• Jun Arasaki and Nine Sheep - Kajyadhi Fu Bushi

Jun Arasaki and Nine Sheep - Kajyadhi Fu Bushi

EM Records

Regular price

Added to your cart!

A beatiful  piece from Jun Arasaki and Nine Sheep, singing a traditional folk song from Okinawa, a wedding song talking about unfolding flower buds (makes sense, when you listen). To our culturally and linguistically blind ears though, it just sounds wholesome and somehow elevating - a real joy to listen to. And we get the joy of hearing that Visible Cloaks twistup on the flipside too. Perfectly unusual.

Check the background from via EM Records themselves:
"A charming set of double transformations on this 7 inch. “Kajyadhi Fu Bushi” is a traditional Ryukyu minyo (Okinawa folk song), a joyous celebratory classic which is usually sung at weddings, with lyrics describing how “beautiful buds unfold”, using the distinctive Ryukyu/Okinawan pentatonic scale.

Typically performed by a small ensemble of a singer accompanied by sanshin, the Okinawan precursor to the shamisen, the A-side is has been transformed by jazz musician and conductor Jun Arasaki and his group Nine Sheep, with five sanshin, four winds, piano, guitar, bass, percussion and drums. Played only once, unrehearsed but perfect in execution, for a 1977 TV broadcast, this release has been taken from the only recording in existence. The B-side is yet another transformation, a remix by the Portland “fourth world” duo Visible Cloaks."


A real gem, this.

Kajyadhi Fu Bushi


Visible Cloaks Remix