Departing the club scene of Osaka, a western part of Japan, to the world---this exciting instrumental band plays dance music mixing up Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, and Electro.

The band name, Sawagi, sounds dashing to start with. Sawagi means “exited”, “stirred”, and “agitated” in Japanese. “We wanted our band name to be a Japanese word that sounds original and interesting for foreign people to hear.”

Drummer Nico and keyboardist Koichi have been friends since they were in elementary school and formed KARAKURI with guitarist Kannon and bassist Takuto Unigame in 2004(KARAKURI changed its name to Sawagi later). Nico says, “Our concept at that time was ‘playing like In-sist’, which is the Japanese Hip-Hop band formed in 1998. Also, we all like D'Angelo and Daft Punk.”

They started performing from 2007. They kept jamming and rehearsing at studio for almost 3 years since the band was formed in 2004, and then made the first demo in July, 2007. In 2008, they performed at the several local festivals and their name started to be acknowledged slowly. In August 5th, 2009, their 1st album ‘hi hop’ was released from colla disc, an indie label in JVC Victor Entertainment, Inc.

“When you search ‘hi hop’ on the Internet, the search engine will ask you, “Did you mean, ‘Hip-Hop?’.” They laugh. “We like Hip-Hop, but we didn’t feel comfortable being categorized as ‘an instrumental Hip-Hop band’ because we aim to be borderless. We just don’t want to be categorized in one genre, and we put the hope to improve higher and higher in the word, ‘hi hop’.

“Instrumental music,” they add, “is beyond the language barriers and it is borderless. Our hope is to fly across the world.”

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