Piercing synths, deep, silky vocals and an undeniable connection with an audience is what has made Arthur Nakane stand out from crowds of musicians and street performers in California.
The 88-year-old musician located in Los Angeles is known for his bi-weekly street performances in Little Tokyo and his appearance on Season 5 of “America’s Got Talent.” Long Beach residents may have seen Nakane performing at the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Annual Autumn Festival, where he’s played for 21 years.
“He’s just a special person,” said Chelsey Coleman, who has run the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Autumn Festival for five years. “A really fun musician and it’s hard not to smile when you’re around him.”
With sights and sounds to behold, Nakane has created a custom rig to play multiple instruments at once. At the height of his musical career, he played the maracas, uses multiple keyboards and synthesizers, an electric guitar, wind chimes, harmonica, kazoo, tambourine, drum cymbals and a bass pedal board all at once.
The Los Angeles musician plays these instruments, using the guitar and synthesizers as the focal points, as he sings along with Japanese, English and Spanish lyrics, blending music of various genres. Nakane’s improvisational and at times humorous performances along with his ability to connect with audience members has helped him stand out to crowds.
Though Nakane has made a path for himself with his one-of-a-kind sounds, he never envisioned being a professional musician. He was washing dishes in a Japanese restaurant in 1963 and the owner found out he was going to join an amateur Little Tokyo band and offered to pay him minimum wage as well as tips if he was good. Since he was going to college, he needed the extra money.
“I said to myself, I’m not here to show what I can do. It’s what I can do to entertain them,” Nakane said.
A few years later, his father told Nakane that he would be traveling to Vancouver, Canada to study at the University of British Columbia in college. He struggled with university life and was suspended and kicked out after five years for failing the final exam.
“Kicked out, no place to go. I cannot go home. I had no face, no money,” he said. Nakane ended up booking a one way plane ticket to the United States since he had a visitor’s visa.
When his visitor’s visa ended, he had two choices: go back to Japan and plan his return to the United States, or go to adult school for two years in order to stay in the U.S. Nakane chose the latter. Within nine years, he and his wife had six children, and Nakane felt he had to keep performing to support his family while he attended Los Angeles City College.
After graduating and transferring to Cal State Los Angeles, Nakane was kicked out and re-enrolled three times, again struggling to balance his musical pursuits and his studies.
His determination paid off, and in 1967 Nakane graduated from Cal State LA and became a high school teacher. His teacher’s salary meant he had to continue performing to support his family. As he continued adding handmade instruments to his arsenal (keyboards he played by attaching a stick to the neck of his guitar), Nakane became a staple of Los Angeles street performances and retired from his teaching career in 1984.
This time in Nakane’s life was also marked with a growing success; the ‘90s rock band Everclear had him open on their national tour in 1996, he performed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and competed on “America’s Got Talent” in 2010.
“I was on the national tour. Every night, several thousand people. They’d scream my name, they’d chant my name [but] I can’t see them,” Nakane said. “So instead of trying to please everybody, I talked with people I can see. If I do that, people in the back feel like I’m talking to them.”
His “America’s Got Talent” performance took him to the Las Vegas semi-finals round, among the 85 other semi-finalists.
On May 30, 2013, Nakane broke his neck in the bath tub, leaving his body paralyzed and his fingers unable to move. In a recent Facebook post, Nakane said he was desperate during those four hours, fearing for his life before a nextdoor neighbor rescued him.
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He said the doctors told him there was a 95% chance he’d successfully recover in 6 to 12 months. The accident inhibited Nakane’s ability to play music since he couldn’t operate the bass pedal board or the electric guitar anymore.
“My crippled fingers barely moved, but they couldn’t even hold onto chopsticks, let alone play my guitar, which was my main instrument among 12 instruments I used,” Nakane said on Facebook.
While a life-changing accident would’ve stopped many people from playing music altogether, Nakane persevered.
Nakane details that he went to the Japanese Village Plaza in Little Tokyo shortly after the accident, a place he’d play music regularly, and sat quietly wondering what he could do to liven the place up. He ended up asking a fellow guitarist named Yoshi Yamamoto to play music with him impromptu, learning songs he wasn’t familiar with.
“This impromptu but precious performance experience encouraged me to develop my own style of music, totally different from the old showy and flashy one-man-band music,” he said via Facebook. “It took a lot of pride to swallow, exposing a shell of my old self.”
Nakane’s goal is to translate Japanese songs to English and to introduce Japanese songs to people.
“Keep doing what you believe is right. 24 hours,” Nakane said when asked about his advice to the younger generation. “All those people, Kiké, Rojas, Yamamoto, Sasaki, all those people were down, down down but they keep going.”
While the 88-year-old singer said he’s not a one man band anymore, Nakane still performs solo occasionally in Little Tokyo. On Dec. 28, he put on his Christmas show, and plans to continue performing at the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Autumn Festival.
Samuel Chacko
Photojournalist
Samuel Chacko is an award-winning photojournalist from Long Beach, California. Samuel currently works as a freelance journalist for multiple publications and he is a class of 2025 Cal State Long Beach graduate. Samuel loves watching sports (the Ravens and the Yankees) and taking photos.
Check out more of Samuel’s work here: https://samuelchacko.com/
