Here you can read articles on Okinawan music and musicians previously published by the author.
Oshiro & Horiuchi
fRoots magazine Nos.343/344, Jan/Feb 2012
Two generations of Okinawan minyo singers and sanshin players talk to John Potter
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I’m in Okinawa’s capital Naha with Misako Oshiro, widely regarded as the greatest living female singer of minyo (traditional songs) from the Ryukyu Islands. But this is a double meeting because I’m also talking with Kanako Horiuchi, more than 40 years Oshiro’s junior. The two women have just made an album together, Uta Nu In, released on Tokyo’s Respect label, and they are busy doing interviews and promotion.
Lucy - Root Salad
fRoots Magazine Nos.328/329, Aug/Sept 2011.
Born in Peru, she’s returned to her ancestral Okinawan home for the music. John Potter gets a house concert.
Most of the interviews I’ve done have been on neutral ground, often at a concert venue, and very occasionally at the musician’s home. Well, today is a real exception. Okinawan-Peruvian singer and sanshin player Lucy has actually turned up at my house here on the south coast of Okinawa for our talk. She arrives with her fellow musician Nao who played on Lucy’s recent first album. Some months ago I discovered that Nao is a neighbour of mine and it was her suggestion for Lucy to come to my home. The two women arrive bearing a gift of apple pie. I note that Lucy is also carrying her sanshin and she is happy to serenade us later with some traditional songs from the Ryukyu Islands. When finalizing the arrangements for this meeting a couple of days ago, I hadn’t expected Lucy to be performing in my own living room!
The Soul of Okinawan Music
(Momoto Vol.6, April 2011) 日本語ここをクリック
Okinawan music is unique and the people’s liking for it has often been remarked upon. From the earliest recorded times any excuse would be found for the indulgence of dancing. The early social and emotional life of Okinawans centred around this alfresco dancing and also around singing, music, poetry and picnicking. It seems that any family gathering would end up in some kind of impromptu performance. The people would also divert themselves after their work was done by drinking and playing musical instruments. They even carried their sanshin into the fields ready to play. The situation was such that in the mid-19th century, two months after Commodore Perry’s last visit to Naha, a set of regulations was issued to the Okinawans from the Shimazu clan in Satsuma prohibiting singing, dancing, and sanshin playing while foreign ships were in port.
Sadao China - Shimauta King
fRoots Magazine No.328, October 2010.
Sanshin player, singer and producer Sadao China has a special place in modern Okinawan music. John Potter enjoys his hospitality.
It’s a sizzling hot Wednesday afternoon in August on the subtropical Ryukyu island of Okinawa and at last I’ve caught up with singer, sanshin player, songwriter and producer Sadao China. In fact, I’m sitting in the living room of his home, a spacious house in Kitanakagusuku only a stone’s throw from the radiant blue Pacific Ocean. Probably best known overseas as producer of the four-woman group Nenes, China himself is something of a legend in the Ryukyu Islands as a performer and last year won a national record award in Japan for his 6 CD box set Shimauta Hyakkei, a magnum opus comprising 101 traditional songs.
Okinawan Elder
fRoots Magazine No.240, June 2003.
Shouei Kina, Okinawan roots music icon and father of famous musician Shoukichi Kina, was interviewed at the age of 83 by John Potter.
He is father to 11 children, has 33 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren. But it's not for his great services to increasing the population of the Ryukyu Islands that Shouei Kina is famous. It's for being one of the most important figures in the history of Okinawan music. He's recorded over 500 tracks in his career, is a maker and teacher of the ubiquitous three-stringed sanshin, devised the method of writing music for the instrument, and singlehandedly introduced and popularized another instrument, the sanba, now an essential ingredient of Okinawan music. And the 83 year old is still singing and playing sanshin almost every night in Naha, Okinawa with his own Shouei Kina Minyo Group.
"Hi there soldier, where are you based?" I'm not used to being addressed this way. In fact, it's the first time I've been mistaken for one of the American military. I'm an Englishman living in mainland Japan and have just stepped out of the airport at Okinawa's capital Naha. I'm here for the umpteenth time on the first step of another journey to investigate the wonderful roots music of the Ryukyu Islands. The plane on the two hour flight from Osaka was sprinkled with beefy shaven-headed young men with American accents on their way back from leave, so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised if this airport bus driver thinks I'm one of his charges. I name the hotel where I'm to stay, he's nonplussed for a second, then directs me to the regular taxis. 
