03 JUL 2020 My name is Hiroo Tanaka, I am a video maker based in Berlin. I have been living here for 5+ years. I make videos about music. As a video director, my biggest passion is to convey the power of music visually. This became my ambition 10 years ago in London in a very DIY way; I was carrying a camcorder and exploring the deep musical world in London clubs, where I met inspiring people and connected with deeper thoughts in the field.

After that, I moved to Berlin and worked for Boilerroom for some years as a documentary videographer. After that, I started making documentaries about musicians all over the world. I also made a film about experimental music culture in Berlin, which shocked me as a sensation after moving from London.

This town changed my perception of being oneself and encouraged me to challenge myself to discover new concepts of my personal life after living in London and Tokyo.

I am currently working on a documentary about Senegalese drummers, which is going to be the first feature length piece of my career.

Now I have a daughter, and she is the biggest inspiration and motivation of my creativity and personal life. I am very curious what my daughter will remember me as, as a person, what I was doing and what I wanted to tell her.

Music and visual arts have always been my motive and inspiration. When I was kid, I never thought I would feed myself by creating something like this; however music and art takes time to understand and reflect on yourself. So during this time of quarantine, I have reminded myself about the importance to take time slowly.

Before this time, I was really busy traveling for work, making short-form online content for the last 5 years. I didn't even have time to think about myself and my family who supported my lifestyle a lot, which was such an ironic situation.

After the shock of Corona, I felt like the world and the economy were being forced to pause, which led me to think more about my initial motivation and satisfaction. Because I sometimes forgot about the beauty of creation as I was being chased by deadlines. So I started to paint with my daughter, going to the forest on bicycle, and started feeling the force of nature and creation again. This allowed me to think about my life and its direction more sustainably.

Without a doubt, my life and career was always encouraged by great inspirations from Black culture. As a kid in Tokyo, hip hop was a part of my life and gave me great courage to survive my youth. Also reggae music in London was the biggest inspiration of sonic energy; it gave me ambitions to get involved with music culture as a video maker and to visualise its energy. Most of the musicians I have made music videos for have African Carribean roots; I always felt welcomed even though I had no verbal language skills in the beginning.

Even though I have those experiences of black culture and people, and as an Asian in Europe sometimes have had racial experience, it is still really hard for me to understand how it is to be Black person in the world. I personally did not attend the demonstrations, as I was concerned about the pandemic situation, but I have started to read books to learn what it is actually all about because I believe that better understanding is the most important key to change. The book is called, “Between the World and Me”, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is teaching me kindly, in a very intimate way, how hard it is in some parts of the world to be a Black person. This is also a good effect, that I finally have time to read something carefully and reflect it in my own identity.

I was generally really happy to have spent more time with my daughter. I focused on the things that bring my life joy. Making music and painting with my loved ones. I made a fermenting factory processing Japanese fermented soybeans and so on, just really being productive in different ways than pre-Corona time.

People wearing masks in Europe generally impressed me. I have always been looked at in a weird way when I wear them to protect myself against pollen fever.

The world has changed a lot since I was born—I hope this should be a good change finally. I really hope. I miss the cinema experience though.

We were directly shocked by lock down, all the music events were canceled and there were not many things to document during quarantine time, of course. I would like to share my vimeo page that posts various videos from different kinds of fields within the music industry I work for. You may find music here that you have never discovered ;)