The richness of American music comes from the mixing of cultures and traditions of people from all over the world.

In the 19th century, as America was growing, the single thing that brought people into contact with each other like never before was the transcontinental railroad.

I've been working with the amazing musicians of Silk Road Ensemble to shine a light on the laborers, especially Irish, African American, and Chinese, who did the backbreaking work of building America's railroad.

Their traditional music accompanied them as they made their way across the continent.

We also wanted to recognize the indigenous people whose ways of life were forever changed, by the laying of tracks through their lands.

The result is our American Railroad project, the focus in this season of “My Music”.

Haruka Fujii is a Japanese percussionist whose main instrument is the marimba, which itself has deep roots in Africa.

She's a performer, but she's also on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Her effortless playing and talent for collaboration have made her an integral part of Silk Road.

♪ ♪ ♪ - You are such a light and such a beautiful player, and I'm glad we get to sit here and have this chat.

-Thank you.

-When I first came to Silk Road Ensemble, I had to learn so many people, you know?

In the very, very beginning.

But you were very, very quickly, I knew, someone who felt like a kindred spirit to me.

Just the way that you approach your music-making and the world.

So can you just, like, talk us through young Haruka and where it all began.

-Yeah.

It's funny, you know, like when— I've been in US, like 20-something years, when I say percussion and as a female percussionist, like, they're like, "Oh, that's amazing," 'Cause not too many you can find in US, but then in Japan it's so common and it's nothing rare about me being a marimba player or a percussionist.

My mother is a marimba player, established, well-known in Japan.

She was one of the, we like to call them "marimba goddesses" of Japan who made this instrument very popular, you know, like Sixties to Eighties.

And there are so many really exciting moments.

And she was one of them, like, who was just leading the marimba world.

And I was born in that time and so like marimba was always like a toy for me.

- Huh.

Yeah.

- Were there like 14 marimbas always around, like, - No, not that many.

Our house is not that big.

Japan doesn't have that many big houses.

-That's true.

But yeah, it was always around.

But as I was little, that was something that, I would have fun playing around, but also that was something that takes my mother away from me.

So I was just like, I kept telling myself, "I'm never going to be a percussionist."

Like, I like music, but percussion will never do it.

So I kept saying that until like high school or so, and I was playing piano.

I still loved music.

And, but then going into music high school started realizing I like piano.

I'm good enough, but there's something different that I want to do.

And, and I thought piano is a beautiful instrument, but it was solo— kind of lonely.

And like, yes, you can be in the, you know, piano trio and there you can accompany people.

But I wanted to have more of an ensemble experience.

I was missing that.

And then I would come home and my mom would be like, jamming with people.

Like there's always percussion ensemble here and there.

I was like, okay, I think I wanna do that.

I kind of discreetly started learning from her students that were like my friends.

And when I became sophomore, I changed the major, I took, passed the test as a percussionist.

I became percussionist.

Then I told her that I'm gonna be a percussionist.

-Wow.

-And she, she got really upset.

It's like, "you don't know how hard this world is.

You think it's just fun."

She was just worried about me.

Right?

- She wasn't upset that you didn't ask her to teach you.

- She didn't get too upset about that, but she was like, "This is not a fun only thing.

It's really hard.

You're gonna be carrying the instruments all the time.

Yeah.

And then you're gonna be competing with this like, you know, like really strong guys."

But then after that, I went to college, started working, and we started playing together.

-You and your mom?

- Yes.

- How wonderful.

- And my younger sister also is a marimba player.

So three of us.

It's a pretty noisy house.

We are all really grateful that three of us performed together often.

- Can you, like you mentioned the female culture of marimba in Japan.

As you were saying, it's not something that is well-known in the United States where being a female percussionist is, as you said, is kind of like unicorn territory.

So you kind of, you know, fight a lot of things.

So can you talk about why that— why?

'Cause there's a story there, right?

- Yeah.

It's really interesting.

Like, I had no idea until I came out to the US in 1998 for school and, and I would encounter questions like, so why are there so many always, like, Japanese female marimba players, like, what's going on?

I was always wondering, but I started doing research and then also my mother did extensive research about the history of marimba in Japan from like Southeast Asia there's this whole keyboard percussion culture, that floats along the Silk road and then comes into Japan in early 1600 and there's this tiny boat-shaped, wooden almost like a sculpture-looking keyboard instrument comes into Japan.

And that was a time Japan was closed for hundreds of years.

Right.

And then there was only one port that the government allows the exchange to happen.

And then this little thing comes in from China and people who saw that thought it's an amazing instrument.

So that was the beginning of how the keyboard percussion starts becoming very familiar to Japanese public.

But another important one is that after, after the war ended, there was this missionary group.

-This is World War II?

- War II ended.

A missionary group called Lacour Missionary Group came with different sets of bands like a harp ensemble and brass quintet.

