For those that don’t believe we can there’s a way to engage with the outside world while stuck inside one’s inner space, Awa Muse‘s second compilation: しおのみち ニの巻 (Shio-No-Michi) Vol.2 proves there are other ways to meet it there.
Part healing music, part environmental music, and mercurial fourth world music, each track on this compilation touches on a new kind of folk music born out of an attempt to combine instruments “foreign” to the Japanese experience in a way that can be integrated with homegrown ideas/instrumentation from their own widely varied tradition.
Released just three years after the original meeting of minds, Hideaki Masago assembles a new crew of musicians like-minded musicians like bassist and environmental artist Kohnosuke Mihara, esraj electro-acoustic musician Takashi Kohgo, and Buddhist keyboardist/percussionist and foundational Wind Travelin’ Band member Esoh (to name a precious few) who share their own form of “earth music”, that is, music inspired by the backroads we travelled as we rose up from salty oceans seeking to commune with others on land, trading most of that very mineral “salt” our terrestrial body once live through, for one now flowing by blood inside each and everyone of us.
Quite possibly one of my favorite collection of fourth world ideas laid to archival memory, I’m immensely happy to share an hour of music that paints a vivid image of a common world we can always tap into even further outside our window (with a good pair of speakers and a wide open set of ears).
Shio-No-Michi
In the early days, people came and went through the salt, and when people came together, a market was born. “Salt” is the spirit of human life and the source of human interaction.
And once again, people are traveling the earth in its tide.
“Shio-No-Michi” is an anthology of sound that spells the consciousness of living on the earth with the sounds of various ethnic instruments, regardless of the country or ethnicity.
It is based on elements of folk music and expresses a natural and fundamental sense through a simple, modern, and unique arrangement.
Although three volumes have already been released, the concept of each compilation album is as follows: Volume 1 “Travels In The Tide”, Volume 2 “Heaven’s Will On Earth”, Volume 3 “The Pacific Rim”.
Sound Travelers:
They meet the instrument on their journey.
Play your own heart with that instrument.
Shio-No-Michi is the spirit of these sound travelers.
The sounds of the instruments are the scenery of sound born from the various climates of this star.
And the mixed tones draw a new landscape.
Close your eyes and travel the landscape inside you.
Listen to the scenery that looks like your hometown.
- From Liner Notes to しおのみち ニの巻 (Shio-No-Michi) Vol.2