Meet the Collective: Mari Watanabe

Pianist, composer and arranger Mari Watanabe began her musical journey in Tokyo, Japan with piano lessons at age four with her grandmother, a piano teacher. As a freshman in college at Waseda University, Mari joined the school’s New Orleans Jazz Club, an organization formed in 1957, after clarinetist George Lewis toured Japan and inspired students to study New Orleans music.

Mari traveled to New Orleans for the first time during Mardi Gras 1985, to see the music first hand. She and her fellow students visited Preservation Hall, and saw the great trumpeter Kid Sheik perform alongside a 90-year-old Kid Thomas. They saw the Olympia Brass Band, and witnessed a New Orleans jazz funeral for the first time.

She quickly decided to make the city her permanent home, and had moved in by that December. Mari’s first gig as a professional musician in New Orleans was at the Gazebo Cafe on Decatur street every weekend, where she performed with Chris Burke and Wendell Brunious on trumpet. 

“I did not know too many songs when I came here, so I had to study very, very hard. One day, an old man came up to me and said ‘You sound good, but you’ve got to learn the 9th, raised 11th and the 13th,” she recalled.

That man was the great Danny Barker. 

Mari took his advice and learned the tension chords he was referring to. She began experimenting with their use in traditional jazz, developing a style of her own and picking up more gigs around town. About a year later, Mr. Danny Barker passed by one of her gigs again, and this time told her, “You sound better. Do you have a keyboard?” 

She didn’t have a keyboard, but decided to follow his advice again and make a deal. He told her “If you get one, I can use you on my gig.” 

“The old man kept his promise,” Mari recalls. “I got a keyboard and started playing his gigs at Dutch Alley every Sunday.”

By ‘87, she was filling in for pianist Sadie Goodson, sister of Billie Pierce, with Gregg Stafford’s band, where she met Preservation Hall musicians David Grillier, Lucien Barbarin, Shannon Powell, Joe Lastie and Leroy Jones. She went on to record with Willie Humphrey, and perform in Jackson Square with Tuba Fats.

Danny Barker continued to mentor Mari until his death in 1994.

“His last words to me were ‘Tend to your business. In other words, keep working.’ And that’s why I’m still here today.”

"Mari is soft-spoken and unassuming - that is, until she gets on the piano. That's when all language barriers are broken down," says Ben Jaffe. "Once Mari moved to New Orleans from Japan, she immersed herself in the culture of the city. I remember her coming to the Hall to listen to Sadie Goodson and Jeanette Kimball. In New Orleans, it's not always about the notes - it's about what takes place in between the notes. It's a challenging concept, one you won't find in any textbook. The only way to learn it is the way Mari did - go straight to the source."

Today, Mari shares her expertise with students as a member of the Preservation Hall Musical Collective, and remains a regular on the piano at 726 Saint Peter street. She has performed at home and abroad with legends such as Danny Barker, Tuba Fats, and Kermit Ruffins, Harold Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and the Chosen Few Jazz Band, which she proudly leads today.

“The first time I went to a jazz funeral, it was, I would say, sight seeing. The second time and the third time, it was a funeral for somebody I know. Then it was a funeral for friends. One day, it will be my funeral. I hope people come to parade for me.”