No Amuro. No DA PUMP. No ORANGE RANGE. It seemed like Okinawan artists, once a strong presence on the “Kouhaku” since the Komuro-era of J-Pop, were slowly disappearing from the yearly music event. This past “Kouhaku” showed that Okinawan artists and Okinawa are both alive and well-represented with performances from D-51, Gorie and NATSUKAWA Rimi, NAKAMA Yukie as emcee, and two mainland artists — one singing an Okinawan song (NAGAYAMA Yoko’s cover of “Bashoufu”) and another singing one with an Okinawan theme (MORIYAMA Ryoko’s “Satoukibi Batake”). Let’s hope this year will be another successful one for Uchinanchu artists!
Archive for January, 2006
You never know what you’ll come across when doing a search on the web. I’ve found many an (Okinawan) artist by accident this way while I was actually searching for a different artist. Such is the case with CAROLINE. I was doing some tag cleaning with my music collection and I had to check on an album from OLIVIA (Lufkin — sound familiar?) which led me to theppn.org’s wiki. They had the info I was looking for on OLIVIA and through it I found out that her sister CAROLINE “debuted in October 2005 in the USA with the single Where’s My Love”. Cool, yeah?
The “Where’s My Love” single is being streamed on Caroline’s MySpace.com account and it can be purchased on her record label’s website Temporary Residence Limited. Here’s a link to the label’s page for CAROLINE (the song is also available as a free download).
She links to a 2005 top album/single list from Textura who has this to say about her “Where’s My Love” single:
Caroline Lufkin’s heavenly title track is so intoxicating and her voice so bewitching, surrender is the sole option.
What a great find. 
