The light and soft music made me excited somehow when I heard the sound. Kanako Omae, a female drummer playing in New York, wrote these songs. She got into drums when she was 16, and she thought musicians don’t need an educational background, so she quit high school and left Japan. Her father opposed her, but he agreed to let her go, only if she lived with her mother. So Kanako and her mother moved to New York to pursue Kanako’s dream of playing shows. 

Kanako originally loved the heavy sound of Rock music, but two days after she and her mother arrived in NY there was the terrorist acts on the WTC. “I was surprised that music disappeared from the city. I felt music could change people in these types of situations.” After 9/1, Kanako changed her style to “make people happy.”

This February, she released her first CD with her band “Fake ID,” and started getting attention from the music media little by little. Kanako looks like she doing well, but she has experienced things that usual Japanese students might not have. “The first time I went to a club to promote, they ignored me because I was a female and Japanese who didn’t have any experience. When I was playing shows, some people would spit at me or say “go home!” but Kanako continued to play because of “many peoples support.” 

After 3 years, she quit high school, got her GED and thought about going to college. Kanako spontaneously feels “I want to meet many people and learn music and many things.” While she’s playing music, she attends a program as a model case that will take Japanese students who can’t go to school. “I want to tell them that there are many different lives. If you can’t find something in Japan, and if you see that there are different cultures and lifestyles, you will see something different from there.” 

Kanako is aggressive, but on the other hand she looks shy and says “I’m doing this because I love it.” We don’t know what will happen next in the music scene, but this 19 year old girl makes me want to support her big.