Live at Café Oto

OKI is the tonkori-wielding bard famed for bringing the endangered music of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, one of Japan’s northernmost islands, to the world via his Oki Dub Ainu Band.

Having prompted double takes with his spacious minimalism and finely integrated dub aesthetic (and indeed, his 2006 collaboration with Irish folksters Kíla), OKI has continued to reinvent his plucked string instrument – and old Indigenous folk tunes about pestles, lakes, bears and grasshoppers – for the 21st century. Studio albums including 2022’s Best Of compilation Tonkori in the Moonlight included soft synths and vocal chants on tracks that come alive before an audience – with this album, recorded at Dalston’s ever-experimental Café OTO during the 2022 EFG London Jazz Festival, a case in point. Buoyed by bass, drums, two tonkoris and a mukkuri, the traditional plucked bamboo mouth harp, OKI delivers his trademark tender melodies and meditative dub excursions with an energy that enervates and mesmerises.

The highlights of Live at Café Oto are many: ‘Muysoka Hanene’ comes peppered with perfectly placed overtone yelps that, accompanied by handclaps, gather in pace and urgency. There are mouth harp a capellas and dub-influenced tonkori solos that reinforce why OKI is one of Japan’s most illustrious heritage artists.

The love from the Café OTO crowd is palpable.