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Show JUN KURUMADA 2001 BEC: Wow. Very talented. JUN: Yes, he is in that respect. Although he has he had this gr up. th r were about thirty of them, they're not too active now, but he had started a group in Eureka, California, in which he has applied for and received some government grants to take the group-in fact, he just took the group to Bulgaria about three months ago-for a show there. So it's one of these where, well we were at the show here at Kingsbury when one of our very good friends, Dr. Agnes Plenk-you probably know of her-well, she came over to us and she says, and it was rather comical you might say, she says, "How come a kid from a Japanese-Chinese background can get out here and sing all these Hungarian and Polish and Austrian songs and dance all these songs?" Because I think Dr. Plenk is Austrian and her husband, Henry Plenk, I think is Hungarian. They said, "He sings all these songs just a fluently as a native would." And they said, "Where did this kid come from?" (laughs) It's rather comical for us because he's one of these kids that likes this kind of-I don't know whether to say entertainment-but then he just liked that sort of lifestyle. BEC: But to be so good at all those things is really remarkable. JUN: Well, he's very good at it and he works hard at it. In fact, he has all the, well I don't know whether they're original, but he has all the native instruments that he plays all these instruments. Whether they're wind instruments or percussion instruments but he plays all these and, along with his wife, they go around in northern California for little shows and he tries to enlist so many of the young people up there to do this type of thing. Now he had, the strange part of it, well I don't know whether he rented a hall but he did acquire the services of a church, sort of the recreation area of a 7 |
