Ryukyu Underground

In the music of the US/UK duo, tradition meets the future against the backdrop of Okinawa’s military base dispute

Jon Taylor and Keith Goordon photos Courtesy of Respect Record

As with many traditional Japanese art forms, Okinawan music, with its piquant, three-stringed, snakeskin-covered sanshin and spicy shima uta (island songs), can be a pretty closed world. So when Jon Taylor and Keith Gordon decided to try and set Okinawan music to electronic beats in the late-’90s, they were on shaky ground.

“When we first started, we sampled some CDs from one label, Campus Records, in particular,” recalls Gordon (above right, with Taylor), in Tokyo recently to promote their new album, Shimadelica. “The owner heard one of our demos and said, ‘Who is this?’”

It turns out the pair could breathe easy. Not only was Campus’ owner, Okinawan legend Yoshikatsu Bise, pleased with what they’d done, he wanted them to do more, weighing the duo down with dozens of CDs that he suggested they sample at will.

The results of those first experiments turned into the groundbreaking 2002 album Ryukyu Underground (Ryukyu refers to the ancient Okinawan kingdom), perhaps the world’s first showcase of traditional Okinawan music in a club music setting. But Taylor, a guitarist, and Gordon, a drummer, weren’t satisfied with sampling alone. For their next project they decided to work with live Okinawan musicians, recruiting young instrumentalist Toru Inaha and singer Mika Uchizato. This, it seems, did cause some waves.

“The Okinawan scene can be quite closed, and Toru did face some pressure from some of the older senseis around him who said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’” explains Gordon. “Often it’s a family thing, and their father is a teacher.”

In contrast to the masters, younger musicians like Inaha and Uchizato are looking to branch out and interact in various musical settings. That said, Ryukyu Underground’s having brought wider recognition to Okinawan music has gained them support from some of the island’s most senior musicians. Says Taylor: “Some of them will say, ‘I don’t really understand what you’re doing, but I’m glad you’re doing it anyway.’”

Taylor, an American, and Gordon, a Brit, first met on Okinawa in 1998. A sometime musician who’d played bass with reggae great U-Roy, Taylor was then a researcher writing his PhD dissertation on the environmental impact of the US military bases in Okinawa. A veteran DJ and drummer, Gordon laughs that he did his dissertation “in Okinawan women.” It seems he’d met an Okinawan woman in Australia and ended up returning with her to her island home.

The collaboration with Inaha and Uchizato that resulted in the pair’s second album, 2003’s more accomplished Mo Ashibi, turned into a lasting one. The pair are both present on Shimadelica in ample measure. But in addition to Ryukyu Underground’s patented reinventions of Okinawan classics like “Tsuki nu Kaisha,” the album also took them in some new directions.

“We made an attempt on a few songs to do a psychedelic thing,” relates Taylor, who moved back to California some years ago and now collaborates with Gordon via the internet. “It seemed that the political climate in the US was calling for a countercultural response. And in the song “Uprising,” we deliberately put Arabic strings into it.”

Gordon adds that living in Okinawa, with its large contingent of US servicemen, the war on terror is an ever-present subtext. “You can’t generalize, but a lot of them are going over to Iraq right now, and there is a change of atmosphere in the bars, so Okinawa has been strangely quiet.”

“As an American doing Okinawan fusion music, you can’t help but face the political questions that come up, like how do I feel about the base situation?” continues Taylor. “I left six years ago, but nothing has changed whatsoever. There’s no way to deal overtly with it in our music unless we hired a rapper to spout off. But we are concerned and we hope it comes through in some way.”

Rather than musical tourists like early worldbeat hit-makers Enigma or Deep Forest, Taylor and Gordon are committed specifically to the music of Okinawa. “Since the beginning, we’ve been working with serious people like Respect Record, and made it clear that this wasn’t going to be a Moby-type thing where we sample people and don’t give them credit,” says Taylor. “We don’t have any intention to sample their music and incorporate it without their permission—the musical colonialism sort of thing.”

Of course, the island prefecture’s most famous acts, like Namie Amuro, have nothing to do with tradition. But in contrast with disappearing ethnic music in much of the world, Okinawan music is apparently still vital. “It’s something that’s always around. You hear people practicing in the streets, and there are sanshin clubs, one of which I’m part of,” notes Gordon. “It’s still very natural, the way that it breathes in Okinawa, and it’s something that a lot of kids do pick up without pressure from their parents.”

Enthuses Taylor: “Traditional music is a part of everyday life there in a way that is completely different from the rest of Japan—and any place I’ve ever lived. It is not some kind of museum relic, it’s a living, organic music. And culturally, it’s laid-back, so if you go into someone’s house, usually there will be a shamisen in the corner, and it will come out in the course of an evening, and there will be singing and dancing.”

Sounds like Ryukyu Underground will be at it for a long time to come.

Ryukyu Underground’s Shimadelica is available on Respect Record.

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