🍳 ♥ 8:51pm
Webhamster Henry:

↳ Song: "Iyunu-Pri" by "Shoukichi Kina"

This used to be in the WFMU Catalog, back when there was a WFMU Catalog.

Shoukichi Kina
Peppermint Tea House
Sometime in the late sixties Shoukichi Kina and his group Champloose
decided that the time had come to blend the old island songs of
Okinawa, which were pretty rocking to begin with, with rock and
roll (and reggae and disco and whatever else tickled their fancy).
This is a "greatest hits" album, and therefore covers a wide
stylistic range. The earliest singles feature fairly
straightforward electric folk music, sticking to the trademark
"ka-chunk ka-chunk" (as Ry Cooder describes it) rhythm of Okinawa.
The later stuff is held together by an over-the-top schmaltziness
that lends it a certain charm, something perhaps only an Okinawan
legend who'd spent most of the seventies retreated into tree
worship with a hermit tree yogi could get away with. Maybe the
best part of all is the beautiful traditional vocalizing of
Champloose's female singers, who have mastered Okinawa's own
treble-friendly "high lonesome sound", set against Kina's modern
arrangements.