Shibusashirazu Orchestra opened the Field of Heaven stage on Saturday with a set that felt like a thesis statement on what Fuji Rock is, or what it should be. Joyful, multifaceted, chaotic but controlled, feverishly artistic but principled. A lot of contradictions in there, but all good art (and good festivals) should have a little paradox in them.
Of course the set featured the requisite frolicking weirdos, bananas, butoh and explosive artistic creativity. Tradition, like dancing, and rejection of strict tradition, like having that butoh dancer be a woman wearing a tinfoil hat. Wacky, but deadly serious. Irreverent but respectful to tradition. Cool stuff.
Every song felt like a set closing singalong anthem, rhythmic tribal chants sprinkled with free jazz. Wicked horn section, wailing like they were trying to blow down the technicolor walls of a fever dream Jericho. Some real ars gratis artis shit. Their first show at Field of Heaven was 24 years ago, and since then they have been a festival staple and it is hard not to understand why.
In all the set felt like an ethnomusicologist, half of Sun-Ra’s Arkestra and a ska band hype man all washed up on a desert island, went a little crazy in the heat and decided to form a group. And somehow it works really well.
The band left the stage in a trickle and not with a boom, one by one as the instruments faded out piece by piece to a casual klezmer ditty. It made the whole thing feel like the set wasn’t really ending, just expanding out beyond the stage to include everyone for the weekend to come. Perhaps when they told us ‘We are Shibusashirazu!’, what they really meant is that we are all, all of us, a part of Shibusashirazu. And we are lucky for it.