Oki Kano, known professionally as OKI, is a leading musician of Ainu music—the music of Japan’s northernmost indigenous people. Born to a Japanese mother and an Ainu father, OKI has recovered and recreated traditional music on the tonkori, a stringed instrument of the Ainu people of Karafuto (a region also known as Sakhalin). The rich, reverberating twang of the tonkori strings, which are traditionally made from deer tendons, allowed Ainu shamans to communicate with spirits that control the wind, rain and other natural phenomena called kamuy. Find out more at the link.