Child DJs show they're up to scratch when brought out to play
When DJs Sara and Ryusei Kishimoto took the stage at a Grammy Awards party in Los Angeles in February, the audience of artists and hardened music executives had to pick their jaws off the floor. Taking a short break from primary school in Japan, the brother-and-sister act 'tore the place up', according to one reviewer, before shyly waving to the crowd and heading back to their hotel for a cup of cocoa. At 1am, it was well past their bedtime.
'It was fun having all those people listen, but the best was being able to go to Disneyland the next day,' recalls nine-year-old Sara. She was 'very nervous' at their first performance outside Japan, she says, 'but when it was over people came and complimented us, which was kind'.
Sara and her seven-year-old brother Ryusei are the latest musical prodigies to break out of cyberspace, where they have quickly earned a cult following. A YouTube clip of the siblings, tiny hands in a blur as they scratch behind a bank of turntables in their Osaka home, has scored almost 2 million hits and attracted offers to perform in New York, Australia and South Korea.
Their parents refuse most gigs, but tonight mum Akemi will be watching from the wings at the Dragon-i club in Central, where the pint-sized scratchers have been invited to tear up their first Hong Kong audience. Don't go expecting nursery rhymes set to phat beats. These kids know their music, inheriting a love of old-school soul, funk and disco from their father, Eiichi, a furniture-maker and former amateur club DJ. Sara and Ryusei's favourite artists read like a turntable who's who: DJ Aladdin, Grandmaster Flash, Jazzy Jeff, Q-Bert and their hero, pioneering Filipino-American scratch artist D-Styles, who will be playing alongside them at Dragon-i.
'I think people are going to be surprised by these kids,' says D-Styles on the phone from Osaka, where he is practising before the Hong Kong gig. 'They're really amazing. Sometimes I think I'm playing with two professionals, they're so good. They have a natural rhythm and a good ear for music. And it sounds like they're having fun; not forced at all.'
Sara started deejaying as soon as she could reach up to her father's turntable and has been scratching for nearly seven years. Her brother made it a double act, although not without its share of friction. 'We argue over whose turn it is on the tables or how long each should play,' she says, giggling.
'They're like any two bratty kids; they fight a lot at home, though you'd never know it to see them on TV,' says Eiichi Kishimoto.
