Kimio Eto Koto Music

Source

Before I dive in to Kimio, I'd like to comment on my use of two separate countries of origin. As with a lot of musicians I share, Kimio was born and raised in Japan, where he adopted his musical style, before moving to the United States to produce his work. It is, in some cases just the way the industry works. Thus far on the series, I have been providing you with the country of production. However, I'd like to stray from this; for in cases such as Kimio's, the music strongly represents the culture of the musician's home turf.

Which brings me to Kimio Eto. Eto was born in 1924 in Japan, and upon researching this article, I found out that he passed away in 2012; of which I was previously unaware. I was very saddened to learn this as I absolutely love his music and am very excited to share it with you.

Eto was pretty much the undisputed king of the koto. Could he not have had a more perfect name? If you are unaware of what a koto is, it's the ancient Japanese string instrument pictured below. It has been around since the 16th century, and although there have been variations(as you'd expect over 5 centuries), it most commonly has held 13 or 17 strings. It is a beautiful sounding instrument; as you can hear in his music :)

Source

When you listen to Kimio's music, it's pretty astounding to picture his fingers at work. The speed and technicality in his work, coupled with the strong emotions, clearly single his work out in a sea of imitators. And, believe it or not, Kimio Eto has been fully blind since the age of 5.

That's right. Entirely blind. Hopefully by this point you've clicked play below and are listening to Eto's work as you learn this. Maybe I should start posting the music at the top of the article? Although I do like having the album artwork as the thumbnail image, and really wouldn't want to post them back to back. I dunno, let me know what you think in the comments. Do you like the way I format these? Or should I prioritize the embed?

Source

Anyways, yeah, he's blind as a bat. Which is probably why he can play the koto the way he does. Despite his unfortunate handicap, Eto made his musical talents known by a young age. While growing up in Japan, he earned many awards and had a few pieces of published work, both as a player and a composer.

Around the age of 30, after establishing himself as a master of the Koto in Japan, Eto moved to the United States to popularize the koto. His success is difficult to be measured, because as with many people from the pre-digital era, there is not a ton of information about Kimio readily available, although I hope I have contributed some of my little knowledge about the artist or at least helped in promotion of this forgotten masterpiece. I have never met a person not impressed with this album, so I hope that the Steemit community will appreciate his work just as much as I :)

Note: If any of my posts over the next few days hold errors or are visually unappealing, I sincerely apologize and wouldn't mind if you let me know so I can try to correct it. Due to being a dog owner, my computer screen currently looks like this:

I am trying to resolve the issue as swiftly as possible. In the meantime, I will try to remain as active as possible on here and, hate to do it but, your up vote would really help me get closer to fixing this situation :) Steem on!

Manna - Universal Basic Income every human is entitled to.
Presearch - Earn tokens while you surf the web.
Use steemfollower to connect with more Steemit users.
Onstellar - Decentralized Social Media platform with a hint of the supernatural.

Check out these faucets!
Moon DASH
Moon BCH
Moon BTC
Moon LTC
Moon DOGE
Bonus Bitcoin
Bit Fun