Ten Thousand Things

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

AINU REBELS – RERA CISE Tokyo Ainu Restaurant – KILA-OKI fusion – UMEKO ANDO

( The Ainu Rebels performance at Hachioji's 15TH ANNUAL "MINNA CHIGATE MINNA II"("WE'RE DIFFERENT AND THAT'S GREAT") FESTIVAL on May 27 at Asakawa River Park in Tokyo has been cancelled)

Mina Sakai, a beautiful and gifted young Ainu university student, musician, and artist, shared exciting news about the AINU REBELS, a group of young Ainu musicians and dancers in Tokyo, that she leads:

The AINU REBELS is a group of young Ainu in the Tokyo area, formed in Summer of 2006. While learning traditional dancing and singing, we also work on producing new ways of expressing our identities and culture. We are doing our best to "have fun" and "be cool" while spreading Ainu culture throughout the world!!

Besides performing with the Ainu Rebels, Mina was a member of Ainu musician Oki Kano's Far East Band, the group that includes female performers. Mina explains that Oki also has another group, the all-male Dub Ainu Band, which toured Japan earlier this year. Both bands have injected incredible energy into, and popularized Ainu music in global roots music circles.

Year before last, Mina's traditional Ainu wedding to a Chinese-American was featured in a beautiful photographic layout in a major Japanese magazine. Her wedding photographs reminded me that, contrary to stereotype, there was never "one" form of traditional Ainu culture. Instead, Ainu culture has always varied not only from region to region, but community to community, family to family, and even individual to individual. In past and present, creative improvisational change has always been a part of Ainu (and other indigenous) cultures. Mina's wedding, lifestyle, and multiple creative endeavors exemplifies this ongoing historical dynamic, and the creative vibrancy and continuity in contemporary Ainu culture.

Ainu culture in Tokyo revolves around the RERA NO KAI (Wind Society), an Ainu cultural club that owns the RERA CISE (House of Wind) restaurant, an Ainu cultural hub in Nakano. It's only open for dinner, closed on Mondays, and located a few blocks from the after you reach the end of the long shoutengai starting at the train station. (Rera-Cise, Arai 1-37-12, Nakano-ku, 03-3387-2252).This 1994 International Herald Tribune article, "A Taste of Ainu Culture in Tokyo" is a bit dated, but has good background on the restaurant and Ainu cuisine, and this E Gullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters thread has some interesting conversation about Ainu cuisine.

Hearing from Mina reminded me of last year's great collaboration between Oki and KILA, an Irish band, that you can sample online at the album's myspace site:

In 2005 when The Dun Laoghaire festival of world cultures asked Kíla to invite a musician to collaborate with, they knew they had to ask Oki. He came, and their time rehearsing together and playing at the festival in the beautiful setting of Monkstown Church sowed a seed that grew into this album. They knew that the music they were making interweaving their respective traditional sounds was worth recording, and so Oki came back to Ireland in 2006, and over a 10-day period in Kildare Kíla & Oki was made. We hope you enjoy... Kíla first met Oki while they were on tour in Japan in 2004 where Dee and Rónán joined him on stage. It was a meeting of minds, hearts, music. Despite coming from such different cultures, Kíla and Oki shared their love of their traditions and cultures and their roles of ambassdors of them, both having played on the world music circuit for a number of years including the fabulous WOMAD festivals. Kíla share Oki's mix of traditional and modern influences along with a strong sense of adventure and fun in their music it was inevitable that when these two met they would embark on an adventure together.

Although their self-description mentions cultural difference, I also can't help but also wonder about the commonalities between Irish and Ainu cultures...

They may be far apart at the surface levels of cultural forms: food, language and dress. However, at deeper levels, I see a sameness in their emphasis on creativity, spirituality, family, community, and continuity – something that all traditional and indigenous cultures share. I think these common values, as well as creative openness and looseness, may hold the key to why so many traditional and indigenous creative individuals and groups are able to collaborate in easy and increasing flows around the world. And these artists and musicians are not only bridging cultures, but also bridging tradition with modernity.

In the past, there was such a split between the "modern" and the "traditional," the First World and the Third World, with encounters destabilizing and even destroying traditional and indigenous cultures. Now we see spontaneous creative and healing rapproachement that is mutually enriching in these honest, mutually respectful, and non-exploitative encounters between musicians and artists. This global dialogue between indigenous and traditional creative people is one of the beautiful emergent planetary social change movements happening simultaneously in so many places. Oki Kano is a brilliant forerunner, and I am watching Mina Sakai and the Ainu Rebels, with great expectations.

Oki has collaborated with Senegalese vocalist FANIA, OLGA LETYKAI CSONKA, a Chukchi, (an indigenous Siberian people) throat singer, and Navajo flute master CARLOS NAKAI for "Island of Bows," recorded in 1993 in a Kyoto temple.

FAR SIDE RECORDS features Paul Fisher's wonderful 3rd August 2005 interview with Oki, and descriptions and samples of Oki's albums.:

Far Side's catalog also includes breathtakingly exquisite recordings (with online samples) by Ainu musician UMEKO ANDO, a relative of Mina's, who passed away in 2004.

"Umeko Ando who sadly died in 2004 was an elder Ainu (native Japanese) women singer. She appeared as a guest on Oki's last album, himself of Ainu descent. This album was produced by and features Oki, with Ando's haunting voice accompanied by Oki's tonkori (a traditional Ainu stringed instrument). An atmospheric album of a tradition that was in danger of dying out that is both accessible and beautiful. Doesn't sound necessarily Japanese, perhaps not surprisingly more central Asian, the roots of the Ainu themselves..."

Smithsonian Global Sound has fascinating samples of narrative poems and a ceremonial drinking song, recorded in the 1960's.

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