Amano

Amano⁠ is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Ireland and Japan. Her practice includes sean-nós, vocal improvisation and folk storytelling. Amano working to de-colonise the Irish language through music, and writes beautiful, evocative and often politically charged poetry and spoken word.

She reads her poem, ‘Underpass 6’ and we’ve a lovely talk about sean-nós singing, the everyday practice of decolonising ourselves, how activism fuels her art, being a culchie from both Ireland and Japan and much more.

The music you hear throughout this programme is all from ⁠Thread⁠ the gorgeous experimental Irish-language album she created with Kalabanx, and recorded by GMC Beats, in the ⁠Kabin Studio⁠.

Follow Amano: ⁠@amanoanseo⁠ // amanoanseo.com

Thanks to the Arts Council for funding this podcast.

listen to previous eps: Noor Hindi // Lavie Olupona

Amano Transcript:

Bairbre Flood: Hi and welcome to Wander with me Bairbre Flood, and with thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support.

MUSIC

Amano is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Ireland and Japan. Her practice includes sean-nós, vocal improvisation and folk storytelling. 

She’s working to de-colonise the Irish language through music, working on many collaborations including ‘The Mantle’ – a storytelling and performance project with Emily Fitzell. And writes beautiful, evocative and often politically charged poetry and spoken word.

The music you hear throughout this programme is all from Thread, the gorgeous experimental Irish-language album she created with Kalabanx, and recorded by Gary, GMC Beats, in the Kabin here in Cork. 

Including this track called, ‘Southwind’,

This is Amano.

MUSIC: ‘Southwind’ by Amano x Kalabanx

Bairbre Flood: The album, Thread, I’ve been listening to it a lot on Bandcamp, and it’s just so beautiful Amano, like really gorgeous. 

Amano: Thank you so much, Bairbre. It’s been amazing to see where that’s taken itself. I think as a small body of work between two friends, we had no expectations around it. We’ve been chatting in the last few weeks because we’ve been nominated for the Irish Language Music Awards for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, and laughing because we still don’t feel like we’ve even launched the project.

It doesn’t have any music videos. The PR campaign was me emailing a few DJs and blogs and performing the songs as much as I could, but it’s taken on a life of its own. And I think that’s the lovely thing about a project that in many parts was improvised. Thank you for listening to the Bandcamp version because that includes the little interludes that are just live raw recordings from an improvised session that I did with Liam O’Maonlai and Ronan, and Gary pressed the button and we just went from there. And the more poetic elements of the work, the writing, a lot of it, again, just came very naturally in immediate organic response to the music that Gary had created.

I started back at music and performance and poetry quite abruptly, and I’ve been blessed to have lots and lots of opportunities for performance come up for me almost immediately, but I haven’t had a full repertoire that really sits neatly in any one of the genres that I work in. 

So I’ve had to find a way to say I’m gonna perform a huge epic electronic song like South Wind, and then I’m going to read a poem and then I’m gonna maybe sing some Sean Nos and just be confident enough to do that so that the audience doesn’t feel disjointed or confused. And to realize that I am the common denominator, these are all my interests, and that there’s some thread aptly that can flow through performance regardless of what the mode of expression is. 

So that’s been really fun and scary and it’s pushed me to communicate more honestly with audiences as well, because things do go wrong when you’re trying to move between, backing track, like using a computer to play music, picking up a guitar, making sure it’s in tune, trying to remember the words of a spoken word piece. Being able to have a laugh and be honest and let people into your internal process and some of the chaos that is ultimately accompanying all art is really great and it’s definitely made me a stronger performer, I think, and allowed me to connect at a more heart-centered level with people in that context of stage to audience. 

Bairbre Flood: What did you learn from the break or did you think it really helped your creative process and your music?

Amano: I had a whole other life for about seven years. The whole center of my twenties was a time of figuring out who I was beyond being an artist. I think as a child and as a young person, I was very naturally drawn to the stage and to making things with words and sounds and performance was easy to me, but I didn’t have any of the internal boundaries or buffers that would really allow me to navigate the realities of a music industry or the pressures and very real elements of being an individual young woman of color artist in the world. 

And I had to take a break. I don’t think I was really given a choice. I think my mental health and other things just said absolutely not. No more of this. And there were moments when I thought I’d never go back to art, but I think in my journey of becoming a more well-resourced individual, of course. I came across so much inspiration along the way. So one element of that was returning to the country where I was born for the first time in 19 years, which is Japan, and meeting some of my family.

