Music at Founders Academy

In a career spanning more than two decades, Hiroshima (formed by Dan Kuramoto and June Kuramoto) has performed for hundreds of thousands, while their extensive catalog of albums has sold over 3 million copies worldwide.

June was born in Saitama-ken Japan (just outside of Tokyo), and raised in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles.

As a child, June longed to return to Japan and found comfort in playing an ancient Japanese instrument, the koto.

Dan explains the intricacies of stringing a koto.

The koto is played with fingerpicks made of ivory.

Shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese bamboo flute

The shakuhachi flute is used in Buddhist meditation as well as classical, jazz and traditional Japanese folk music.

The sound is made by blowing in the end of the flute. Hold the flute under your bottom lip and blow over the crescent cut at the top edge.

Using her grandmother's koto, June, only six years old, found a "connection" for her life in the instrument and Japanese music.

June has performed with some of the greatest musicians in the classical world from Japanese masters to Ravi Shankar.

The koto is approximately 6'-3" long, 10" wide and about 3" deep. It has two sound holes at the bottom and is hollow inside.

The traditional koto has 13 strings (originally silk, and now usually substituted with tetolon).

The 13 moveable bridges (originally ivory but now also made of plastic) represent the scale of the dragon.

At the head of the dragon the strings are pulled down through eyelets, representing the horns of the dragon.

Curious fingers

Bree and Porcelynne

June has studied classical, traditional koto with Kudo Sensei for over thirty years. She has also received her "natori" (teaching/professional/master degree) from the acclaimed Michio Miyagi Koto School of Japan.

Markhum tries on the fingerpicks.

There are four basic character sets used in writing modern Japanese: katakana, hiragana, kanji, and romaji.

Saif demonstrates similarities in his and June's written languages.

Arabic, Hindi, Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji

"We've always stood apart from other instrumental groups of our time by taking the graceful classical sound of the koto and experimenting with varying American musical idioms around that," says Dan Kuramoto, Hiroshima's leader and producer.

"We create musically a cross-commentary about a multitude of cultures that comes from our backgrounds as Asian Americans growing up in a racially diverse America."