By WARREN FURUTANI

Harry Manaka’s iconic book, “Sansei Rocker,” along with the resurgence of the music that drove the dance scene in the Japanese and Asian American community in the ’60s and ’70s, has experienced a rebirth. One reason is the Sansei generation is now retired and attracted to those special times.

No longer at Roger Young auditorium, Parkview Woman’s Club or Baby Lions, you can now catch Elemental Funk and the singing group Asian Persuasion at venues like the Gardena Elks Club or at Nishi Hongwanji Temple.

But another branch of the music tree from those times was not rooted in the Motown sound or other dance music; it was unequivocally rooted in the jazz/fusion genre. One of the pioneers and practitioners of this trend was Alan Furutani.

Alan passed away Aug. 24, 2023. But the musical tradition that he and so many other musicians established in the community continues and many are still “wood shedding” and playing at obscure venues and on the big stage ala Hiroshima (jazz fusion).

Alan was a sax man and played most of the woodwind instruments (tenor sax, soprano sax and the flute). He also founded many different jazz bands over the years, including Fujazz and Visions. He also played with many other jazz-based groups from So Cal, Nor Cal and the Pacific Northwest. But Alan was not a snob. He also played in several dance and garage bands like Street Flower and the Benjo Blues Band.

Alan’s jazz roots can be attributed to his father, Chuck, and their neighbors when he was growing up. The Stones, Floyd and Vernell, were musicians and Floyd was the owner of CS Music store on Western Avenue in Gardena. Alan, along with his older brothers, Norman and Warren, took music lessons from the Stones. The youngest Furutani brother, Stony, was named after Floyd Stone, whose nickname was Stony.

Chuck was a working man and a 442nd veteran. He met the Furutani brothers’ mother in the swamps of Arkansas in the Rohwer and later Jerome concentration camps. Mary Yamada Furutani was from the Elk Grove area south of Sacramento and Chuck and his family were Terminal Islanders.

Chuck grew up with many different cultural influences, being from an island in the Port of Los Angeles. He was also a Sansei (third generation Japanese American), which made him different from most of his Japanese American peers who were second-generation Nisei.

He was also a jazz drummer and singer who plied his musical trade at small clubs and bars like the Bluebird Club on Western Avenue in South L.A. Chuck indoctrinated his sons in the ways of music, especially Jazz.

Norman, the oldest, played in the marching bands at Peary Junior High School, Gardena High School, and Cal State Long Beach. He also played in the local big band, the Esquires. Warren, the second-oldest, played guitar and was influenced by the folk and protest music traditions of the ’60s.

But Alan played the consummate jazz instrument, the tenor sax. He enjoyed playing groove-based tunes like John Coltrane’s “Equinox and Naima.” Of course, Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” and Herbie Mann’s jazzy blues tune “Comin’ Home Baby” were on Alan’s playlist.

He was strongly influenced by the jazz and R&B sound of the ’70s and such artists as Pharoah Sanders, Grover Washington Jr, and Idris Muhammad. And although the sax was Alan’s main axe, he was an excellent flute player and Herbie Hancock and Hubert Laws seeded his early style.

He and his wife and soulmate, Marsha (Kawagoye), played at the inaugural San Francisco Asian Amerasian Jazz Festival in 1985. Alan started the Amerasia Bookstore Jazz Festival and performed at many more Asian American and other jazz festivals. He and Marsha also played at three San Francisco Nihonmachi Street Fairs and later held down the small stage at the Coffee Cartel Coffee House in the Hollywood Rivera for 17 years.  Marsha is a singer.

Alan worked at many different kinds of jobs to pay the bills. His last job was as a dispatcher for Jo-Mi Plumbing in the Sawtelle area. But make no mistake, Alan was a musician to the end. He was practicing, “wood shedding,” with his last breath.

He will be missed by his family and friends. But his music will live on. The family is having an intimate family gathering to send him off but his musical compadres are planning a musical tribute and memorial celebrating Alan’s music and lifelong commitment to jazz and other styles and music genres in the spring of 2024.

Alan is now playing his flute as he and Obachan walk through his favorite pear orchard and through Ojichan’s strawberry patch.

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Warren Furutani has served as a member of the Los Angeles Unified District Board of Education, the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, and California State Assembly. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.

The post OG-SAN: Reflections — Alan Den Furutani (Oct. 15, 1951 – Aug. 24, 2023) appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press

4 hours ago

FILE – Wayne Brady attends the Paramount 2022 Upfront Party in New York on May 18, 2022. Brady and Alan Mingo Jr. will perform as Wiz in San Francisco from January 16 through February. 11 at the Golden Gate Theater and in Los Angeles from February 13 to March 3 before hitting Broadway in spring 2024. (Photo by Christopher Smith/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) – Two men who slipped on six-inch heels for Broadway’s “Kinky Boots” will play the title character behind the curtain when “The Wiz” tours the United States beginning this fall and hitting Broadway in 2024 — Wayne Brady and Alan Mingo Jr.

“Me and Wayne are going back as actors to where we were friends, Los Angeles,” says Minho. “So what better way to share a gig with your friends?” Brady adds, “It’s a dream. It really is a dream.”