I also spent some time living in New Zealand. I also went back to university and studied a degree in world religions and politics and all that. Through that time I wrote a little bit, but I didn’t play music really. And I didn’t sing really. But once I began, again, it was a deluge. It was, there had been so much gathered in seven years of virtual silence that I can’t actually shut up now.

Bairbre Flood: Fair enough. Your voice is beautiful. I do remember you coming in, I think we did an interview in the old UCC studio, I think years ago. I think you came in that time to do a few songs and your voice has just gotten even more beautiful with time and with age and with experience.

And I think there’s a lot to be said for that. And I think it’s really interesting how you came back to it and how it just blossomed and matured. And I think that’s a really nice thing for other people to see, other young people to see from that.

Amano: Thank you so much, Bairbre. And it’s actually conversations that I’ve had with much older people as well who’ve talked about going back to a great love or passion in a professional or creative sense later in life. They’ve been really inspiring for me because you do, again, I just think there’s.

Is it capitalism? Is it patriarchy? What is it? I grew up in an X factor generation where to be a performing artist, you had to be, what was the age category under 21’s or under 25’s or something. Or else you were in the overs and you were a freak.

So for sure, yeah, there’s certain things that we considered normal that were sold to us as young people from ridiculous TV shows like that, that, yeah and that make you second guess. Oh my God, can I? Do I have a right to have a bit more life experience and  start something totally new – is that okay?

And my voice, I really appreciate you saying that. When I started singing again, I was really frustrated with the fact that of course I had lost a lot of muscle memory and capacity and stamina in my voice. And I really dove into songs from childhood around the same time as I started singing again.

And a lot of those were Irish songs that I learned at school. And it unlocked this inner love of Sean Nos music. I think as a kid I didn’t really know that the songs I was singing were Sean Nos, but of course now I do know that they belong to a specific cannon. And I think in obsessing over those, for lack of a better word, and just wanting to learn more of them and wanting to understand the stories that they carry, I’ve been able really to build up the stamina again in my own voice. And it gives my singing style a specific flavor that is beyond the pop or folk genre. And definitely does carry some of the more ornamented, and wide ranging melodic style of shadows into whatever genre I work in.

So that’s been really fun, but yeah, challenging.

Bairbre Flood: I often think that the Sean Nos style of singing and a lot of folks singing, not just Sean Nos, but all throughout the world, is a little bit gentler on the voice. It’s like I feel with a lot of pop and belting and that it can very easily, you can push your voice too much.

People can end up with vocal chord damage. And I feel like the folk tradition and the Sean Nos tradition. It almost looks after you and just helps your vocal chord and like soothes them and it doesn’t get you to push them and it also allows you to create your own sound. So it really gives your voice a chance to breathe and not, you’re not pushing it, you’re just allowing it to come out.

Do you think that,  about like old fashioned kind of styles or folk styles? 

Amano: Definitely. I think I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on Sean Nos and traditional singing in the last year. I was very fortunate and I got funding from the arts council to pursue my own personal development in the tradition.

And I’ve had great conversations with other singers and I guess the interesting thing in comparison to other singing styles is of course, up until very recently, I mean there’s probably a handful of artists who’ve had to ever go on tour or sing to auditoriums in this style. Up until very recently, this type of singing was community based.

It was not in any way aided by a microphone. It wouldn’t have been some case that any individual would sit down and be the sole performer for one hour. It’s music in the round. Everybody’s taking a turn. So the pressures of being a professional. Quote, quote unquote professional singer. It’s just a different skillset.

So I do think that of course, any folk singer who finds themselves having to tour or something like that will have to borrow skills that have been honed in. Classical or jazz or pop music to protect the vocal chords because you’re demanding something completely different of them. That said, I think the other genres can also maybe come back home to the organic and natural act of singing that every human being in the world has the capacity to do.

And remembering that it’s nice to hear someone’s own accent, idiosyncrasies and weird ways of breathing in a song. That we don’t have to flatten all the signs of human life in a vocal. And I think it’s really tempting to do that. The more accessible studio level production becomes to each and every one of us in our bedrooms, it’s natural to want to aim for the really shiny, polished pop production, but I personally love the sound of a breath.

I love the sound of a violin bow hitting awkwardly off the instruments. I love the sound of fingers fumbling on a guitar like I that, that’s music. It’s not all beautiful melody. The literal being alive is in it, and that’s important.

