Brazilian-Okinawan Fusion: Music, Diaspora, and the Trans-Pacific Century
Fusão okinawana-brasileira: música, diáspora e o século transpacífico
ブラジル系ウチナーンチュのチャンプルー: 音楽、ディアスポラ、トランス・パシフィックの世紀
Join us for a night of award-winning music, talk story, history, and politics of the Okinawan diaspora in Brazil.
RSVP recommended
Born in São Paulo, Victor Kinjo is a diasporic Okinawan nominated for Best Singer in the 2018 Brazilian Popular Music Awards. After completing a Ph.D. in Social Science at the University of Campinas, he has dedicated his career to fusing Okinawan melodies with Brazilian beats and indigenous diasporic culture with contemporary politics. His album “Kinjo” was released in 2017 through Matraca Records/YB Music. He will perform new releases while talk the story of the Okinawan-Brazilian diaspora.
Born in São Paulo, Karina Satomi Matsumoto is a third-generation Okinawan who has served as president of Urizun (Association of Okinawa Scholarship Students in Brazil) and on the Board of Directors of the Brazil Okinawan Association. She currently works at a NPO for refugees in São Paulo. She will give a short lecture on the 110 years of Japanese and Okinawan immigration to Brazil, a contemporary overview of the Okinawan diaspora, and its relationship to the U.S. military base issue in the Okinawan homeland.
Born in the U.S., Annmaria Shimabuku is a second-generation Okinawan, Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at NYU, author of Alegal: Biopolitics and the Unintelligibility of Okinawan Life (Fordham UP, 2018), and member of the Global Uchinanchu Alliance (GUA). She will provide brief comments on transnational Okinawan organizing in face of Japanese capitalism and U.S. militarism.
