Cool. Going to give this a try in a bit. Have you ever wanted to quote or share a tweet but had to painstakingly take screenshots of said tweet, upload them, and then embed the images in your post? Today we are launching a new feature dubbed Twitter Blackbird Pie. The new feature makes displaying…

I met Kanako in Hawaii and I must say she’s quite talented and pretty too. She already has the chops for minyo so it’ll be interesting to see where she takes Ska Lovers. Here’s a link to their Myspace page and to their YouTube channel. Their album, “Lovers Ska ~Song for You,” is available for…

Just a note to say that my recent interview with Sadao China has been published in the current October issue of the UK’s fRoots Magazine under the title ‘Shimauta King’. The complete article is also available to read now on the Features page of the Power of Okinawa website: http://www.powerofokinawa.com/features.html   … Read More via…

Okinawan band Begin celebrate their 20th anniversary this year. They have also just released the third in a series of short albums of island music. This one is entitled Begin no Shimauta: Omoto Takeo 3 and it comes eight years after the second in the series, and ten years after the original Omoto Takeo CD.…

As already noted in ‘The Power of Okinawa’ and elsewhere, there are a bewilderingly large number of Okinawan music CD compilations to choose from. Well, here’s another to add to the rapidly growing pile. This one is a bit different from some of the hastily put together albums on big labels already available, and so…

At the end of last year Sadao China was awarded the prestigious Nihon Record Taisho Kikaku Sho for his 6 CD box set Shimauta Hyakkei which was released on King Records in October. This national award is a fitting tribute to China's long career in Okinawan music: he first recorded at the age of 12 and is…