Oki Kano’s (A.K.A. OKI) identity, as a part of Japan’s northernmost indigenous people, is central to his person and his art - as he says: ‘I might travel on a Japanese passport but I am Ainu’. His music, as heard on this year’s ‘Tonkori in the moonlight’, celebrates Ainu folk - while blending it with reggae, dub, throat singing, and Irish, African, and Central Asian tradition. Naturally, as said by The Wire, it is ‘like something you’ve never heard before’ - minimalist in sound, perhaps, but decidedly maximalist in design.
Photography by Kenji Ito