Now Available!
Smithsonian Folkways Recording presents:
120,000 Stories
Discography.
120,000 Stories
“Nobuko Miyamoto is an icon of Asian American music and activism. Since the early 1970s, she has been exploring ways to reclaim and respirit our minds, bodies, histories, and communities, using the arts to create social change and forge solidarity. 120,000 Stories collects powerful new songs, reinterpretations of old ones, and recordings from across her career, including from the seminal 1973 album A Grain of Sand and the band Warriors of the Rainbow. These songs speak to past and present struggles—for self-determination, Black Lives, the environment. They chronicle difficult histories, they celebrate resilient traditions, and most of all, they endeavor to connect communities.” -Smithsonian Folkways Recording
A Grain of Sand
“In 1973, three young activists in New York City recorded A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America. Singing of their direct lineage to immigrant workers as well as their affinity with freedom fighters everywhere, Chris Kando Iijima, Nobuko JoAnne Miyamoto, and William “Charlie” Chin recorded the experiences of the first generation to identify with the term and concept Asian American—a pan-ethnic association formulated upon a shared history of discrimination.” - Sojin Kim
Best of Both Worlds
This was Nobuko's first solo album, produced in 1983 by Derek Nakamoto. Each Asian born in America has to define for themselves what it means, how they will use the best of both of those worlds. The album spans a simple, yet profound ballad like “American Made,” to music she wrote for a modern ballet about the immigrant experience - “Journey in Three Movements.” (video is archived) It was distributed on vinyl and is not yet digitized for distribution.
To All Relations
To All Relations was produced by Derek Nakamoto in 1997 on the Bindu Records label. Its title song and theme for the album, “To All Relations” was inspired by Nobuko’s presence at the Many Winters Gathering in San Pedro, California in 1992, a protest against the 500 year anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival. At this gathering elders spoke the words “mitakuye oyasin,” (all relations) spreading its meaning to all those gathered. Soon after a song came to her. It was blessed in ceremony by Lakota elder, Wallace Black Elk, whose spiritual son chanted a prayer in the recording. This profound teaching became woven into Nobuko’s music and work into the future.