The incredible longevity of Okinawans results from the islanders' traditional diet, sociability, exercise and general stress-free living, but it might also be helped along by the island's lovely, passionate folk music. With strong dance beats, sinuous melody lines and earthy lyrics, Okinawa's music sounds quite different from the folk music of more northerly islands. Yoriko Ganeko, an Okinawan singer and sanshin player, will take her distinctive style of Okinawan music to Tokyo, Koza Okinawa and Osaka for three special shows this week.
Learning Okinawan minyo from her father, a renowned singer on the main island, she recorded several songs that became hits in Okinawa before joining Ryuichi Sakamoto's world concert tour in 1988. She also learned to play the sanshin, a three-string instrument with a pungent tone that sharpens folk-dance beats while delicately accenting softer ballads.
Ganeko's last two releases with talented multi-instrumentalist Chuei Yoshikawa -- "Uta Asobi" and "Uta Asobi II" -- showcase her singing in the Okinawan dialect as well as in standard Japanese. Yoshikawa's many original guitar, ukulele and banjo tunings add unique accompaniment to Ganeko's voice. She negotiates the unique twists and turns of Okinawan melodies with a voice of startling range and depth, dropping to breathy whispers, but rising to that distinctive whoop of "sui, sui" on the lively numbers.
Even if it's not the music that gives the island's inhabitants their long lives, music of her pure and heartfelt kind should be high on the list of life's pleasures. After all, as Ganeko and Yoshikawa sing on their latest release, "People who don't like drinking and traveling/don't like singing and dancing/who pile up money and stress/will surely become senile."
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