the message in the bottle is the booze

Day 04 - A Song that Makes You Sad

Iyomante Upopo - Ando Umeko

This is a song in Ainu, the language of the indigenous people of Japan. The Wikipedia article on the Ainu people will explain their history and their struggle to retain their culture better than I can.

The Ainu language is moribund--likely to go extinct very soon. There are language revitalization efforts, but that's no guarantee that Ainu will be around in, say, ten or twenty years.

Ando Umeko, an Ainu folk musician, died in 2004.

I've stolen this from thehunter. Because I like music, and I like memes. I should have started on Nov 1, for congruence, but congruence is overrated.

Day 1 - Your Favorite Song

I don't have a favorite song. I have favorite songs--and rather a lot of them. They change week to week and year to year. However, according to Last.fm, the song that I've listened to the most is:

Darha Nopigom (Eonmori) - Byungkwi Hwang

This is a gayageum solo by one of the best living gayageum players/composers in Korea. At least I think he's still alive; he's pretty old.

But if you asked me for my favorite song off of this album, it would be:

Chucheonsa (Swinging Song) - Byungkwi Hwang

This is a gayageum and vocal piece. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the vocalist. She wasn't credited in the tags when I bought this album off of Amazon.

Both of these are incredibly beautiful. They weren't what first came to mind when I started to think about what would be my favorite song, but hey. Last.fm doesn't lie.

( cross off the list )