*New Single Has Released*
#HMTP "Hiroko's Monthly Tune Project" #3 "Wind's Song" has released, and now available on Spotify, iTunes, AppleMusic, Deezer, Tidal.
Wind's Song - Hiroko Arakaki
https://artist.landr.com/music/672985024663
When I was a college student, Waseda Shochiku screened a documentary film called “Screaming Masterpiece" which is about musical features in Iceland and various artists including björk, Sigur Rós, múm. Since I'm fond of their sounds, I went to watch it. Then, I was totally fascinated by the place "Iceland" itself.
The film contains the scenes of björk's live show. When I listened to the low notes in the intro of "All is Full of Love”, tears started to flow out like a waterfall and I felt somehow “I will go to Iceland someday”.
The first time I had been there was in 2009 (this trip was pretty dramatic, but I'll skip it because it's a long story). After returning to Japan, I was suffering from a kind of lovesickness which makes me want to go to Iceland intermittently, but I couldn't go there so often, so I've always been thinking, like, "I want to go there, again..." "That amazing, overwhelming nature...", "It was so beautiful...I miss there", and "The place I haven't visit last time would be like this when I actually walk there..." Too dreaming and finally wrote a song called "Kaze no Uta" ( means "Wind's Song").
When I visited there for the second time in the fall of 2013, there were exactly the sceneries I envisioned in this song. "Wow, really this!" I was so impressed that I felt like I was dreaming (this trip's story is also pretty dramatic and long).
In Iceland, wild winds often blow. Those are strong enough that push you back slowly even if you are standing firmly. When you're accustomed to daily life in Japan, it might make your blood freeze a bit if your car is blown by the winds when you're on paved roads( the specified speed is basically 90 km/h). Also, out of the high season, the road freezes easily, so 4WD is necessarily required.
Once, I have led our car to offroad with my too ignorant navigation, the car was stuck in the snow, on the vast tundra land where you could see just moss and snow and nobody there.
Or once at night, We had a flat tire due to running over some fallen rocks, on a dark coastal road with very little traffic. Every time I faced these moments, I felt deeply the meaning of the word, "Don't underestimate the power of nature."
Iceland is also a well-known volcanic country. The photo which I used as the jacket for this single had taken by Yuri, one of my close friend, in 2013. It's the place near the part of the broken bridge "Skeiðará Bridge Monument", which shows the dreadfulness of the floods that occurred when the Vatnajökull volcano erupted in 1996 and melted a part of the glacier.
The nature you see in Iceland is wild and powerful, just overwhelming. Then, somewhere in my mind, I realize that I have an incomparable sense of security, knowing the facts that nature exists as nature and that humans live in harmony with nature.
The Icelandic people I met helped us very kindly, and casually just same as breathing, seeing us in need. When we got stuck in because of a flat tire, the few cars that passed by stopped. A family came helped us changing the tire even though it's raining lightly and cold, and another woman gave me a paper with her phone number, saying "Please call me if the things go wrong. I will talk to your rental car company in Icelandic." It was just like a family.
Maybe it's because they know the power of the nature that swallows tiny lives left with careless in nature easily. But it's not that they are scared of nature, I imagined. For Icelandic people, it is "natural", and rather they are loving and respectful to it, I felt.
Nature is not a thing to overcome, but one that we accept its behaviour and live in harmony in it. Warm, cool, and calm. I want to be like them as a human being! For those who live in Japan where natural disasters often occur, their attitude may be a great hint, I guess.
For me, "Kaze no Uta" is such a precious song which is my love letter to Iceland and nature, holds my favourite scenery. It reminds me of the ideal feelings of "I want to live like this as a human being", and the appreciation that "Something makes me to alive and is supporting me to go forward" when I sing this song. "Kaze no Uta" originally a Japanese song, this time I translated it in English and rearranged into "Wind's Song", released as a work for my ongoing "HMTP" (Hiroko's Monthly Tune Project). This project is that I release a track a month, and this tune was for January 2020.
Another one of my close friends, Vicky checked the English lyrics. I'm honoured to introduce that she was also in charge of English subtitles of "Naraibusan (I Want to Learn)" which is available on its MV on YouTube ( https://youtu.be/6NAhAad-OKo ). Thank you always, Vicky.
I'm just singing my favourite things, but I hope you'll listen to. I dream it would be more fun if I could share such feelings, such as the joy of being held in majestic nature and being overwhelmed, with security, with someone anywhere in the world.
