Dancing in the seats: Kishi Bashi brings his party album to The Lensic

Kishi Bashi came to party.

His recent album, “Kantos,” released in August, is a self-proclaimed “party album” that he is promoting on his current tour that comes to The Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., in Santa Fe, on Thursday, Sept. 19.

“I’m excited,” Bashi said. “That’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a lot of high energy and playing a lot of my new songs and definitely a lot of dancing in your seats.”

“Kantos,” which is Bashi’s fifth studio album, is an upbeat mashup of Brazilian jazz, ’70s funk, orchestral rock and the ’80s Japanese genre, city pop.

“It’s very distinct, kind of jazzy, and it’s very breezy and light-hearted,” he said of city pop. “It’s just kind of bouncy and I think it felt natural to me because I grew up with that as a Japanese American.”

In addition to being a retro style of music that he loves, city pop also speaks to his jazz background.

“I’m a jazz musician myself, so I studied a lot of funk and jazz fusion,” Bashi said. “Every time I have a chance, I try to invoke that. That’s the place I go back to when I think about funky music.”

“Kantos” also has a tinge of influences from the cult-classic sci-fi novel series “Hyperion Cantos,” the writings of 18th century enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, as well as a life altering trip to the ancient ruins on the island of Crete, according to a news release on Bashi and his music. Its lead singles “Colorful State” and “Icarus IV” are expressive, prog-tinged orchestral rock tracks while the song, “Make Believe,” exudes psychedelic rock and hip-hop elements.

Kaoru Ishibashi, who goes by the performing name Kishi Bashi, was born in Seattle. He self-produced “Kantos,” and invited guest musicians Sweet Loretta, vocalist Zorina Andall, saxophonist Augie Bello, and activist/rapper Linqua Franqa to be part of the album.

“Kantos” is a departure from his 2019 album, “Omoiyari,” which is a companion soundtrack for his Emmy-nominated MTV Documentary Films debut, “Omoiyari: A Song Film By Kishi Bashi.”

“I call it a song film, because it’s more than just a film, and it’s more than an album,” he explained. “I had all these other demos that I was working on and I think that’s kind of where a lot of this music was born. I had a lot of not just orchestral and historical and inflective and like dance music and party music. I had all this music that I really couldn’t release until the movie was done.”

Bashi co-wrote, co-directed and appeared in the documentary film.

“That was a huge thing and basically it took up my last five years of my career, writing it,” he said. “And, there’s two companion albums, and it kind of consumed a lot of my artistic output for that time.”

Bashi described “Omoiyari: A Song Film By Kishi Bashi,” as an exploration of songwriting and documentary filmmaking, as well as World War II history and history in general.

“It covers, Japanese internment incarceration, Japanese internment camps and race retreats, and how that resonates with how we treat minorities today and immigrants and refugees,” he explained. “It focuses around my own discovery of my Japanese American identity, of how I always kind of felt out of place, but then began to gain confidence and feel in my realization that America is very multicultural, (with) very diverse origins, a diverse population, (with) a colorful population to reflect that.

“It’s a lot of very deep historical looks into immigration and racism, but also about celebrating and gaining confidence in being multicultural or bicultural.”

Delving into difficult moments in history was motivational for Bashi. He said making the documentary was “extremely rewarding” and helped him grow as a person.

“I’m a very positive person, so I like to see the resilience of survivors of difficult times, and how they shielded their children from trauma, and how they were able to overcome and really lead beautiful lives of their own,” he said. “I like to see the whole picture and it always impresses me how strong people can be.”