HoRookies recently released their 2nd album “Focus” at the beginning of the month and held a release party for it on YouTube. They announced that it’s now available on YouTube as an archive so if you missed the livestream or just want to watch it again, here’s your chance! By the way, if you haven’t added “Focus” to your library, it’s definitely worth a listen.
Slow news day? How about news of a newspaper mascot? Yay! On 9/15 Ryukyu Shimpo mascot Ryu-chan will be celebration their 16th birthday! The celebration will happen on Ryukyu Shimpo’s YouTube channel and they mentioned there will be a special guest and giveaways.
Due to the pandemic, most of this year’s eisaa festivities (there were still smaller, downsized local ones here and there) have been canceled. To make up for it, there was a limited time YouTube VOD of the fantastic film “Eisaa Don Don” (extended to 9/30!), a rebroadcast of the Campus Records x Matsuda Kazutoshi’s 2020 eisaa festival, and now we have Virtual Okinawa’s 10,000 eisaa dancers emceed by our favorite VTuber Nema Ui! While it was live-streamed on 9/4 (Uchinaa time), it’s available as an archive for now. Oh, and it’s around 5 and a half hours long!
“Nakagusuku-son In The House” MV on YouTube
Wow. This music video and song is a lot of fun! MC Gosamaru’s “Nakagusuku-son In The House” is an Uchinaa-rap song and also features the amazing Yonaha Toru on sanshin. The single is also available on music streaming services.
The video digest is from “Ryukyu Classical Performing Arts Meet the 25 String Koto”, a concert that took place last December featuring top artists from Luchu classical music and dance. It’s interesting hearing the classic songs arranged for the 25 string koto as well as Nakai Tomoya’s original songs and we’re grateful for the English subtitles and translations in the video description section. This is a must watch video if only for the explanation each artist gives for their instrument.
Allison-sensei started her Kucho Girl YouTube channel about a year ago and has a lot of great content in English for those interested in learning more about classical (koten ongaku) and folk (minyou) music from Uchinaa. If you’re not familiar with the word ‘kucho’, Allison-sensei calls it an Okinawan spike fiddle and it’s one of the instruments that accompanies the uta-sanshin along with kutu (zither), fwanso (flute), and teeku (drums). It’s definitely a channel you’ll want to subscribe to.
Welcome to the world of Cocco! We’ve posted about Cocco and her YouTube before but now she’s gone and started a new channel called Cocco Channel. She’s been using the old (but still official?) YouTube channel for her personal vlogs so she’ll probably start posting them to her new one. One thing we can be guaranteed is a deeper dive into Cocco’s world.
New episodes of “Toki no Suisaiga” season two started airing at the beginning of the month. The new season brings back Miyazawa Kazufumi (The Boom) as narrator and Ryukyu classical music performances by Oyakawa Haruka. Check out their YouTube channel for the latest clips.
With the cancellation of this year’s eisaa festivities, Campus Records is rebroadcasting their Remote Eisaa Festival 2020 on their YouTube channel! They have also launched a Remote Eisaa Festival website with an online store (sadly, no overseas shipping) and are accepting donations (“throwing money”).
Speaking of Campus Records, they’ve been releasing a lot of great content on their YouTube channel so be sure to subscribe.
His staff had to get his favorite awamori into his system and once that was done Gori was ready to announce his 8 recommended songs from Okinawa (Uchinanchu artists). So without further ado, here’s his list in the order that he announced it (links go to YouTube videos):
His comments on why he chose each song is worth checking out too so be sure to watch his video.
