Luka Kawabata's The Hafu ハーフ Project comes to Vancouver this May
An emotional journey of navigating identity through music, dialogue and media.
Last year, we had the honour to speak with former Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist, Luka Kawabata, about The HAFU ハーフ Project, his three part digital series which will be presented for the first time as a live performance in Vancouver on May 25 and 26, 2024 at The Russian Hall with collaborative artist Perri Lo. Tickets are available here.
Below we revisit our wonderful conversation with Luka about this project.
Combining traditional and adapted song while drawing on cultural touch points from Japanese, Swedish and Canadian culture, The HAFU ハーフ Project shares a semi-autobiographical story of the struggle with identity and seeking new meaning in community.
As a person growing up between cultures, what does it mean when you don’t engage with your identity for fear that you won’t be taken seriously?
This multimedia theatre performance takes the audience through a musical exploration in peeling back the layers of how identity manifests as a product of social circumstance.
You can also download this podcast on all major platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The Hafu ハーフ Project:
Chapter 1: Paueru-Gai パウエル街
Chapter 2: Childhood 幼年
Chapter 3: Wish 希望
TRANSCRIPT
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Welcome. It's inside Vancouver Opera and my name is Ashley Daniel Foot, Senior Manager of Partnerships, Engagement, and EDI. Today we're honouring Asian Heritage Month with a fascinating and insightful conversation with baritone, and Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist, Luka Kawabata. Luka talks passionately about his Hafu Project and talks about the unique intersection between family, memory and music. We also get in a few questions about the state of modern opera and how to confront our canon.
“It's important to tell updated stories because why were these pieces of music popular or successful or people loved them at the time was because people connected to them.” - Luka Kawabata
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It's a fascinating conversation and I hope you enjoy.
So this whole opera thing, where did this all begin?
Luka Kawabata:
I bounced around between voice teachers in mostly high school. I did a lot of community theatre in elementary school, but then I started applying for universities and I did not apply for a single music program because I had a plan in my head. But then I won a very, very small local competition in the Vancouver area and one of the judges said "You could have a career in this; you should pursue this." I had already gotten into university and I was like "This is the track, we can't deviate." So I ended up finishing an civil engineering degree at Queens University and during that time, I realized that there were many people who enjoyed engineering much more than I did.
So I thought that it would be cool to strive to have that same feeling, and so I applied to the opera program at the University of British Columbia because I had a friend who I knew during high school who did the program before me, and I got in and I started singing and the rest is history.
I finished my master's right as the pandemic was starting, but I was very lucky, especially at that point to have already been accepted into the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program, and so it was a very organic sort of transition to what my relationship with Vancouver Opera is now.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
So here you are many, many years later with a master's degree in opera performance, having completed many seasons with Vancouver Opera, both on our main stage and our Yulanda M. Faris Young Artist program, but I feel like your identity as a singer is so multifaceted. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Luka Kawabata:
The pandemic was an interesting time for a lot of performers because it made people analyze not only the fragility of live performance, but also people's identity within the industry. And so people had the opportunity for the first time to analyze that and see the other aspects of the industry that informed them or invigorated their artistic creativity as well. I was part of a program through the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Opera in the 21st Century program that during the pandemic was completely online. I had some amazing mentors who encouraged me and encouraged everybody that was involved with the program to create projects that were personal and for themselves, and take that where it could be and not create art for a certain audience or for kind of a capitalistic view on art, but making art for the sake of the art at its core.
And so I started working on this project because I knew that I wanted to play with themes of identity and my history of being multiracial. Growing up in a multicultural background and bringing the history of Japanese people specifically on the West Coast of British Columbia, but also the relationship of being a first generation Japanese Canadian, but being born in Japan as well, but also having roots here that on my mother's side that have been here for a while and kind of examining all those cross sections. It's a kind of ambiguous puzzle that no one can really understand all the things that create identity. And so I chose this opportunity through art and through art song and through the world of music that I know and love to kind of in a sense create a visual musical diary out of it.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
You used the words multicultural and multiracial. I want you to reflect on what that looked like for you and how that came through.
Luka Kawabata:
I asked this exact question to my parents in Chapter Two of a project that I'm describing. The project is called The Hafu ハーフ Project. Hafu is a Japanese word that is imported from the English word ‘half’ to describe anyone who is half Japanese. Therefore this was something that obviously I connected with. When I asked my parents what their relationship was with raising their children in a multicultural environment, they said, "We didn't think about it. We were raising you as our children, obviously we brought our experience as humans together."