2004 was a landmark year for the Ryukyu Festival as it celebrated its tenth anniversary. These celebrations of Okinawan music were, in fact, originally held in mainland Japan back in the 1970s when Okinawans, forced to leave their islands to find work in Japan, hankered after a taste of their own distinctive music and dancing. The festivals were re-introduced to the mainland in 1995 and have been held every year since, gathering together the cream of musicians from around the islands.
I’ve been in Campus Records, the Okinawan music shop on the island’s Koza City, for ten minutes and its owner Bisekatsu can’t stop giving me presents. I asked something about the singer Shuken Maekawa, and he’s rushed off to present me with the original vinyl single of a duet Maekawa made with Misako Koja years ago. He also gives me Sadao China’s original single ‘Bye Bye Okinawa’, a huge poster for this year’s Ryukyu Festival, a Campus T-shirt, and more CDs. Yoshikatsu Bise (better known to everyone as Bisekatsu) is celebrating 35 years as the owner of Campus Records – not just a music shop but also a small but prolific record label. As well as his life as shop owner and record producer, he has for many years been a songwriter, and a concert promoter both in Okinawa and occasionally in mainland Japan. The genial Bisekatsu is also a walking encyclopedia on the islands’ music history. 
My idea of a great time is listening to Okinawan music. But listening to the very best traditional Irish music runs it a close second. Soon I may be able to do both at the same time. As a long time fan of Okinawan music, living in Japan, I’ve frequently toyed with the idea of moving to the Ryukyu Islands. After all, this is where the real music is in Japan. But for various reasons, too tedious to relate, I’m still waiting to take the plunge and my own move is temporarily on hold. Irish music legend Donal Lunny has no such qualms and has seized the initiative by relocating there recently, and already has plans to work with Okinawan musicians. I met up with Donal and his wife, musician Hideko Itami, when we found ourselves near neighbours in the Ginowan area of Okinawa during the summer.
“So maybe we’re both old souls”. So says American jazz pianist Geoffrey Keezer about his recent partnership with famed Ryukyu Islands singer Yasukatsu Oshima. The pair recorded in New York last year together with a handful of jazz musicians and their album – “Yasukatsu Oshima with Geoffrey Keezer” – has just been released by Victor in Japan. It may not be the first time an Okinawan sanshin has joined forces with a piano but there hasn’t been anything quite like this before, where a traditional Ryukyu musician has been plucked from his own setting and dropped into a New York studio with previously unfamiliar musicians.
It’s Sunday afternoon in Okinawa and I’m at the football with Keith Gordon of Ryukyu Underground. The island’s team FC Ryukyu is playing against a team from mainland Japan in the JFL – the third tier of Japanese soccer. FC Ryukyu are bottom of the table with no points but have a celebrity manager in former Japan, South Africa and Morocco coach Philippe Troussier. He hasn’t been able to do much yet but in the warm up to the game the sounds of Ryukyu Underground are played loudly over the public address system. Keith’s connection with the club has also wangled us some complimentary tickets and he reveals that Troussier is apparently keen on the duo writing a new club song for the players to run out to. Perhaps they’ll even change their name to FC Ryukyu Underground. 
She has already travelled Europe, appeared on Portuguese TV, performed on the islands of Cape Verde, and recorded in Rio de Janeiro. Now she has a debut album on the Victor label showcasing her own brand of fado and other styles. But this exciting young singer isn’t from any of these places. Despite singing in apparently flawless Portuguese, 26 year old Mio Matsuda is from Japan, where she lives in Kyoto. Late last year I met her for the first time when she played to a warmly appreciative audience at a packed concert hall in Osaka, not so far from her home. More recently I renewed our acquaintance by phone as she prepared to travel again from Japan to Portugal and Brazil for two months of music making which includes recording for a second album.
The duet album is popular in Japan, and especially so in Okinawa, where over the years there have been a number of collaborations by stars of the local music. This year the tradition has continued with the important release of a new album by two leading lights of the traditional Okinawan music scene – Oshiro Misako and Yonaha Toru. Their joint album is entitled Futari Uta and is released on Tokyo’s Tuff Beats label.
Okinawa is rightly known as an island of music, songs and dance, but also has unwanted notoriety as an outpost for the US military. Last year musicians got together to protest US plans to close the Futenma air base on the island’s city of Ginowan and relocate it to a new site further north in the small town of Henoko. Apart from the noise and danger to residents this will inevitably damage the environment in and around this area of great natural beauty.
