Music

The Asia Minors

The Asia Minors were an all-Asian Canadian band who played in Toronto in the 1960s. The band was formed by the Lumb family, a prominent Chinatown family: it was sponsored by restaurateur Jean Lumb and the members included three of her children. Other members at different points in the band’s lifetime included Alan Kondo, Terry […]

Grace Terakita

Grace Fujie Terakita was a well-known Nisei soprano singer before, during, and after the Second World War. When living in BC before the war, she recorded her trademark song Shinna no Yoru (China Nights). She lived in the Winnipeg area after the war. Her accompanist in BC was Vernon Hakkaku. In Manitoba, Terakita sang with […]

Ian Nishio

Ian Nishio was a bass player who recorded and performed on several recordings with Terry Watada as well as with the heavy metal band Snow Axe in Toronto, including their album We’re All Different.

John Saisho

John Saisho is a saxophone player who has recorded several albums with Terry Watada.

Kunio Suyama

Kunio Suyama is an actor, singer, and emcee who has been highly active in the Toronto Buddhist Church. He is especially well-known for his role as emcee at the annual Obon Festival in Toronto. Suyama put on and performed in many shibai plays at the Toronto Buddhist Church over the years. He was also a […]

Garry Kawasaki

Garry Kawasaki is a musician who played bass and provided vocals for the Asia Minors, an Asian Canadian top 40s rock band that played in Toronto in the 1960s. He collaborated many times with Terry Watada, including appearing in his album Runaway Horses and several other recordings. He has also performed with the band the […]

Archie Nishihama

Akira ‘Archie’ Nishihama is a musician and composer. He studied music in Osaka, and composed several songs for schools in Japan, as well as the kohka (school song) for the Toronto Japanese Language School. He is also well known for his arrangement of the song Wonderful Canada for the Sansei Choir in Toronto. Nishihama was […]

Alan Kondo

Alan Kondo was the first lead singer of the Asia Minors, an Asian Canadian top 40s rock band in the 1960s in Toronto. After leaving the band, he went on to study film at UCLA under Jerry Lewis, and became an editor for Visual Communications in Los Angeles. He edited Hito Hata, the first Asian […]

Teresa Kobayashi

Teresa Kobayashi is a master koto player, the daughter of renowned koto sensei Miyoko Kobayashi. She also plays the shamisen and shakuhachi and danced odori for 27 years. As a child, she was primarily interested in dance, and began learning the Hanayagi style of nihonbuyo (odori dance) at the age of six. However, she found […]

Kaya

Kaya is a vocalist and songwriter based in Burnaby, BC with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz from Capilano University. As a queer woman of colour, she values diversity and representation, and strives to create inclusive spaces in the Vancouver music scene. Kaya draws influences from artists such as Lake Street Dive, Nina Simone, Rebecca […]

The Singing Knights

The Singing Knights were an Asian Canadian folk band in Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s. They were formed by the Chung family, and at one time featured Garry Kawasaki and Terry Watada. They toured Ontario, and once performed for Prince Charles of England.

Tim Tamashiro

Tim Tamashiro is a singer and ‘jazz evangelist’, well-known as the host of Tonic on CBC Radio 2. Growing up in Blackfalds, Alberta, Tamashiro had six months of piano lessons before his mother and piano teacher decided to let him teach himself how to play by ear; he has since become a passionate believer in […]

Ohama

Tona Walt Ohama is a composer and performer of electronic synth music who records music in an isolated underground studio on his family’s potato farm in rural Alberta. He has played synthesizers since 1975, when he bought his first monophonic synthesizer, the A.R.P. Axxe, at the age of fifteen. He has been called ‘Alberta’s Best […]

Number One Son

Number One Son was a Vancouver Asian Canadian folk-rock band. Its members included Martin Kobayakawa, Kuan Foo, Sean Gunn, and later Terry Watada. They released two albums: Number One Son and Hockeynight in Chinatown.

Masaki Watanabe

Masaki Watanabe is a journalist/translator and a jazz musician with an international background. Born in Tokyo in 1945 to a Japanese Finnish father and a Japanese mother, he graduated from International Christian University in 1966 after which he joined Reuters news agency in London. He has since worked as a Reuters correspondent in North America […]