Kazufumi Kodama

Raised in Fukui Prefecture on a diet of hymns and marching band music, Kazufumi Kodama might not have seemed like the most obvious candidate to start Japan's first-ever dub band. It's been more than 30 years since the trumpeter teamed up with drummer (and future Simply Red member) Gota Yashiki to form Mute Beat, the pioneering group with whom he played for the rest of the '80s. More recently, he's preferred to dub it up in a sound system style, with only a DJ and a ton of effects pedals to accompany his minimal melodies. Now celebrating his 60th birthday, Kodama joins fellow Mute Beat member Emerson Kitamura and a handful of younger dub artists for this Liquidroom gig.