OKI

Oki Kano plays the tonkori, a plucked stringed ancient instrument from Hokkaido, and sings in Ainu, his ancestral language. This endangered tradition has been suppressed for centuries. The music of OKI collective is part of the struggle to preserve it.
"Born on the Japanese island of Hokkaido in 1957, OKI is a contemporary of the likes of Haroumi Hosono and Midori Takada, yet as a musician who blends Ainu folk music with international influences his style is singular in the canon of Japanese music though he is quick to point out: “I might travel on a Japanese passport but I am Ainu”.
Embracing reggae, dub, Irish folk, throat singing, African drumming and music from Central Asia, it is OKI’s openness to international influences that has seen him revitalise Ainu folk music - breathing new life into a musical culture that was on the verge of extinction. He is one of only a handful of musicians who play the tonkori, a five-stringed Ainu harp, which is both the pulse of this record and the force that unifies the disparate sounds he introduces: “I’ve never seen a traditional tonkori player”, he says “They were all dead when I started”. (c) Lewis Robinson