If hard work were all it took to make dreams happen, the six members of Crossing Rain — Asher, Devin, Haru, Jorden, Monarch and Shotaro — would be well on the way to superstar status in the ever-expanding galaxy of international boy bands.
Crossing Rain, aka XR, made their semi-public debut with an invitation-only meet-and-greet/performance for family, friends and select media at Natsunoya Tea House in October, then went fully public at the Hawaii Theatre Center in November. Next came XR’s debut album, “Dreams,” released in December.
Their first official music video, “Come Back 2.0,” premiered Feb. 10 on YouTube.
Crossing Rain takes it up another level on Saturday when they perform their “Nice to Meet You” concert in the Blaisdell Concert Hall. They plan to announce tour dates on the mainland soon.
“We’ll be doing pretty much all of the numbers from our new CD, ‘Dreams,’ and some surprises that we’re practicing. It’ll be fun,” Jorden said while visiting the Honolulu Star-Advertiser offices earlier this month. (The band members only use single names.)
Crossing Rain is already a dream-come-true for Tirzah Productions CEO Susan Kitsu. For years, she’d dreamed of getting involved in the business side of the music industry. In 2020, Kitsu founded Tirzah Productions, assembling a team of music industry professionals headed by multi-Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winner Pali Ka‘aihue. They began looking for potential talent by combing through audition videos, contest footage, Facebook pages and Instagram posts.
After watching more than 350 performance clips, Kitsu and her team selected the six young men they thought were the best fit for the group they wanted to create.
>> RELATED: Devoted fans of K-pop define a cultural phenomenon
The members of Crossing Rain met last year for the first time on March 21. Think of it as a blind date for six.
“Meeting everyone for the first time was definitely an enlightening experience,” said Haru. “Seeing how we are, our humor and stuff like that. I’m sure at first we were all kind of iffy about each other, but as we continued to work together we never had an obstacle that we couldn’t overcome as a team. As long as we’re together we can push through anything.”
“We all just clicked instantly when we first met each other, it’s never been toxic or nasty,” Monarch added. “We’ve always been super-tight as a group. It’s always been Crossing Rain against whatever’s in front of us.”
One of the sextet’s strengths is the prior experiences of the members, whose ages range from 13 to 21. The eldest, Monarch, has credits as a local recording artist; his 2019 album, “Winter: A Sonic Adventure,” which he recorded using the stage name Keola, was a finalist in the hip-hop category at the 2020 Hoku Awards. Jorden is the son of multi-Hoku Award-winner Mark Yamanaka and raised amid the Hawaiian music scene on the Big Island. Devin has experience in musical theater. Shotaro grew up watching his father, Tatsuya Yamaguchi, performing with J-pop hitmakers Tokio in Japan. Asher and Haru have ties to local dance crews.
“We want to not only dance, not only sing, but just bring that Aloha Spirit and spread it around to the world, not only these islands,” Asher said. “We want to bring hope, bring positive, positive energy, and through our dancing and singing to encourage and motivate others.”
“Hopefully in the future we’ll be doing it in Korean and Japanese and Hawaiian,” Jorden added.
Shotaro, who at 13 is the band’s youngest member, says that Crossing Rain is ready to go all the way.
“The more time we spend with each other, we help and teach each other and lift each other up. We’re working hard to accomplish our goals, for the next performance, and for the fans as well.”
But can a K-pop-style boy band that is not based in Korea and has no Korean members be accepted in the K-pop market?
The music genre’s rise in popularity in recent years has resulted in bands that model themselves on that style — smooth harmonies, clean lyrics suitable for all ages, a look that combines edgy fashions with camera-ready hair and makeup, and tightly synchronized, explosive choreography polished during countless hours of rehearsals.
University of Hawaii-West Oahu professor Jayson Chun, a specialist in Japanese media history, East Asian media history and popular culture, who also co-teaches a summer course on K-pop and K-pop culture at UH-Manoa, says that the time is right.
“In the past few years you’re seeing a new trend of people of different nationalities, and groups made outside of Korea based on the K-pop training system,” Chun explained. “The nine-person girl group Twice, three members are Japanese and one is Taiwanese. GOT7 is a boy group and three of the seven members are not Korean. The mega-girl group Blackpink, which is very popular now, has four members — one is Australian Korean, one is Thai and a third is a Korean who lived in New Zealand.”
Chun also mentioned SB19, a five-person K-pop-style boy band in the Philippines, and Ninety One, a Kazakh boy group in Kazakhstan.
In Japan, famed Korean producer/recording artist Park Jin-young, known worldwide as JYP, of JYP Entertainment Corp., created a six-month television show called “Nizi Project.” The competition show chronicled his search for the nine members of a Japanese girl group he named Niziu. The youngest member of Niziu, known professionally as Nina, is an American woman who is of Japanese and Caucasian descent.
“Crossing Rain is part of this worldwide trend in making K-pop-style groups outside Korea, ” Chun said. “Hopefully we can see Hawaii pop — ‘H-pop’ — out there too.”
Meet Crossing Rain
Asher
Full name: Asher Morgado
Age: 15
Birthplace: Honolulu
School: Home schooling
Musical influences: Bruno Mars
Devin
Full name: Devin Teruya
Age: 18
Birthplace: Honolulu
School: Aiea High School (Class of ‘21 valedictorian)
Musical influences: Broadway musicals and K-pop, especially BTS member Jungkook.
Haru
Full name: Evan Harutoshi Doria
Age: 18
Birthplace: Honolulu
School: Campbell High School (Class of ‘21, summa cum laude)
Musical influences: BTS and Itzy, especially Itzy lead vocalist Yeji, also Frank Ocean and Bruno Major.
Jorden
Full name: Jorden Kealoha-Yamanaka
Age: 20
Birthplace: Hilo
School: Kamehameha Schools Hawaii (Class of ‘19)
Musical influences: Michael Jackson, Boyz II Men, Bruno Mars and Stevie Wonder
Monarch
Full name: Wyatt Kealoha Dean Kaneshiro
Age: 21
Birthplace: Christchurch, New Zealand
School: Kaiser High School (Class of ‘18)
Musical influences: Drake, Kanye West, Baby Keem, City Girls, Rico Nasty and Rapsody
Shotaro
Full name: Shotaro Takasawa, or “Sho”
Age: 13
Birthplace: Tokyo
School: Home schooling since joining Crossing Rain
Musical influences: Jungkook (of BTS) and Tatsuya Yamaguchi (my dad!)
—
“Nice to Meet You” Hawaii Showcase
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 7 p.m. SaturdayFeb. 26
>> Cost: $55 and $85
>> Info: ticketmaster.com
