“Keeping pure hearts”: identity, reminiscence, and resistance in okinawan popular music

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, Okinawans have creating music, which mixes traditional min yo’ (folk songs) and shima uta (Island songs) with jazz, reggae, folk, and other Western musical elements. The mixing of traditional and Western musical elements is referred to as “hybridization” or champuru. Okinawan popular music, also known as Uchinaa Pop, is unique in that it uses Okinawan indigenous language and traditional instrument, sanshin. It will also be necessary to analyze the lyrical content, in which certain themes are embedded with Okinawa’s cultural values and worldview. I will analyze Okinawan popular music as a symbolic construct to define such concepts as identity, reminiscence, and resistance as it is locally situated within the context of the historical and political framework. These concepts are not mutually exclusive; rather they are interconnected in meaning and purpose when it comes to interpreting and explaining Uchinaa Pop. This is a preliminary study, in which I will be conducting fieldwork in Okinawa, Japan in the summer of 2007.