Music In My Martial Arts
I remember the first time the martial arts tournament circuit started to allow competitors to use music in forms (martial arts routines) competition. These were usually black belt competitors who performed their martial arts forms with a music track background.
Back in those days, the music soundtrack was usually on a cassette tape through a boom box at the division ring or if a tournament was large enough, it would be played through a PA system.
This was an exciting time since the whole concept of using music in martial arts was so new and many of us felt that music really added to the overall entertainment of the martial arts forms. The audiences as well as most other competitors at these tournaments loved these musical martial arts forms.
The biggest crowds would always be at where the music would be playing at these karate tournaments. This was something that I wanted to add into my own competition forms as soon as possible soon after I saw them.
I first used Paul McCartney’s ‘Live and Let Die’ James Bond theme with my open freestyle karate form. I also tried a dance track by Two Unlimited but I eventually composed and recorded my own custom musical soundtrack for my martial arts competition forms with a keyboard synthesizer I had at home.
Most of the big national tournaments in the largest martial arts tournament circuits like NASKA featured the top forms competitors using music. Even if some of the forms competitors did not use music during the preliminary eliminations during the daytime, many would add music if they made the finals during the evening shows.
This really spiced up the evening show finals when top martial arts forms competitors all used music with their performances. These became more popular from the audience’s point of view than the sparring divisions.
Interestly enough, I decided to abandon music for all my competition forms during the second half of my martial arts competition career. As musical forms became an official forms division at many big martial arts tournaments, there was an increased focus to require competitors to perform our forms syncronized to our music rather than just use them as background music.
In fact, some tournaments like in the NBL circuit started to penalize competitors who did not perform their forms with enough syncronization to their music. I personally felt that this was too restrictive for my own forms as it robbed my techniques of power if they were always performed to the specific beats of a music soundtrack. So ditched music in my martial arts even though I still loved watching others perform their forms to music.
Martial Arts In Music Videos
Now many years later since my retirement from martial arts competition, I am once again combining music and martial arts. However, this time, it’s not music in martial arts but the other way around, ie., martial arts in music.
Many of my readers/viewers already know that I’m also a musician and have recently produced a few music videos showing me performing various songs I like to play on guitar. One recent example is my unplugged acoustic version of Neil Young’s tune ‘Hey Hey, My My’.
I will be shooting more music videos but to make them a bit unique, I am going to add some martial arts elements in them. The above photo is from from my Chinese kung fu form video I decided to extract a bit from this video to use in an upcoming music video.
Martial arts is a big part of my life and I want to show the beauty of martial arts. What better way than do this in my music videos especially when I can potentiall expose an audience who thinks that martial arts is just about fighting and violence.
Below is a still image from my upcoming new music video.
