MC Jin, DJ Krush show bridges two worlds

The double bill at the Showbox Friday night sounded more than a bit ambitious. Up-and-coming, lightning-tongued Chinese-American hip-hop MC Jin and prolific Japanese hip-hop/trip- hop/acid-jazz DJ and producer DJ Krush, featuring shakuhachi (Japanese flute) master Morita and taiko drummer Tetsuro Naito?

What kind of crowd would be drawn by such an eclectic show? How would such diverse music intersect and interact? For the most part, however, the show seemed to work, bridging the traditional and the popular, Eastern and Western, hip-hop aficionados, groove junkies and boho world-beat hipsters.

Jin has garnered national attention for being the first Asian-American hip-hop artist to be signed to a major label and, especially, for trouncing opponents in MC battles with his furiously effortless eloquence. His continuing commitment to acute poetics was apparent as he took the stage with little fanfare, only to drop rhymes that stung with the precision of an ice pick and flowed like they'd been cured in smooth, mouthwatering honey. Jin wooed the crowd with an easy charm and community-minded politics (he's just founded YOFAM, the Youth Organization For Asian Minorities) before spitting out his genre-redefining hit, "Learn Chinese."

Next, DJ Krush, whose take on hip-hop culture comes from thousands of miles (and a few light-years) away, bent and pulled his dexterous beats into an ambient, avant-garde shape that made room for the virtuosic improvisations of his guests, Morita and Naito (both of whom appeared on Krush's most recent album, "Jaku"). Krush paired the delicate intensity of Morita's shakuhachi with drip-dropping, dreamlike samples and matched Naito's bellowing taiko with bowel-shaking beats. At times, the enticing bombast one expects from taiko seemed to get lost in the mix, but overall, the trio crafted an ethereal, experimental fusion of traditional and contemporary that had the enthusiastic crowd frantically searching for new ways to dance to it.

The concert was part of the Boeing Dreamliner Arts Festival. According to Amy Lindsey of One Reel, which produced the show, "The point was to try to get the Pan-Asian thing going and get as diverse a crowd as possible." Lindsey also said she had to basically talk all the musicians into doing the gig, which was one of very few U.S. performances for Krush and company. But judging by the resoundingly appreciative applause echoing unwaveringly throughout the Showbox, this attempt at cross-cultural collaboration was worth every effort.