The new album by Jun Yasuba's A-Chang Project, "Harara Rude," should be heralded as a major new album of Okinawan music. However, Yasuba is at present unknown to even Okinawan music aficionados. It took her two years to sell 500 of the first An-Chang Project albums, "Yarayo-Uta no Sahanji," and at present, she isn't expecting much more from the second.
"I've pressed 1,000 this time, so it might take four years to sell them," she says. "Anyway, I'll be sleeping with them all around me for a while."
The music that she creates, along with Yoshie Uno and Natsuki Hattori, her friends and co-conspirators from her former group Shisars, is certainly unlike any other Okinawan music by either local musicians or mainlanders who have offered their take on this country's most vibrant folk music. The songs are mostly traditional, but are sung in harmony, whereas usually the vocals are sung in unison.