Brady will perform as Wiz in San Francisco from January 16th to February. 11 at the Golden Gate Theater and in Los Angeles from February 13 to March 3 before hitting Broadway in spring 2024.

Mingo will play the Wiz in the remaining cities of the national tour beginning with the start in Baltimore and including Cleveland; Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh; Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta; Greenville, South Carolina; Chicago; Des Moines, Iowa; Tempe, Arizona and San Diego.

Most recently, the two actors appeared on Broadway in Kinky Boots, where they played Lola. Brady passed the role to Mingo, and “now I’ll go out on the street and then I’ll pass the baton to him,” says Mingo.

“The Wiz” was one of two shows that a young Brady always dreamed of doing one day. “I’ve always wanted to be on The Wiz.” I’ve always wanted to be on Dreamgirls. Those were two of the classics that were something of the North Star of theater as a kid. It was like, ‘Hey, if you can get on one of these shows, that means you made it.'”

The cast also includes Kyle Ramar Freeman as the lion, Phillip Johnson Richardson as the Tin Man and Avery Wilson as the Scarecrow. Schele Williams will direct and says she hopes the show will be a “touchstone for a new generation”.

The show is an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, with a book by William F. Brown and music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls.

The Wiz premiered on Broadway in 1975 and won seven Tonys, including Best Musical. It includes such classic songs as “What Would I Do If I Could Feel” and “Ease On Down the Road”.

A 1978 film version of The Wiz starred Diana Ross, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor as Wiz. Michael Jackson played the scarecrow, Nipsey Russell played the tin man and Ted Ross played the lion. NBC televised a live version in 2015, starring Queen Latifah, Ne-Yo and David Alan Grier.

Both Brady and Mingo say the show — with black actors front and center — is finding a new resonance as it progresses at a slower pace in the coming months.

“I think of all these people of color on this stage telling the story of a young woman who is lost and looking for something. Disenfranchised, she happens to meet three other young people who are all looking for something and can’t get answers from the elderly around them because the world is in chaos. She has to make an effort and find her way – now is the right time.”

Mingo, who starred in the original series Rent and The Little Mermaid, said The Wiz played an important role in inspiring his career.

“It motivated me to get into this business,” he says. “I love bringing our art to new audiences. Hopefully they will make wonderful patrons, if not art themselves.”

The original Broadway production starred Stephanie Mills as Dorothy, Dee Dee Bridgewater as the good witch Glinda, and Andre De Shields as the wizard.

Brady, who won a Primetime Emmy Award for “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” says he’ll place his wiz somewhere between Prior and De Shields.

“I already know I have two places to find inspiration. I loved Richard’s dark twist and I loved Andre’s standout twist, his panache and all the grandiosity,” he says. “So I think somewhere in the middle I’ll put my husband. I think I can add a certain charm and light to it all.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Yammer founder and Textline CEO Alan Braverman and his wife Angela, president of Space Lace Auctions and Atelier, could lose $4.6 million restoring a historic Jackson Square penthouse.

That’s assuming they get their asking price of $7.9 million for the indoor-outdoor lot with a 3,000-square-foot “sky garden” on the roof.

The couple spent more than $9 million over several years to convert the 3,200-square-foot top floor of an 1860s Jackson Square penthouse into their “dream home,” without considering resale value, she says Listing Agent Gregg Lynn of Sotheby’s International Realty.

“It should be her forever home,” Lynn said via email. But those plans changed as the couple’s baby got older and they realized they wanted to be closer to family in the Midwest. “No one wants to sell at a loss – they would strongly prefer to sell and recoup their costs, but they recognize that this is not possible and that will not prevent them from continuing their life close to their family.”

The couple paid $3.5 million for the top-floor condo at 42 Hotaling Place in August 2012 after “seen everything on the market” and fell in love with the property’s history and its location near the Embarcadero, he said. They also purchased the ground floor commercial space at 38 Hotaling Place for nearly $5.7 million in January 2020 to house Space Lace’s couture and vintage collections. They’re asking $6 million for the ground floor space that’s now vacated. The middle floor of the building has another owner and is occupied by an architectural office.

Lynn described the years of renovation of Hotaling Place — an alley flanked by mid-19th-century buildings that were saved from the fires after the 1906 earthquake because it housed one of the West’s largest whiskey shops — as “Similar to renovating a historic house on a canal in Venice.” The alley’s antique shops and art galleries were forced to close when building materials were scraped into the property, he said. Other “expensive considerations” included seismic structural work and upgrades to electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and technology systems.

Aside from the period facade, the three bedroom, two bathroom home retains only a few original brick and wood features. The rest is all new, Lynn said, with Venetian plaster walls crafted by a third-generation plasterer and a commercial kitchen with an “on-demand wall” that rises and falls from the peninsula to separate the cooking area from the Separate the rest of the open living space concept.

Most of the couple’s favorite features aren’t even in the house, Lynn said, but in the rooftop “sky garden.” It features a large pond with a water feature, an outdoor kitchen and dining area, a theater pavilion with an outdoor TV, a hot tub, a bocce ball court, and a yoga area.

Lynn said the unusual location in a non-residential area of ​​the city near downtown is the main reason the Bravermans are likely to suffer such a big loss.

“If this property was in Pacific Heights, it would be listed for $15 million,” he said.

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