HapaRock ♥

Benny Oyama: Singer, Songwriter and Guitar Coach Make contact: ✉ bennyoyama @ gmail dot com Ask me about lessons at your coordinates, or in Washington Heights/Chelsea ♫

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This beautiful song comes to us from J. Goncalves and Marino Pinto, made famous in late 50's Brazil by Joao Gilberto. My version is inspired by Gilberto Gil's interpretation off of his Gilbertos Samba album. I am donning my Samurai-off-work look today for this video.

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Autumn Blue - オータム・ブルー

大山・ベニー, ギターとボーカル ジョナサン・コーヘン, サクソフォン 2015大山・ベニーによるオリジナル曲

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Benny Oyama and Yehonatan Cohen cover Old Man, by Neil Young.  Beautifully recorded at Studio 42, Brooklyn, New York,  April 2015.

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Carolina Bela by Jorge Ben Jor

Benny Oyama - Vocals, Guitar

Yehonatan Cohen - Soprano Sax

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Alien Alarm Clock

Buzzin' in my ear

Wake me with your purring 

At the start of the year

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My guitar student is Matt Hunter Correa - a Latin pop singer with a crazy following in South America (1,975,005 likes on Facebook and counting, lawd have mercy!!!)  

We shot this video of our lesson not too long ago. I was a little too serious that day with him! And I still had my Luigi moustache from Jumpman the musical.  I miss that moustache.  

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The kind of emotion that some of my music expresses would be a reflection of the kind of person I am, because I couldn’t have written that kind of music unless I was that kind of person. The fact that I don’t write other kinds of music means that I am not that other kind of person.

Aaron Copland

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9 times out of 10 I feel no small dose of apprehension when I sit down with the guitar. It's because there's the risk of failure - I may fail to practice patience, I might not be awake enough to find what I'm looking for. But pushing through, I soon realize I was looking for that challenge of apprehension in the first place, and here is where the rewards flow out. It's not because I've conquered anything. It's about stepping through the threshold and accepting my imperfections, which opens the space up to flow through the details. Then, everything naturally cleans up just by my arriving there.

-Benny

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(-‿◦☀) For my guitar students - My availability, at a glance, and updated weekly.

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Show Me Round  music video.

Video by the amazing Andrew Blum and his company Prism Light Works.  Music by Sam Reich.

I contributed as Casting Director/Performer/Guitarist/Lead Vocalist.  Filmed 2013.

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My original "Song for Beat Takeshi"  was filmed at the port of Jaffa by Ido Fruchter in the summer of 2013.  You can see Tel Aviv in the background and hear the mediterranean accompanying my guitar playing and singing.  

The song was inspired after watching Beat Takeshi's Hanabi (meaning "fireworks" in japanese), which is a very sad, violent, and nihilistic movie.  This is the snowy painting from Hanabi that inspired my choice in shorts for this music video:

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I’m out from work with the flu a sinus infection/bronchitis  ヘ(>_<ヘ)  but that wont’ stop me!  ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪

Time expands and contracts, like my glands.  In my sneezy solace I have taken to watching talks given by J. Krishnamurti.  I have never seen such attention and penetrating insight!  Here’s a song about the relativity of time.  

  Alien alarm clock buzzin’ in my ear

Wake me with your purring at the start of the year

Feed me with the rhythm of your otherworldly beat

One more year for me is only a day in the world where you come from

  channeling a message while you’re dreaming 

January, February, Spring melts into Fall

You peel back your hours as my calender falls

March remembers April may bring June’s new clarity

But what it means to me is that time’s slowly passing, time’s slowly passing

Alien Alarm clock, ringin’

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"Fine By Me" @ Abilenes.  Rochester, NY 2012.

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Benny Oyama Press Kit

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"She Asks Me".  A little tune I wrote for a stage adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.  Yes, we leap from planet-to-planet, until she says "I've had it!

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@ Waterstreet Music Hall w/ Walri, July 2012

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The Benny O Flow Show

This past winter, I sat and watched as the Pioneer Valley moved into its more reflective and introverted snow-covered mood, and in a dream it seemed the buildings and people of Hampshire College had transformed into coffee-colored meditations.  I mounted a solo voice-piano-guitar show to give the cold some perspective.

The Benny O Flow Show - Recorded ao vivo December 12, 2011.  Click here and get it for free.