→ Ohayo! A Universo Japanese Music realizou uma entrevista com a cantora italiana Shoujy. A cantora de Visual Kei começou a sua carreira em 2012, e estou aqui a divulgando.
A entrevista estará em inglês.

→ Universo Japanese Music conducted an interview with Italian singer Shoujy. The Visual Kei singer started her career in 2012, and I’m here to promote it.

→ Carrer

Universo Japanese Music:
I’m going to start the interview with a question that I always like to know (as do many fans): why did you want to become an artist?
And how is your life as a singer?

Shoujy: Artist is an important word, a concept that started being part of me not immediately, it’s like a sort of vocation.
A path made of many attempts, sacrifices, failures, desire to improve and be able to represent one’s art in a personal or original way.
The awareness took place in a very chaotic way through the events, the appreciation both from the public and from people who work in entertainment sector, but above all when inside me I perceived that singing is a love that grows day by day together with music, elements that I consider essential in my life.
Being a singer is a continuous rise and fall, especially on an emotional level, but also technically.
Personally my path as a performer started as a simple passion and from more than 3 years it has become a job.
Before, the management of an artist was a little different, everyone played a role, especially in context of promotion, but nowadays we artists are almost “managers of ourselves” unless you’re a superstar.

Universo Japanese Music: How did you hear about the Visual Kei scene?

Shoujy: The first approach to J-Music occurred initially with anisongs and immediately afterwards I came across the web with Gackt and The GazettE.
I noticed with “The GazettE” that they had something “different”.
By listening to them on youtube and Last.fm I found all the correlates between the results.
After The Gazette I moved on to An Cafè, Malice Mizer, Alice Nine, Dir En Gray, Nightmare, Versailles and many others.
Looking for some biographies and interviews of the bands the word “Visual Kei” appeared to me and everything related to this current fascinated me terribly!

Universo Japanese Music: How is the Visual Kei scene in Italy?

It’s common? Or is it still a little strange for most people in your country?

Shoujy: The vkei scene in Italy can practically be said to be almost non-existent.
There have been artists who have performed covers, there are some who have made original projects, but have never 100% respected the canons of the genre.

The Visual Kei is quite a niche, most J-Music listeners in Italy are focused on J-Pop / J-Rock, we are very few.
Strange … I’d say no, only that this scene isn’t at all known in my country.

Universo Japanese Music: From what I saw in your publications on Twitter and YouTube, you started your career with covers. It took some time for your first song. Could you speak more about this process?

Shoujy: My career as a singer has gone through many changes.
I started from the rock bands bringing some western covers and original songs to the clubs and some events and in the meantime I was studying singing.
I am a person who loves collective projects a lot, but in my case these projects have always crumbled due to the lack of seriousness and different life priorities of the other members.
Being that basically, at least as I have noticed in my region, this problem was often present so I decided to pursue a solo path in parallel with the bands.
I have participated in numerous singing competitions always with western repertoires, but in the meantime my passion for Japan has grown day by day.
A cosplayer friend of mine informed me of a J-Music contest called “Idol Master” which would be held at the “Napoli Comicon” fair.
I was not willing to participate, but in the end I convinced myself, I participated and I won this contest and this paved the way for me as an interpreter of Anisong throughout Italy.
A reality that I never thought of reaching, but that enriched my soul and everything thanks to the winning of this contest and to my constancy on the web in posting Japanese covers.

In my heart I have always wanted a project of my own where I sing in Japanese.
I love the language, its phonetics and its way of being composed because it is a distinguishable style full of emotions.
Over the years, during the publication of the covers, with my trusted collaborator Haru, we have made numerous meetings to create songs, lyrics, melodies but we often left in suspense (I think precisely because we did not have clear to 100% the our musical identity) until we got to interfaced technically with Visual Kei.
In fact, Visual Kei was the missing link to our musical knowledge.
Haru has studied the composition of J-Music for several months and from here we have definitively established the path of the Shoujy project by finally publishing “Higeki To Kouun No Hana”.
A visual kei song that takes its cue in particular from nagoya kei.

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A song that many people worked on:

• Haru took care of the composition and the entire audio recording.
• The mastering was done in Japan at the “Parasight Mastering” (Studio that dealt with the BABYMETAL, Fighiting Gold – Opening of Jojo Vento Aureo, Aldious, Envy, Exist Trace, Galneryus, Myth & Roid etc …)
• The lyrics and melody were created entirely by me, initially translated by John Kaminari and immediately afterwards it was retranslated and adapted by Francesca Paciello (known as Japanaplessons) Japanese teacher together with Jun Tokizawa (Japanese native speaker very fond of Italy).
• The music video is produced by “Totoro Photoset” and managed by Fabio Formato and make-up by Valeria Gaudino.
• Video editing was done by me and some watermark effects were created by Francesco La Bianca (one of the founders of Radio Nihonara, an Italian web radio dedicated entirely to Japan)

Universo Japanese Music: Are you participating in any music project?
Shoujy: Currently not

→ Animes & Games

Universo Japanese Music: I saw on your YouTube channel some Anime Music Cover.
What’s your favorite cover, of all the ones you’ve sung?
Shoujy: Glamorous Sky by Mika Nakashima

Universo Japanese Music: What are your favorite anime?
Shoujy: Hokuto No Ken
Universo Japanese Music:What are your favorite game?
Shoujy: Final Fantasy X

Universo Japanese Music: Have you ever done cosplay, or are you thinking of doing it? Shoujy:

Shoujy: Cosplay has always fascinated me, but some of my friends have convinced me to do it.
I did Tifa Lockhart(FFVII),Rin Tohsaka(Fate),Ayano Tateyama(Mekakucity Actors) and others (all done pretty amateurly), it was fun!

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