Chording To Meg

Being the second day of spring, the Passover just around the corner, all I see is white in my window. Mind you; I live in Harlem. Whether you are Jewish but not feeling it, or you aren't Jewish at all but want to feel Jew-ish, there are ways you can feel more Jewish without guilt or doing anything involving clearing out bread from your kitchen cabinets. Here is my personal "FOUR ANSWERS" (playlist) for the week anticipating Passover! No. 1 Alberto Mizrahi Trio Globo "Dayenu" featuring Howard Levy, Eugene Friesen, and Glen Velez (YouTube) No. 2 Pharaoh's Daughter  "Taitsch" (Exodus)  (YouTube) No. 3 NPO Trio "Exodus and Emancipation" from NPO Trio Live at The Stone  (Bandcamp)  No. 4 Louis Armstrong "Go Down Moses"  (YouTube)

Our guests don’t ask four questions, but one. "When do we get to eat?” We tell them to eat something before if they don't want to be hungry staring at a shank bone and parsley while we read for two hours. To make the matters worse, every year at our Passover seder, our Afro-Asian Jewish American daughter passionately sings “Go Down Moses” crescendoing into the part “Let my people go!” The song exemplifies the parallel between the Jewish people's enslavement and departure from Egypt and the African-American slave experience in the United States. The parallel that I only draw once a year on Passover. “ Exodus and Emancipation ” is one of the tracks from one of my new albums, a debut album by the NPO Trio ( Sam Newsome on sopranos saxophone, Jean-Michel Pilc on piano, and Meg Okura on the violin) to be released on March 15 from Chant Records, a newly established avant-garde, and world music label. I first met Jean-Michel Pilc almost 18 years ago when I used to play ...

by Meg Okura Whenever I see a four-foot-eleven black elderly woman in a perfectly pressed dress suit with ever so fashionable glasses that scream intellect, I get scared. You know she is judging me. In fact, she is, but most lovingly - she is my mother in law. A granddaughter of a former slave who was born in Salisbury, Maryland in 1934. According to her account, she was always at the top of her class. In her 30’s, thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, she was even able to pursue a doctoral degree and became a professional. She was able to support her family, was a multiple-time homeowner, married not just once but twice, and helped everyone around her with her time and money. My mother in law is one of many thousands of examples of successes in America. Exactly four years ago, on the day of MLK celebration, my daughter who had just turned three at the time and I became Jews by choice. We chose Judaism so our daughter will be raised with progressive Jewish...

My 5-year old said, "Did you know that Beth and Laura in my class speak Chinese?" "That's impressive!!" I said excitedly. "Not really. Their moms must speak Chinese." "Oh. Have you heard them speak Chinese?" I asked. "No. but their moms totally look Chinese." Okay. "They do, huh?" "Yes, totally!!" So I ask  "Do I look Chinese?" "No" "So what do I do look like?" She looks at me and says "You just look like a plain old person." "Plain old person?" I said and gave her the tightest hug I could ever give. This was a very special moment for us as a mother and daughter. Until this moment, she had always looked at me as "the other"- the opposite of the "plain old person". Even before she could speak, she often compared my pale skin with her beautiful mocha complexion. And as soon as she learned to speak a few words,  "Me, Daddy brown. Mommy, wh...

“Hi, my name is Meg Okura; I am a jazz violinist and a composer” is something that I would say when I introduce myself. But is this an authentic statement? “My name is Meg Okura.” Yes and no. Sometimes people ask, “what is your REAL name” as if it’s not a real name. Meg Okura is just one of many names I have been called: the Chinese violinist, the Asian chick violinist, Connie Chung, Meg Okurawitz, and a few that I can’t mention here. All joking aside, my birth name is 大倉恵. That's the name I used to be called growing up in Japan. But now, everyone calls me Meg Okura, with the exception of my mother in law, who calls me Mrs. Newsome. Newsome is my husband’s name. Although I never changed my last name to Newsome, she still calls me Mrs. Newsome. I once confronted her about it, and she finally confessed that she just cannot remember my Japanese last name. It’s okay. We’ve only been married for 12 years. This week, we have just celebrated Rosh Hashanah and next week for Yom K...

Until recently, I was a very unlikely candidate for conversion. Even though I am Japanese, I was raised in a believing Protestant household, and subsequently became a Born-Again Christian at the age of ten at a Christian camp in Japan. At 18, I moved to the U.S. to attend The Juilliard School. I used to be a Christian violinist, giving church concerts, appearing at evangelical events and on Christian TV programs. And I led prayer groups at a church in New York City. Yes, I was that crazy Shiksa. It was about ten years ago, that I started touring with “ Pharaoh’s Daughter ”, a Jewish Middle-Eastern band consisting of mostly Israelis and few Gentiles. It’s headed by an American Jew, Basya Schechter , an ex-ultra-Orthodox woman from Borough Park. We have performed at many Jewish festivals and all imaginable venues; Carnegie Hall, JCC’s, synagogues, colleges and even prisons. We traveled, ate, laughed, and occasionally, we cried together. For the past ten years, I got to pa...