“So, we raised you multiculturally, but not just… Japanese and Canadian. We exposed you to lots and lots of cultures.” - Excerpt of Luka’s Mother from Childhood 幼年
I really appreciated that from my parents because I never felt like our house was divisive or divided in terms of identity. We always felt like a very close family unit and all themes of identity that I took on were because of society ultimately because people like to tell you who you are, especially when you're young, you're growing up. People say "This is your identity. This is what you look like, this is how you should behave." And it's all based on weird preconceived notions of nothing, in my mind.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I'm thinking about the project that you're talking about and I think what was fascinating about the first part, and it's three chapters and the third chapter is coming out soon, and the first two chapters were supported by Manitoba Opera and the Banff Centre for Creativity. You explored your intersecting identities through French art song, how, why? Tell me more…
Luka Kawabata:
The first chapter is called Paueru Gai パウエル街, it means Powell Street, and that's where the first settlement of Japanese Canadians lived and gathered. And to this day, there's still a lot of historic Japanese buildings. I chose to set it to a French art song because that is the world that I knew I was comfortable in that world. And I will admit I was a little bit afraid to present Japanese music at that time as well because not only as someone who in an operatic academic institution, it's not something that's necessarily introduced to everybody regularly. So I didn't have a big knowledge of Japanese song, but I wasn't sure how other people would react and whether they would validate anything that I would create if it was presented first as Japanese song.
And so when the second chapter came out, which is called Younian 幼年 , which means childhood. And now reflecting on it, I see it as the representation of my two grandmothers, one of which is from Japan. Lived with us in Vancouver for a number of years, but spoke only Japanese. And so there's one Japanese song and the other song is in Swedish because my grandmother grew up hearing her father speak Swedish. It was a bonding moment for us as well because she said that no one has sung to her in Swedish since her father passed away.
When you see the video, it is presented using a lot of visuals from my parents' wedding, which was sort of creating this union of cultures. They had a traditional Shinto wedding in Japan. This was my first opportunity to have these kind of conversations with my parents about how my mother as a white Western-Canadian woman felt going into this space in Japan and putting on these traditional clothes and marrying a Japanese man in a Japanese format.
“I had to go get fitted for my kimono 着物 and my wig.”
“Three Canadians wearing the kimono… so that’s kind of getting the attention from the people at the shrine. It’s a wedding for the Gaijin 外人 (foreigners).”
- Excerpt of Luka’s Mother and Father from Childhood 幼年
When you grow up, you just see your parents as your parents, and you don't think about all the steps that led up to that.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
That's beautiful. I'm thinking about what you said about reflecting on the history of Japanese culture in Vancouver. What have you discovered in your research and in your listening to your family stories and about BC's shameful treatment of the Japanese population?
Luka Kawabata:
The biggest gift that this has given me is the fact that I have been able to meet so many people in the Nikkei community, Nikkei representing the Japanese diaspora around the world, the Nikkei community in Canada and many on the West Coast as well that I've been able to meet in person. I'm going to Victoria in June and I'm actually programming a full concert featuring a lot of the music that you see in this project, but a lot of additional Japanese music for the Victoria Nikkei Society there.
I feel very lucky that I have had this opportunity to grow with this. But it's also been interesting me having been born in Japan and my dad living his entire life in Japan until we moved to Canada. What his outlook was on Japanese Canadians who were in Canada at the time of World War II and the events that ensued then from a Japanese perspective in Japan. As a country, it's a very isolationist. And so a lot of global events that happen outside of Japan are not necessarily seen as Japanese focused events. What I wanted to convey in the first chapter, Paueru Gai パウエル街 of The Hafu ハーフ Project, was the fact that even as a Japanese person, I have work to do and the opportunity to learn about people who I'm connected to. But I don't have anyone that went through these events and so it is my opportunity to educate myself and to continue to have these conversations about these events.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I think that's incredible. And I think it shows the power of art to interrogate and reflect, both on our society but also personally, which I think is so beautiful. In many ways you've rediscovered your family through this work and there's something incredibly profound about the power of art that can do that.
You're on the way to Pittsburgh. Tell us what's happening there.
