Ainu Songs

Kiyo Kurokawa
14 x 9 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Teru Nishizama (?)
14 x 9 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

 

Kiyo Kurokawa and Teru Nishizama perform several duets and a few solos on the cd Chants des Ainu (Ainu Songs) from the Musique & Musiciens du Monde series of the UNESCO collection. Last year songs of theirs were represented by stock images of  traditional Ainu women but now I think that I've found photos that actually depict the two women. The photos were made by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who also recorded the music. These photos are found on Ainu Songs Japan on the Phillips label and was in 1980 the first release of the music recorded in 1978 in Hokkaido. I do not have the original LP and liner notes are not published on the web so I can't be sure the images depict them or who's who. Given the prominence of Kurokawa on the LP and that she's seen clapping on another photo I may assume that the individual on the record sleeve is indeed Kurokawa. Why is this important you may wonder? Well, Kiyo Kurokawa, together with Nishizama is featured twice at #5 and #14 in the Top 100, and individually she comes in at third place of performers for the year, just behind Cat Power and Bongwater. The Ainu, as dwelled upon earlier, are descendants of the indigenous Japanese Jōmon people and share many cultural characteristics with neighboring Siberian and Inuit peoples. A great number used to live (and some still do) in the easternmost Russian territory Sakhalin, an island just north of Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese island where most Ainu live today. Sakhalin has been disputed territory between  Japan and Russia but became solidly Russian after the second World War. The two songs in the Top 100 are both associated with the bear festival. Upopo is a sitting song and Horippa a dancing song.