What's new about Azur Indian?

Since last October, we have been struggling to seek for how to shift our music project for the setting of aid recipient county such as Costa Rica due to re-location of the project from Japan to there and re-transformation of the its schemes.

And finally we reached a point where we found our focus shifting towards protecting minority's rights through form of art.

From the perspective of peace studies and development, there are still many issues regarding abuse of human rights. Minorities such as foreign-descendant group and indigenous group can be the victims of its abuse of rights in many cases. Most of the times, their rights are vulnerable and put aside, that has to always depend on the decision made by majorities. Thus, in order to make their livelihood better, there needs from legislation by the authority to grass-root support or raising awareness by ordinal majority citizens.

To tackle this given issue, our focus will be set towards protection of indigenous intangible cultural asset: music in order to raise awareness on this issue. It needs both top down and bottom up strategy, and since we are doing grass-root activity, we will take bottom up task in this regard.

In order to make an intangible asset visible and preserve it, it first needs a way to be seen as a tangible way like transcription of their music in order to
1. preserve
2. disseminate to generation to generation as well as other entities or individuals who are willing to be involved to play their music.
Therefore, first we will work on transcription then disseminate it to general citizens through our performance as well as the means of social media.

We will keep updating in this blog, so please check it out!
 
Currently, I (Midori) am back in Manila to continue the rest of the courses for master's degree.

I will come back to Costa Rica in the beginning of July then start internship working for above indigenous issues through music.

I am looking forward to seeing you all again in Costa Rica!

Pura vida para todos!

Entry : Midori

Thank you very much for coming to our charity concert 31 March, 2011

Thank you very much for all coming to our Charity concert held on the 31st March. Supported by Nelly and Club Union, we successfully conducted a concert with don Oscar.

The programme was divided into two parts; the first part was classical music and the second part was full of tango with don Oscar.

As for the first part, it was enjoyable as usual to play especially both of Antarqui and I are more and more used to play these pieces. I feel that we are getting more capable to insert our own understanding to the performance.

As for the second part, it was a new fresh experiment in terms of playing tango with someone else! Don Oscar is a distinguish bandounion player. We had a lot to learn from him from tango perspective of playing music.

(Bandounion and Cello duet)

This charity concert was initially to raise fund for kids victims of violence in Costa Rica; however Japan was affected by catastrophic disaster recently, we also asked audiences to support Japan.

(The performance with don Oscar was really new to us. I fell in love with Tango!)

Thanks to all the warm support, we collected extra US$200 to donate to a grass root support group "Oga for Aid" that is helping people in isolated areas in Miyagi prefecture, Japan where I (Midori) come from. See this : https://www.facebook.com/#!/OGAFORAID

I just hope that we can rebuild our country as soon as possible as well as caring for psychologically affected victims. I hope Azur Indian will have a chance to perform for those people in the near future.

(Just before the concert started...are we both nervous a bit??)

The concert was truly enjoyable to have our friends and family. Some people started dancing, some started crying for nostalgie, some fell in love with tango!

Thank you again for all to share this memorable moment with us!
We hope to see you all in near future!

Thank you all for coming!

University for Peace Model UN Closing Ceremony 5 March, 2011

Three-day Model UN was held at University for Peace. During these days, we acted as if we were in a real UN committee. I myself was a bloger, so I was attending 5 conferences (Security Council, UN Women, Peace Building, Environment, Human Rights) taking pictures and writing articles.

At the end of 3-day, Azur Indian was given a chance to play music at the closing ceremony to congratulate our success and participants' effort. Thanks for UPMUNC committee to have given us a chance!

This time we played with a violinist Sara Ford (IPS student) for the second time (see entry  "University for Peace 30th Anniversary" which was the first time to play with Sara and Azur Indian) played various kind of music, from classic to Costa Rican ones.

Applause for everyone who participated in UPMUNC! And great thanks for the committee!

Azur Indian 2010 to 2011

Time flies! 2010 had passed by so quickly and 2011 has arrived. 2010 was chellanging year and brought many new things to Azur Indian! So let me recall and share what we have achieved and what we will focus in 2011.

March 2010, I (Midori) left Japan and started master's degree in Manila and Costa Rica. Antarqui later came back to Costa Rica, so we moved the base of our music project from Niigata, Japan to Costa Rica in September.

As for the content of project, it aimed to promote "Understanding Different Culture" through world music appreciation when we worked in Niigata. It consisted of talk part (mainly about Africa and Central America) and music part (Classic Music, Tango, Jazz and so forth according to request we receive).

The programme conducted in Niigata was formed and targeted Japanese citizens to promote their knowledge of other countries; however this did not directly apply to the setting of Costa Rica when we thought about doing it here.Therefore, we started looking into what and how we can re-form our project to adjust the current setting of Costa Rica. 

Finally we reached to a new idea for the next phase, focusing on indigenous/ethnic music of Costa Rica. This aims to empower indigenous group of people through form of music. First we will focus on Costa Rican ones, hopefully expand our focus to Central America, South America later, and  after that covering many kind of ethnic music from all over the world as much as we can.

Through this project, we aim to contribute international development focusing on intangible cultural heritage such as extinguishing indigenous culture through for of music, precise transcribing their music to preserve. 

If music is transcribed, it can easily encourage any people to play including people in endangered culture since their common problem in terms of preservation of culture faces how to convey it to the next generations.Therefore, making endangered culture visible is significant.

Besides the new project, we will continuously work on what we have been doing; performing, teaching, supporting music in any ways.

2011 is the third year since we started Azur Indian in Niigata, Japan. We are hopeful for the success of our new project. Moreover, I personally hope to encourage Japanese people who were victimised by the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake; particularly because I come from the devastated area.

As we both believe that music itself is directly connected to development; therefore it can form the staring point and platform for development. Needless to say, what we expect for the next step for Japan is to rebuild and develop the country again. In this sense, I hope to contribute my country and my loved people through form of music for their great effort that are being made on the ground even at this moment. 

Entry : Midori

Christmas Concert 24 December 2010

I know it is too late to talk about the Christmas since it has been over 4 months since then...but please allow me to write about it since I want to keep record....

On the Christmas day, we played at Romero's Christmas party held at Daniel and Huri's house. There were over 30 people invited to the party, the house was beautifully decorated, Dani and Huri welcomed everyone with good food and drinks.

We happily presented what our focus for our the music project will be to everyone attended there, in which  we will work on indigenous/ethnic music. Then we played 4 pieces starting by Swan, then Humoresque, Elegie and Libertango.

It was very special for me to play at Christimas in Central America because the day was very different from my country. It was truly much more holy and religious.

(Entry : Midori)