Streams of understanding, via spiritual land bridges, or how a Navajo-Ute found a musical connection with Japanese sonorities/tradition. Somehow, I feel a sense of myself in this music. The first time I heard of Island Of Bows by R. Carlos Nakai (with the Wind Travelin’ Band, Shonosuke Ohkura, and Oki Kano) I was struck by the shocking familiarity of this music. Mr. Nakai’s flute, of Native American origins, had been a sound that’s inescapable for those that live in the American Southwest. Whether in traditional dances or ceremonies, it’s its sonority that instantly placed those of us (with Native American descent) in communion with our ancestry and sonically signal that deep spiritual connection music has with tradition. But now, I heard it undertaking a journey that I little expected, morphing the “Eastern” way into shapes that spoke of a higher, shared communion.
A communion of timeless Native American and Japanese folk that yielded something truly touching, with little explored avenues that Fourth World, New Age, and ambient musical ideas can take that are quite simply breathtaking. Inspiring to say the least, Island Of Bows gathers musical masters from seemingly disparate traditions and finds what they are meant to be together to create something with much greater consequence and of a deeper, longer impact.
Originally released in 1994, on Japan’s impressive Awa Records music label, Island Of Bows was yet another attempt to expand the reach of their progressive-minded, world music-influenced, healing music. The genesis of this album was an invitation sent to Native American New Age pioneer R. Carlos Nakai to come to Kyoto and collaborate with a few of the artists from their record label.
R. Carlos Nakai, famously, was the Flagstaff, Arizona Navajo-Ute who transformed his classical training in trumpet into a methodical reimagining of the indigenous wooden flute of his tribe, creating pioneering ambient music driven not just by tradition but also advanced in the way it sonically moved it via audio treatments like tape/digital delay units and synthesizers. It’s rare to find someone who can create music influenced by centuries-old Plains indigenous people and not bat an eye to create experimental sound installation music or leftfield, deep, electronic fusion with groups like Jackalope. Mr. Nakai was and is something special.
By 1994, at the top of his game, performing all over the world, releasing widely albums on large American New Age labels like Celestial Harmonies, somehow his music was lost in the aisle of your local health and wellness store. Gone were the opportunities to go out on a limb. In Japan, though, he now had an opportunity to have a meeting of the mind and go further again, with similar-minded musicians who were attempting that kind of bridge crossing, who could appreciate what he had been trying to do. He had worked with classical and jazz ensembles but this had to be different.
Luckily joining him were, artists like Oki Kano, who played the tonkori strung instrument, and were of Japanese indigenous descent, and also like him didn’t seek to distance their Ainu heritage from the newer music they were experimenting with. On percussion, Shonosuke Ohkura took his mastery of the otsuzumi (a Japanese hand drum) as a means to dive deep into Noh music and in turn bring that knowledge into this collaboration. The core of this group would be led by the Wind Travelin’ Band a six-piece of neotraditional musicians that drew inspiration from the musical instruments of Africa and Asia to perform, as a musical caravan, by choice, non-Western music at various outdoor venues near or around Kyoto and the Kansai region, creating their own form of naturalistic, pastoral ambient folk music with a heavy emphasis on Japanese wind instruments and shamisen (played by brilliant Japanese New Age master Hiroki Okano).
Like a Conny Plank-recorded CAN album, Island Of Bows was recorded live at Kyoto’s Hoon-ji Temple, then pieced together and sonically treated to fit the ethereal mood they created. It was a two-day affair full of improvisatory jams where mutual understanding opened itself off to deeply creative musical communication. And what communication it was.
The leading role on Island Of Bows would be Nakai’s siyotanka, finding spaces around the stellar shamisen, yangqin, erhu, and tonkori string rhythm section but everything seemed to float around through each other. Gorgeous songs like “Sunrise” or “Kamui” would then be further laced with harmonizing shakuhachi and wordless vocalese that made the songs try to go beyond any specific tradition and truly blend all their lineage together. Much like its musical, spiritual cousin, Jorge Reyes’s & Suso Sáiz’s Cronica De Castas, this collaboration works because historical ties usually bind us in ways we don’t quite comprehend until we begin that special process of simply piecing them together. Songs that leave room for this openness like the titular track, “Cloud Temple”, and “Red Wind” are unforgettable for this reason. All these tracks go to the core of what makes music such an important cultural bridge. No one taught R. Carlos Nakai where his siyotanka was supposed to fit in this narrative but a simple outpouring of breath guided him where had to be.
Each one of us is the leading edge of a long shadow of human experience through time and our uniquely personal oral traditions encourage sharing and understanding the commonality of our journey to the Morning Star.
R. Carlos Nakai
In this way we will know, through interpersonal and intercultural communication, the similarities of our culture-based differences and realize that we are all one human race striving for peace.
Wind – that which touches the invisible.
Wind Travelin’ Band
Pleasure – expression of joy and thanksgiving.
Humanity – the power to create what is genuine, seeking the origin of sound, growing aware of life’s coexistence in the dawning era, playing from a heart of gratitude.
The sound of wind.
The sound of sky.
The sound of earth.
Simple joy, sorrow, reverence, poured into sound, joining in resonance, then fading into the wind.
One response
Hi, don’t you have this in lossless format ?
Beautiful music !!!
Thanks a lot.