Okinawan Ryuku Music
My family spent three years in Okinawa, and loved it. To me Okinawa is Hawaii on steroids. It is very tropical, amazing history, great people, and delicious food. I would love to go back and visit. Doing this blog it brought back a ton of awesome memories. The Shuri Castle was a very beautiful place and glad we went there multiple times, a few years ago it was destroyed from a fire. We saw many live performances at this castle and all over the island with their many parades. Oh and learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road and from the wrong side of the vehicle was interesting. The sanshin is the three string instrument you see, with snake skin. It is the traditional sound of the okinawan music. This instrument was influenced by China in the 16th century, and is now considered the soul of Okinawan folk music. The folk music also has the traditional taiko drums as well, the shime-daiko (large), hira-daiko (medium) , and the ...