Tag: Masako Masunaga

Yesterday evening I went to see the concert of Masako Masunaga in Higashi Nakano. Masako Masunaga has been working for Osaka University as an assistant of the laboratory where I studied, and is now one of Japan’s famous arpa players. She already released one CD in 2003, and is going to release the second CD in October this year.
I did neither know what arpa was nor that she had become so famous as an arpista until a colleague of the laboratory let me know about her tour. All I knew about arpa was the ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency network.
For those of you who don’t know about it, an arpa is a 37-string harp-like plucking musical instrument derived from Spain and Latin American countries like Mexico, Paraguay, Guatemala and Venezuela. It is lighter and a bit smaller than a classical harp, and is very popular among the people in those countries.
On the stage in Higashi Nakano, she played it very cheerfully and sometimes gracefully for about two hours counting the inclusion of a 15-minute break in the middle. She said that she was playing the arpa for cheering up the people who were struggling against their own stressful life.
Asking how she came across an arpa, she answered that she had "happened to" listen to music played by an arpa when she had been invited to a famous arpista‘s house and, being attracted to it, she had asked her to teach how to play the arpa the next day.
"It was a great chance for me to change my life," she added. Indeed, her life became more glorious than ever by an arpa.
Everybody has a chance to find the way of success. The point is that you should never give up trying to search for it.