And one was the marimba female quartet led by Lawrence Lacour himself.

The priest was also a marimba player.

- Wow.

So were these nuns?

- I'm not sure.

- Or like just missionaries?

- Missionaries, I think.

- So, female missionaries playing - Was led by a priest.

- Yeah.

-Wow.

- There are a few, like, historical pictures.

And then he gave more than a hundred performances from the north step to south step of Japan.

So just covered the entire island.

Yeah.

- So this was a huge, sensational like thing that's like “Look!” you know?

- Wow.

- And within this audience, a lot of kids went to see it too.

Like, Keiko Abe is one of them who saw tha and she became sort of like the first goddess of marimba in Japan.

The rise of these instruments— and manufacturers started competing each other to make better instruments.

And these companies who used to make wooden propellers for the war planes.

- Oh wow.

So, like, they were out of things to make, right?

- Right.

And at that time, Japanese government sort of designated after the war, like the rebuilding of the education system and then like the music classes, they decided a few instruments to be used to learn Do-Re-Mi, how it works, right?

So even like my time, you would go, you would sit, like elementary school, you sit and then there's like whole sets of xylophones and you put it on the table, and then that's how you start learning.

-Wow.

-So like that also made it really, you know, familiar.

- So what, you know, with the cradle of marimba-ness in Japan, what made you leave and come to the states where people were gonna look at you like “You do what, what?

What are you talking about?” - I really wanted to see, like, I was a fan girl of well, first, New York as a city, I really wanted to go to New York.

And also like things that come from outside of Japan.

I feel like a lot of what we do so well is sometimes come from, like, this passion of wanting to know what's outside.

I wanted to go out of Japan and New York was just like the city that I was always dreaming.

So I didn't even know like who teaches at which school or whatever.

I had zero English also.

- Wow.

Okay.

- No English whatsoever.

And, but I wanted to, the thing only thing I knew is like, I want to go to New York.

I wanna go to good school, the best school in New York.

And then I didn't know anywhere else but Juilliard.

And then I applied for it, and then I got in.

And then after getting in was just like, really, my head was just like exploding.

- Oh my gosh.

- And you're trying to learn English at the same time, and wow.

-Yeah.

- But yeah, since, since I started making music and living outside and I, you know, like I interact with people, like people in Silk Road who really inspire you to look back to your own roots.

- Mm.

-My passion now is like the beauty that we have in Japan and an interesting history, like the marimba, and the things that people don't know, I feel like that's my mission.

That's take things out of Japan and spread it out.

It's like, here, this is what we do and this is how we think.

- We are more than manga!

-Yeah.

There's more than kimono and sushi.

And, yeah.

That's my passion.

♪ ♪ [Sings In Japanese] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - It's really incredible to think about like, say, “Tamping Song”, which is your composition in the American Railroad Project.

You take something that is very rooted in history and culture and tradition, and then you— it's your own.

Mm.

You know, you really make it your own and then the ensemble makes it their own.

-Yeah.

-And you know, that's amazing.

- It's a beautiful process that With your amazing idea of just like one, maybe, theme that you brought in.

It's like, let's, let's make a story with the theme of railroad, and musical story.

And then that whole journey started to go into all these communities to learn about what happened and who were involved.

And until then, I had no idea that after Chinese people worked, which is a well-known fact, right?

on the railroad after the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese come in as an alternative.

And over 13,000 people, like my ancestors, right?

Like Japanese immigrants came to work on railroad.

And I had no idea that was a fact.

There's like, internment camp fact is known, and I knew about it— and living in the Bay area, like I meet enough people who talk about that.

Right?

But it's a new discovery of like surprising history part that I started reading more about it and I did the research.

Like I was looking for, like, is there like any tune or like a melody that they sung, you know?

And then I found this old YouTube clip of Japanese railroad workers in Japan, not here.

That was, I believe it's like 1930-something recording, old recording that was on YouTube.

And then this song is called “Tamping Ondo” It's all about this motion.

And then some melody comes with, actually, the sound of this hammer hammering down.

And that gave me an inspiration of, you know, I took some melody from that song, and I wanted to, I started wanting to weave the story of how it's the same like for me too.

How many of us from outside of America see that as the land of new life, new opportunity, new something, and we all come over there and then start the life.

Right?

And with, with ambition and expectation.

American dream sometime, and I was just imagining this song must have been sung in the American railroad scene too, for all these like within the railroad workers, Japanese immigrant workers, and... Yeah, so like I wanted to sort of describe that ambition part in the beginning and also wanted to include— I also went through of missing home, you know, leaving your homeland and, just like, your life goes on in the US then there's always your roots and, you know, melancholy feeling of it.

So that, the middle part is describing that.

Yeah.

So both, both emotions.

Yeah.

♪ ♪ ♪