Message to Asheville from Ishinomaki, Japan, the town hardest hit by the 2011 tsunami скачать в хорошем качестве

Message to Asheville from Ishinomaki, Japan, the town hardest hit by the 2011 tsunami

When Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, our town was broken. It did more than break our bridges, shops, roads, it knocked down more than trees and light poles. It did more than wash away our things. It took away something from our spirits, seeing all that we had worked to build, all that we enjoyed, all that we were so proud of in our beautiful town, lost. It felt inside like the twisted mess of debris we see everywhere. It was in the summer when my Japan ‘24 tour was planned and I knew basically nothing the Sendai area. It wasn’t until just before I came that I learned that I would play in Ishinomaki, the town hardest hit by the 2011 tsunami. It seemed like odd timing to visit a city that had experienced a natural disaster just as we recover from ours in Asheville. We approach Ishinomaki in late afternoon, the mountains rise all around us, with little villages huddled around the rice paddies on either side of the Kitakami River that gradually widens as we approach the coast. This was all underwater, they tell me. Underwater? I ask. I don’t even see the ocean from here. Yes, the tsunami pushed the river upstream, causing a flash flood. The valley became a chute, concentrating the force of the tsunami’s wave and squeezing the water through the mountains on either side of the valley, scouring out the villages along its banks. They take me to a memorial, an elementary school several miles from the coast in the Kitakami River Valley. The force of the flooding was so intense that all the walls of the school were violently demolished, even the walls on the second floor are gone. Twisted rebar sticks out of the rubble like an old man’s beard, the ceiling tiles washed away to the struts. Chalkboards still hang on interior walls, desks and chairs stand in protected corners, the clocks are stopped at 3:37. Many of the children had time to flee up into the surrounding hills, but 75 students were washed away. A plaque at the site reads: “Talk to one another, think together, and remind one another not to lose sight of the most important thing: the preciousness of life. Then, the future that we hope for will surely come.” La Strada is sold out, meaning that its 25 or 30 chairs are filled. The crowd is completely silent as they wait for us to start, silently sipping the one drink they are required to purchase with their ticket. Ren, my collaborator on Dobro from Sendai, and I walk to the stage to tune before we begin, and the plucking sounds stick out uncomfortably in the room like belches. I think about what I will say on stage. What do you say to a community who lost 6,000 souls? I explain a little about the message I hoped to take home to Asheville from Ishinomaki as we rebuild from our tragedy in North Carolina, and told them I had visited the school and read the beautiful memorial inscriptions to honor the dead. Then I sang “Hills of Swannanoa.” I get them to sing a few songs with me, including my friend Uchida Bob’s enduring Japanese song “Kogudake sa,” “Just Rowing.” I love to sing this at almost every show in Japan, but it was especially powerful in Ishinomaki. Just rowing, rowing this sea. Rain may fall, Wind may blow, But in hard times, The spirit may be reborn. After everyone leaves, we pack up and chat with the owners Aizawa-san and Tomoko, his wife. I ask them about the original La Strada venue. “All gone,” Tomoko says. As she tries to explain in Japanese, her husband carries out a retro-style, hand-made banner from the back room. It’s titled Tōhuku Ching Dong Summit. Tōhoku is the region around Sendai. On the banner, there is a building with a boat on top of it. Tomoko explains that the original La Strada was crushed by a large boat that washed up on the building atop the great wave. Below is a mustached man wearing a top hat carrying a whimsical contraption on his front with a drum and other noisemakers attached to it. A bird perches above him, crying, “tough!”as he shouts, “indomitable, impossible to defeat!” “Listen to our heart beat!” is written on the drum he is beating with a mallet. What is Ching Dong, I ask? Tomoko pulls out a real-life version of the noisemaker and puts the straps over her arms. See, she says, you ring the little gong (“ching”) and bang the drum (“dong”) with mallets. “Ching Dong” is the sound the thing makes, an onomatopoeia, and she demonstrates. It’s old fashioned, she explains, people used walk around and advertise something they were selling, like tofu or baked sweet potatoes or fishing poles. Tomoko explains to me, “See, people look ok, we have rebuilt everything. But they still remember. They can’t be fixed as easily. So that is why we have music here, to bring people together to heal and listen to music.” Their Ching Dong message at La Strada is “Listen to our heart beat!” So Asheville! From Tomoko’s Ching Dong in Ishinomaki, Japan: Listen to our heart beat! We are indomitable!