Latest on Instagram

Meet Hachi Joseph Yoshida, the Japanese singer-songwriter who performed 'Beer' in Nihongo with The Itchyworms

Meet Hachi Joseph Yoshida, the Japanese singer-songwriter who performed 'Beer' in Nihongo with The Itchyworms

Estimated:  reading

Bands inviting fans onstage to sing a song with them is something we've seen done at concerts time and time again. We've seen it in movies and in real life. It's even happened in Manila, at American Football's 2019 concert, when Run Dorothy vocalist Dee Cruz stepped in to join the band for 'Every Wave to Ever Rise' and 'Uncomfortably Numb'. In these instances, fans joined their idols to sing the songs as they are, unlike what Japanese singer-songwriter Hachi Joseph Yoshida did at The Itchyworms' Kyoto concert earlier this October.

It all started when Yoshida uploaded a cover of The Itchyworms' 'Beer' on YouTube last September. He'd been posting covers of Filipino songs as early as 2016, offering his own renditions of songs by the Eraserheads, December Avenue, and SB19 translated in Japanese, but this particular cover of 'Beer' led him to one of the best nights of his life. The Itchyworms' Jugs Jugueta reached out to him with a message, saying, "We are going to do gigs in Japan, let's sing 'Beer' together!"

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by JUGS Jugueta (@jugsjugsjugs)

"It was like a dream come true, to get a message directly from a singer I admire so much," Yoshida shares with Bandwagon in an interview. Come October, Yoshida arrived at LIVE HOUSE GATTACA to sing 'Beer', an 18-year-old song, which coincidentally enough would be of legal age to have a beer of its own, with one of his favourite Filipino bands. "Jugs sang the first part of 'Beer' in Tagalog, and I sang the second part in Japanese. The audience got quite excited. I have sung onstage many times as a singer, but it was the most enjoyable live performance I have ever had."

BANDWAGON TV

He recalls, "While I was singing in Japanese, the audience started singing in Tagalog. It was like an amazing chemical reaction was happening because we were singing in different languages, but with the same melody. I thought it was a very curious, but wonderful scene."

Born and raised in Japan, Yoshida found his love for Filipino music when he came to Cebu to study English as his first step to realizing his dream of becoming a world-famous musician. Everywhere he went in the Queen City of the South, he found himself surrounded by music and noticed how carefree the people were as they sang and danced along the streets. "That was when I started listening to Filipino music and thought that one day, I would like to become a famous singer in the Philippines," he says.

"Filipino singers are overwhelming," Yoshida, who has won several songwriting contests in Japan and abroad, confesses. "The love songs they sing with their delicate voices are so expressive that they make me cry and I can listen to them over and over again. The Philippines is known to have the most music-loving people in Asia, and I think it is the best place for musicians. That is why I want to know more Filipino songs and cover them."

These days, this father of two has been listening to a lot of Michael V, Lola AmourBen&Ben, and even ena mori and Zild, who he met in person during his last visit to Manila in June this year.

"I didn't expect to be able to meet and talk with Zild, but I happened to meet him outside the live house and was able to talk with him for a while and take pictures with him," he shares. "He was very friendly. I told him that I had made a Japanese cover of his song 'Isang Anghel', and he seemed pleased. I thought that the closeness between artists and audiences was different from that in Japan."

According to Yoshida, the excitement he feels at Philippine shows is "10 times greater than in Japan." He says, "There are many people who watch live shows quietly in Japan. Japanese people are mostly very shy. In the Philippines, audiences shout a lot, and artists respond to them, raising the heat of the live show. I really wish I could do that kind of live show in the Philippines."

Having grown up with a piano teacher for a mother, music was always a part of Yoshida's daily life. In high school, like many teen boys, he picked up the guitar in hopes of playing J-pop and wrote a lot of his own tunes.

He's come a long way since then, now looking up to the likes of the Eraserheads simply because of how they wrote their lyrics. "I strongly hope to meet and talk with Ely [Buendia] someday when I become famous," he says with a long list of goals—which includes an Awit Awards nomination—that he'd like to cross off as he makes his climb to share his love for Filipino music with the rest of the world.