Ropeadope

Some artists exceed the confining industry-boxes of genres, and blaze roads seldom traveled by their contemporaries. In a land of box-dwellers and one-trick ponies comes Fumihito Sugawara, or simply Fumi-hito for short. The Hiroshima-raised Fumi-hito narrates the listener’s musical adventure, not with words, but through the use of sound. His sounds are his symbols as he states, “I feel a visual narrative through notes.” And it’s only fitting for a cat whose name literally translates to “man of literature!”.

Currently working up his chops in the Austin-based band Afrofreque; Fumi-hito is now stretching out in his lone efforts into spaces of limitless melodic and rhythmic structures, setting an atmosphere of blissful proportions with a sophisticated style that’s cinematic in structure, but funky in sound. With Fumi-hito, there’s never a dull moment! His style can be seen as the outcome of a hypothetical meeting between the likes of Lalo Schifrin, DJ Logic, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. And this multi-instrumentalist offers everything that one would expect of a virtuous musical and philosophical visionary heavily influenced by hip-hop, jazz, brazilia, soul, and Japanese-folk music. Think of it as experimental genre-blending mood-music which consistently relays some story and/ or message within its being. Needless to say, the world is in for years, decades, and maybe even centuries of mind-blowing and soul-thumping grooves! This artist has chosen to take “the road less traveled” — to create sonic timelessness in the 21st century. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, welcome the magnificent Fumi-hito!