Hideki Ishima

Hideki Ishima (石間 秀機, Ishima Hideki, born March 21, 1944 in Sapporo, Hokkaido) is a Japanese musician, known primarily for his work with Flower Travellin' Band and for creating the sitarla instrument. A guitarist and sitar player for nearly forty years, he now exclusively plays the sitarla, an instrument he invented in 2000 that combines aspects of a sitar with an electric guitar.[1] Guitarists Akira Takasaki, Rolly, and Mikael Åkerfeldt have cited him as an influence.[2][3][4]

Hideki Ishima
Ishima playing a sitarla at the Knitting Factory in New York City in 2008.
Background information
Born (1944-03-21) March 21, 1944
Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
GenresRock, hindustani, psychedelic rock
Occupation(s)Musician
Instrument(s)Sitarla, sitar, guitar
Years active1966–present
Formerly ofFlower Travellin' Band, View, Pythagoras Party, Co-Colo, Donjuan R&R Band, Trans Am, The Beavers
WebsiteOfficial site

Career

Ishima started playing guitar at 19, at the behest of a friend who wanted to be in a band.[5] His first group was Jarōzu (ジャローズ) in his native Sapporo shortly after graduating high school. He moved to Tokyo and formed the group sounds band The Beavers in 1966, who had released four albums and one single but had not had major success.

Ishima began playing sitar at 24, after researching Gábor Szabó at the suggestion of a woman and learning that the jazz guitarist also played this instrument he had never heard of.[1] He taught himself from Ravi Shankar's 1968 book My Music, My Life, looking up the Japanese translations for the English words.[5]

In 1969, while in the blues band Mystic Morning with Joe Yamanaka, the two of them were scouted by Yuya Uchida for Flower Travellin' Band.[6] When they went on hiatus in 1973, Ishima recorded the solo album One Day and joined a group called Trans Am.[1] After a few years off, he followed this with the Donjuan R&R Band with Kenichi Hagiwara. During the 1980s he was in Co-Colo[7] alongside Kenji Sawada and Nobuhiko Shinohara, before being fired.[1]

Ishima quit guitar in 1990, citing money problems.[1] After a 40-minute sitar lesson from Manilal Nag during a trip to Japan in 1998, Ishima became a student of Nag's Japanese apprentice.[5]

He made a comeback in 2000 exclusively playing the sitarla.[1] That year, he recorded the album More-ish with the multinational group Pythagoras Party. The improvisational instrumental group View was formed in 2007.[1] At the end of 2007, Flower Travellin' Band officially reunited. Ishima revealed that there were several talks about getting back together prior, but they were all centered around nostalgia, something he has no interest in. It was only when their producer suggested they write new material and play it together with the old songs for a three-year period that a reunion came to fruition.[5] Ishima also said that even though two of the other members had not played in years, they were eager and pushed him into doing it, helped by the fact that his new instrument made the old material interesting.[1]

Sitarla

The sitarla (シターラ, shitāra) is an instrument that combines aspects of the sitar with the solid body electric guitar. It was conceptualized by Ishima and created by Masao Nagai in 2000.[8][1] It is a hollow-bodied instrument, 3 1/2 tones lower than a guitar,[1] with only three existing in the world as of 2008.[5]

Ishima said he had the idea for the instrument 15 years prior, but everybody told him he was crazy.[1] He now plays the instrument exclusively,[9] and it replaced his guitar playing in Flower Travellin' Band when they reunited.[10] It is featured on their 2008 album We Are Here.[11] The sitarla was displayed at the 2000 NAMM Show.[8]

Discography
  • One Day (1973)

References
  1. ""First I had the idea, nobody cared. They said 'you're crazy!'"". jrawk.com. Archived from the original on May 20, 2009. Retrieved August 5, 2009.
  2. Takasaki, Akira (2015). Raijin: Rising Akira Takasaki Autobiography. Rittor Music. p. 53. ISBN 9784845627172.
  3. "僕が影響を受けたギター・プレイ10曲". musicshelf (in Japanese). Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
  4. "SPECIAL TALK SESSIONミカエル憧れのギタリストと夢の対談が実現!! - Mikael Akerfeldt / OPETH & Hideki Ishima / ex-FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND". Young Guitar (in Japanese). Shinko Music. 6 (June 2013).
  5. "Sex, drugs and sitars". The Japan Times. May 2, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  6. "We just stopped, took a break. It turned out to be for 36 years!". jrawk.com. Archived from the original on January 1, 2009. Retrieved February 3, 2016.
  7. "CO-CoLO" (in Japanese). Geocities. Retrieved February 3, 2016.
  8. "石間秀機HP 本陣". new-sitarla.sakura.ne.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved August 25, 2021.
  9. "汝の隣人のブログを愛せよ - LOVELOG". Blogs.dion.ne.jp. Retrieved January 11, 2015.
  10. "SXSW: Quick fixes with Flower Travellin' Band, Fleet Foxes' J. Tillman, Garotas Suecas, and more". San Francisco Bay Guardian. March 20, 2009. Archived from the original on December 12, 2009. Retrieved January 11, 2015.
  11. "Fricke's Picks: Flower Travellin' Band". Rolling Stone. April 14, 2009. Archived from the original on April 18, 2009. Retrieved January 11, 2015.
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