MUSIC – ‘Leighis’ also featuring Liam O’Maonlai.

Bairbre Flood: Something about the decolonization of language and what that means to you. If someone said to you what, what does decolonization mean to you personally?

Amano: I think the first place that I experience it in an Irish context is in knowing the names of the places where I am in their original form. Because the colonial process has so many layers. It occurred in different ways in different centuries on this land and in every other land. But I think Ireland has a really, in your face example.

When we look at the different stages of renaming our town lands and our mountains and our forests and things like that, we can see that things that were particularly powerful in one understanding of how the world works, the more animist understanding of how the world works. We’re particularly targeted in the new geographical naming of a place, yew trees and ash trees, and places where forests would’ve had some sort of sacred meaning were often given the most ridiculous new names that didn’t hold any of the original meaning. 

And so I think the process of active decolonization in Ireland at least, is very much alive in the environment and informs me, but as a woman, as a person with my own experience outside of being Irish, in fact of being other.

I think there’s also been huge layers of letting go of the idea that I have to be this way or that way to belong or be accepted in a place. And every single person, no matter what your background is, European or Asian or African or whatever it is, has to go through I think some level of that. 

Amano: In a society where there’s many cultures, there’s layers of class stratification, there’s economic barriers we have to often open doors for ourselves if we want to get to the place that we desire that we dream of and that the biggest barrier to a lot of those can be psychological. I think I’ve experienced that in a huge way, funnily enough, in Irish, which should be a playground of the post-colonial, but in fact, it has absorbed, I think so much of elitism of feeling closed, of feeling exclusive of I’m not I can’t speak this well enough.

I’ll never be as good as a native speaker. Who am I to make art in this language if I don’t come from a specific part of the country? All of those questions before we actually released the music. Both Gary and I were really grappling with because, neither of us come from Irish speaking households and we really did have moments of being like, oh God, can we do this? Are we allowed to do this? Are people going to hate us and give out to us? Am I allowed to innovate with an old style without being chastised? And of course nobody has treated me in that way or said those sorts of things in reality, but I was terrified. 

And I think those fears really hold so many people back from expression, whether that’s in music or in community or in, in their jobs or whatever it is. So I think really asking myself who holds the keys of permission? Who is my gatekeeper, is my daily act of de decolonization. And it’s hard. 

Bairbre Flood: I really appreciate you sharing this with me because when I saw you coming back and singing these songs, it just seemed so natural and easy for you I think it’s really interesting for other artists to hear that this process is not always as easy 

So I really think it’s great that people can hear that and see the process behind things and maybe encourage them to sing in Irish as well. Like you don’t have to be a gaeilgor. 

Amano: Yeah. I think it’s important to recognize that the work of making Irish a sustainable living language isn’t just for the fluent Irish speakers.

Like they simply can’t do it on their own. And also, I’ve had some conversations with shadow singers in particular who’ve said. Our grandkids want to play metal or our grandkids want to, skateboard. They don’t wanna learn these Sean Nos songs. 

So it’s good to have other people who are interested and it’s good to investigate how can I begin to learn, even if it’s not the orthodox way, even if it’s not generation to generation. People are, I think, quite open. It’s just a matter of creating opportunities for people to meet. 

Amano: And I think one of the really important things for me in beginning to work with Sean Nos and actually talk about it, is I know that I’m part of a generation in Ireland who are experiencing for the first time a sense of not really being culturally rooted anywhere because we have parents who have migrated or we’ve been adopted, or, there’s so many different reasons why a person might not have had a generational transmission of culture but who still might want to create or feel like they belong to. A generational type of culture. 

Of course there are new cultures, there are urban cultures, there are fusion cultures. But it’s unfair to say that all new or migrant or mixed race communities have to just make hip hop. They should also be able to do traditional step and not feel alienated in that desire.

I think that it’s important to continue talking about it even if it gets sticky 

Bairbre Flood: For sure. 

And I think anyone can do that, anyone who has a love for the language, same with any culture’s music that you love. If you love songs from Palestine, you can learn them and you can spread them and you can share them. 

Amano: I’m really glad that you mentioned Palestine and I guess any culture that has a legacy of resistance in their music. I think it’s actually a very beautiful act of service to learn those songs no matter who you are. Like I reflect on that often. A lot of the Irish language songs, poems, everything they could so easily not be here.

If it wasn’t for a few people making a conscious decision to try and keep them alive or teach them to someone the songs want to be sung regardless of the all the people around them, regardless of how we might feel, our awkwardness, our shame or not enoughness, the songs really do want to be sung and they want their meanings to be understood and remembered and interpreted.

