of it, then anything any object can create music, because...

Haruka Fujii  10:00

Exactly.

Nanette McGuinness  10:00

So yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  10:00

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest, Haruka Fujii, for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]