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SANDII @ ASAGIRI JAM 2005
We like to think that the Orange Court was so named because of all the Fuji stages it complements the sunset to the best effect. Of course, you can’t always guarantee clear skies at Fuji, but when there are, dusk doesn’t get any nicer than at that end of Naeba. So we were quite pleased to see that Sandii Suzuki is in the penultimate slot at the Orange Court Sunday evening. In the 80s, after all, she was the leader of a rock band called Sandii and the Sunsetz.
With albums produced by YMO’s Haruomi Hosono, a cult following in Europe and even a top ten single in Australia, the Sunsetz were one of those rare Japanese bands that made it on their own terms outside of the archipelago, thanks mainly to Sandii’s cosmopolitanism. She spent her teen years in Hawaii, where she not only absorbed American rock but studied hula dancing. After she disbanded the Sunsetz in the early 90s she became Japan’s leading world music maven, recording reggae and Polynesian songs, an album of Malaysian music, and dabbled convincingly in dancehall, Singapore hip-hop, Indonesian pop and Japanese-style chanson.
But since the late 90s she’s returned to Hawaiian music and in 2001 even opened her own hula studio in Shibuya where she has 500 students. She’s worked with some of the most celebrated musicians in Hawaii, and her revue, which includes 25 members, performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival.
At Fuji she’ll be hooking up with her frequent collaborator, the kalimba player Bun from Koh-Tao, as well as the “tribal jam unit” Earth Conscious” for a set of Hawaiian and Tahitian roots music. And since Sandii was named a “uniki kumu hula” (legitimate hula master) in 2005, we’re sure there will be a whole lot of shaking going on. Let’s hope the weather cooperates.
photo by Sam, courtesy Smashing Mag