And I think it would be really terrible if we’re so afraid of a tradition changing that we keep it closed. And I think that’s going back to your point on decolonization, I think my attitude to tradition has transformed or to heritage has transformed. I think the colonial gaze takes a fascinating piece of heritage and puts it in a museum and says, that has to be stagnant and we can look at it and remember.

No one’s allowed to touch it or play with it or try something new with it. But a living tradition is resilient and it can retain its core and its roots while also branching into new things 

Bairbre Flood: For sure. And especially with songs of resistance and especially in a Palestinian context the message and the impetus and the reason to keep singing them is still the same and is still so vital.

And if you cut them off and you like put them in a museum or you make them something sacrosanct or you make them something that can’t be touched, then you’ve taken away the power from them. And the community keeping them alive within communities is also so important.

Amano: Yeah. Yeah.  I agree with you and I think that’s something that people tell me most often about Irish, especially people who are learning or hoping to reconnect, is they just don’t feel like they have not enough opportunities to to experience the communal elements of the language to speak to people, to make mistakes.

Not just on Duolingo –  to learn with others. And the songs are the same. There are a few wonderful traditional song nights in Dublin that I’m aware of, and I’m sure in other places in the country. But it would be nice to imagine a future where we’re. Back in a place of community that songs are shared naturally and that people who carry traditional songs from the many cultures that are on this island have an opportunity to share those and learn from each other.

That’s my song Utopia that I’m dreaming of right now. 

Bairbre Flood: And it’s possible. It’s like that’s not too much to ask for, but I really do think that’s I think there might be this shift as well – we’ve been so saturated with social media and so saturated with, and so overwhelmed maybe, by the amount of stuff that to sift through.

And so there’s something really lovely about just going into somewhere and just somebody to connect in a real setting, in a real life place and to hear music live. And I think it’s, it’ll never go away. It’s never gonna, people are never gonna tire of that. 

Amano: I don’t think so. And it’s my favorite thing about being Irish is how much live music is just around us at all times.

I haven’t quite experienced that. Anywhere else, even if the music is terrible. Yeah. It’s still live, it’s just we love having real instruments and real singers and it’s true. It’s just everywhere. And it’s wonderful to be part of that constant home. But yeah, I think on the traditional song front, one thing that I, one layer of like purity or that this has to be this way that I’ve shed myself in the last while, is I think it’s great to take the time to explain what a song means, especially like in Irish language, an old song to, to take a little bit of time to tell an audience.

What they’re listening to is a lovely thing. And of course not everyone can do it. You can’t interrupt a set and just keep talking and talking. But I’ve seen like Maura Una ve who, who’s from the big Begley family of musicians I saw her sing a few last year in, in Dingle and she’s in her later years now.

But she really did delight in taking a few moments to explain in English to the audience, okay, this is what this song is about, and then fully immerse herself in the song. It didn’t break her concentration or her flow whatsoever, and I could see how. Gloriously, the people in the room responded to that because not everybody will understand, and I think we do naturally start to zone out or dissociate a little bit if it’s been like 30 minutes and we can’t cling onto anything, even if the music is lovely.

MUSIC: 

Amano: This poem. It was written in Sapporo which is in the north of Japan on the island of Hokkaido, though a colonized place in and of itself by what is now Japan at the expense of the indigenous.

I went to language school there for five weeks and I don’t think I learned a huge amount of Japanese ’cause I was so overwhelmed. But I did a lot of observation of life and yeah, the underground is vast and sprawling because it snows so heavily in the winter in this city that a lot of life moves underground for a few months of the year. 

This is ‘Underpass 6’.

Everywhere I go goes the soft jazz, the hum of melancholia in a Japanese station underpass, Sapporo underpass. 

Six sprawling intimate silent lips, withholding screeching tongues. 

Let there be no air with which to make mistakes. 

Only the earth shakes out loud here, 

while everywhere Jazz occupies the airwaves, 

fingers caress ivory keys, but to touch

You or me? No, this is not the place. Skin Tears, sweat, rage, 

live only on the flat screen or the flat page, 

or there in the dark where the customer pays. 

Touch my disobedience while. 

The quick train flattens my dislocated lungs and the jaaaaaazz

is quenched.

Amano: So I was born in Karume, which is a city close to Fukuoka. In the very southern island of Japan, of the main three islands of Japan. And my family are from close to a city called Kumamoto. So a little mountain town, lots of rice fields, middle of nowhere.

