Oki out to save art of playing ‘tonkori’

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Oki plays the ‘tonkori’.

KUCHING: Oki Kano is on a mission to preserve the dying art of playing the traditional Ainu lute (tonkori).

The tonkori is an instrument played by the Ainu people of Japan, and was also used by shamans to communicate with the spirits.

According to Oki, the playing of the instrument almost died out in the late 1980s because many Ainu elders who knew how to play the lute had passed away.

He said with the passing of the Ainu elders, there was no one to play the lute, and the traditional instruments were kept for display in a museum.

“The lute-playing tradition is dying, but fortunately there are still a few Japanese studying and playing the lute. My role here is to give new life to the tradition.

“I listen to some of the rare Japanese old folk songs recorded by anthropologists a long time ago in order to improve my skill in playing the instrument. It is important that I continue to learn,” he said when met here yesterday.

Oki will be performing for the first time at the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) here. It is also his first time in Sarawak.

He also expressed his amazement at the Orang Ulu because of the many cultural similarities between them and the Ainu people.

“They (Orang Ulu) are like a long-distant relatives of the Ainu people. Even their ‘sape’ is more or less similar to our ‘tonkori’. I find this to be a really interesting discovery in Sarawak,” he added.

He said he was looking forward to perform at the next RWMF if his audience loved his performance this time,  and hoped to bring along more Ainu performers in the future.