Luka Kawabata:
I have been very lucky to develop a relationship with the Association for Opera in Canada where they are supporting me through their pitch program to go to the Opera America Conference and pitch The Hafu ハーフ Project to a new audience, talk to some new people, have some new conversations and expand The Hafu ハーフ Project or create some new friendships where new projects that speak to more people can be made. Because ultimately in the creation of new projects, all these things for the most part start with just a random conversation with a friend. And these things snowball and these things continue to grow.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
And your goal for the future of the project, what does that look like?
Luka Kawabata:
In the current state of The Hafu ハーフ Project, it is going to be three chapters of a digital presentation, the third chapter of which is going to premier in June, facilitated by Pacific Opera Victoria. And so you will see this online, but we are doing a live presentation of the third chapter as well in person.
My goals for the future of the project, I would love to expand this and have conversations about how this can be translated to a live performance and how it can be a bit more engaging with a live audience and presented that way. Because I think visual wise, music wise, attention span wise as well, people have a certain way that they absorb material online and people have a completely different mindset when they're entering a room that you can curate and present to them. So I would love to create a space where we can present The Hafu ハーフ Project in all three iterations and expand on the current chapters of it and see how it grows from there.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I want to think about opera for a second as an art form, and I want to think about you as an artisan. You've talked about your intersecting identities and I want to think about how the art form maybe does or does not welcome that and what kind of world you found yourself entering into as you take steps into the professional world. How does that all come together or does it not?
Luka Kawabata:
With opera specifically, we're dealing with material that was created for its time, and so it is written from the perspective of the people who composed it or wrote the libretto. And that is the point at which we need to start and realize that the societies that we live in now do not have the same social standing, do not have the same political views as the people that were in the audience. And so it's important to translate those circumstances to the people that we're presenting it to now.
As someone who is of intersecting identities, I look at a lot of the material and say "I am stepping into someone else's shoes." I have yet to find a character that I say "Oh, this is me." And I almost don't have that expectation of a lot of the work, but it's a reason that I am such a supporter of new works as well. Because it's important to tell updated stories because why were these pieces of music popular or successful or people loved them at the time was because people connected to them. And so to bring in new audiences to opera, it's important to create stories that the person anywhere on the street would connect to and have an understanding of these events as well.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I again want to push a little harder on that because I think about the kinds of works that major opera companies have to program in order to keep the lights on works that are, I think, undeniably problematic when you think about the harm that they've done. I'm thinking of, I don't think we need to name opera names, but they're ones that will come up again and again across the world in seasons. Does that mean that we toss those operas out? How do we reconcile all of this? And I think the answer is more discussion, but I want to hear your thoughts on that.
Luka Kawabata:
These kind of feelings come in waves where there is no one right answer or right approach.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Of course not.
Luka Kawabata:
I think context and having the right support from people who are experts on especially cultural matters, that is the biggest step that updating a problematic work can take. And having those people in every discussion and talking to every person involved in the production as well. Because every choice that is made, from a performance level, from a design level, I'd say we surround ourselves with people who want the best intentions. But if you don't have all the available knowledge or if you think that you have all the available knowledge, but you just are not aware of all the knowledge that could be accessed, but you don't know where to look for it, then how do you expect these people to come into the room or present a piece of art truly authentically and acknowledging the lens of which many of these problematic works were written.
And ultimately, a lot of these works were written from the perspective of white European men. And so that is the main thing. For example, I'll speak as a Japanese person, I look at the story of Madame Butterfly, and I think "I love talking about Japan, I love seeing Japan on stage," but the biggest takeaway that I see from that opera is that it is from Puccini and Pinkerton's perspective. And so this is not a story that is told from Cio-Cio-San's perspective. Understanding that completely changes your perspective on all the events in the opera as well.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Absolutely. There's no question. I think we can leave it there. I think it's a beautiful project. Congratulations and good luck as you journey across North America to have those pitch conversations. It really is about who you meet in the moment and finding those champions who understand the spark, the passion that you have. Luka Kawabata, congratulations.
Luka Kawabata:
Thank you so much. And I will say that Vancouver Opera has been such an amazing support network for me in the past three seasons, and I was saying that this is my family.
The HAFU ハーフ Project live on May 25 and 26, 2024 at The Russian Hall with collaborative artist Perri Lo. Tickets are available here.
Credits:
Host - Ashley Daniel Foot
Guest - Luka Kawabata
Editing - Mack McGillivray
Cover Photo - Mark Yammine