I always laugh like I’m from the shtick in both countries. I’m not a city girl.

Bairbre Flood: Yeah, you’re a bog woman from Japan and Kerry. Yeah. What are the odds, 

Amano: Yeah.

Culturally, it’s on its own in good ways and in bad ways, and. I can understand why so many people in so many places find it fascinating and have been drawn there for different reasons, and I can also understand why it ends up in some ways being quite cheaply objectified as well, because there are so many things to feel fascinated by.

There’s so many things that fit into that exotic curiosity that we all have. And yeah, I think I’ve. Although I haven’t lived there, I have in some ways reflected that in other people by sheer virtue of telling someone that I’m half Japanese or that my father’s Japanese, I so often have a response that, is them sharing all of the things that they love about this country with me that like I, I really don’t know about.

Amano: But it’s a beautiful thing and a challenging thing. I think people have a sense of familiarity, or at least at and at some of the soft cultural levels, some ownership over elements of Japanese cultural exports, like whether it’s anime or film or the language itself is so popular or music and that that people feel very proud, to share what they feel they know about this place. But I guess I’m just learning too. 

So sometimes it’s hard to navigate projection and like my lived experience and not wanting to disappoint people or burst their bubble, but also staying true to myself. And it’s funny, it’s a fascinating place to be associated with.

I think that nuance is so important and you must encounter this all the time because you meet people who have I. Immediate experiences of migration or seeking international protection, et cetera. It’s so important to be able to have a nuanced opinion of your home country. It doesn’t mean you love it any less, it’s just, we have to be able to say this.

Elements of this are overwhelming, elements of this are corrupt, whatever it is in the particular place. And to have some feeling of fighting to change that. I do think in my interactions that I’ve had with young people or people of my own age in Japan when I was spending time there I’m not sure if there’s so much space to advocate for change in such a ritualized traditional society. 

Amano: And that can be hard. I think a lot of people who’ve had opportunities to study or work abroad, even if it’s for a year, find it really hard to go home and reintegrate into a culture of obedience and hierarchy. And in many ways I feel very blessed that I grew up in Ireland.

That I didn’t quite have that experience of being a woman, of being a human, with really high expectations. I was able to make mistakes and drop out of school and have boyfriends and do things at my own pace that I probably wouldn’t, I just realistically wouldn’t have been allowed to do had I grown up in Japan.

That said, I think the culture of dedication to work, to craft, to family is also extremely beautiful. The balance in all things. I don’t know. I hope I spend more time there someday and I can have a more informed opinion. 

Amano: But for now I think I’m really lucky actually for all of the challenges that might have been experienced by me as a young person in Ireland yearning to know more about this place or yearning to not have a face like this and just be Irish and have a normal Irish name and a normal Irish family. I think now I see it as an asset and I am learning so much from being at the threshold of things with the Irish language as well.

I think that’s my. Purpose as a person, as an artist, whether it’s in music or someday in some other field, academia or something. I just, by virtue of being born, I brought together cultures or styles or aesthetics or sensibilities that don’t often get to meet in such an intimate way. And I like to be that bridge and bring other things that don’t often get to meet together.

And yeah, that’s, I think that’s me now, and I’m happy with that. 

Bairbre Flood: That’s beautiful. And I think as an artist, as a human being it’s fantastic. But as an artist it’s great because it gives you such different ways of looking at things and access to different traditions and yeah it’s just an amazing opportunity and a lovely thing to have to be able to access.

Yeah. I just wish, I wish for people who are of mixed race in Ireland, I just wish that process would be a little bit smoother for them in the future. This is my wish for Ireland as it continues to mature, which maybe, I dunno if it’s getting there or not. To be honest, sometimes I think it is, sometimes I think it’s getting worse in some ways, but I just wish that it would just be smoother for people – that they don’t have to go through so much to get to that point. 

Amano: Yeah. I hope so too.

I think I share that wish with you. I think we’re not quite there yet, since I’ve stepped back into public life in a musician sense, it’s been quite fascinating because so many of the opportunities I’ve received are through the Irish language, but I have found some correlation between people reaching out to me, say for something really exciting like a television or radio program. They’re contacting me not because of my music or my poetry or something. It’s ’cause wow, there’s a person of color who can speak Irish. We want them to talk about racism or like migration or something.

Even though it’s not like what my work is focused on right now. So I think we have a few years to go before. Just having a more dynamic, diverse public sphere. And I think giving people platforms like this one, where I can bring up racism. You’re not like dragging it outta me.

Amano: Or people can open up their own space to have a conversation that they want to have, that they feel empowered in having. But that it’s not like a novelty, that it’s not like the focus of the event. I dunno. I think I’m not sure we’re there yet. I know I’ve definitely been. Part of events and situations like that myself, and I do think platforms are incredibly important, but I just, I do think empowerment and tools and just supporting all working class people generally to make the work that they want to make with as much ease as they can, will naturally facilitate more cohesive communities will naturally facilitate better art and, at the end of the day, that’s just what we need is the basics. And from there people always find more common ground for sure. 

MUSIC: Todchai by Amano x Kalabanx

Bairbre Flood: I did want to just ask you something very quickly on the activism side and maybe something on how activism fuels you or how and how it interlinks with your art and how you see that process? 

Amano: I’m not sure about yourself, Bairbre, but I know that activism has been an aspect of your life for many years and I think it changes. I really do think your relationship to what it is to be an activist changes, and I’m definitely in a period of change right now.

I think. One of the characteristics myself of being involved in social movements or making art related to social movements, liberation or the liberation of others has just been an overwhelming sense that I have to do something. I have to do something and my have to do something often ends up on a page.

I understand that there’s other people who have to do something, ends up in on the street or ends up studying law. We all maybe experience the impulse of wanting to assist other human beings or other animals at a very deep soul level if we’re open to it. But that can lead us in different directions.

And I think trusting that. All of the different pieces of the tapestry matter that your skills, no matter what they are, will feed into a bigger ecology of change is really important. I think for me right now, I’m trying to focus on honing my skills because I feel like I’ve done lots of different things in moments, but I haven’t really focused my energy on being in my, in my feeling fully confident and skilled in something.

Amano: And I think doing that and then using those skills to facilitate. New conversations to facilitate the empowerment of other artists is where my future skills will be best used.

It’s quite an amazing thing to care enough about something and to take action. And I don’t really know if there’s a formula. For that. I think you have to make loads of mistakes and do things badly and look back and cringe on some of the things that you said or did for sure. If you have that bark, if you have that overwhelming, oh my God, I need to do something about something, just try and start small.

And I think a lot of people get caught up about the idea that my contribution will never be enough. I can’t do enough. Who am I to make this change? Or to do anything? Will people laugh at me? Will, maybe they will, but I’ve never ever stepped out on, under the umbrella of, a  social movement or a protest or a some sort of changemaking event and not met people who are appreciative and not met. People who want to do more work together and be friends, so yeah, I hope activism. In some way will always be part of my work. I think actually following your heart and not taking the safe road of doing the job that feels safest if you have the opportunity to, most people in the world don’t have that opportunity.

Most people in the world have to make ends meet, have to make sacrifices to stay alive. And I’m just very blessed that I’ve been born into a particular moment in my family, in my town, in my community where. I have had options, and it’s not easy being an artist, but I’m choosing that and I know I can make a bigger impact there.

Amano: And if you’re an architect or a nurse or a teacher or whatever it is, you can make your impact. But I think if you’re following your heart in that career, you’ll make the biggest impact. And that’s it. Yes. If you have that choice, it’s scary, but. To break that ceiling of the people who’ve gone before you and do it is such a sacred thing.

I think that is activism. I know myself when I think about my Japanese and Irish family, like the matrilineal lines, my God choice. Choice on who to marry, a job choice on where to live. Like that just was not part of the reality for any of the women who’ve come before me. And my family’s really open until me and my mom.

So I think with that in mind, I’d be crazy not to at least give it a go. Give freedom a go, 

MUSIC: Heart by Amano x Kalabanx ft. Liam O’Maonlai 

Bairbre Flood: A huge thanks to Amano for talking to me and for the beautiful art she’s creating through her music and poetry. 

You can find more about her different projects and collaborations on her website –amanoanseo.com and follow her @amanoanseo  

I’ve put links to some of her music and performances on Youtube and the album, ‘Thread’ on Bandcamp with the shownotes too. You’ve been listening to several of the tracks from that album throughout this episode, including ‘Southwind’ and ‘Tus’ and ‘Heart’ and ‘Leighis’ also featuring Liam O’Maonlai.

Thank you all for listening, thanks to the arts council of Ireland for funding this podcast, from me Bairbre Flood, bye for now!