Happy New Year

Once upon a time, I got a call from the Storyteller at Window Rock, the headquarters of the Navajo nation. She said her people needed my medicine. I asked her if she knew what I did and she said no but she’d seen me in a dream performing with a fan. She knew her ancestors would help her find me because we were entering into the Time of No Water - when Coyoto comes to the city. A time for people to come together.

After the dream, a few months later, the Window Rock Storyteller was sitting on an airplane and asked the man next to her if he knew me. He turned out to be a friend of mine, a circuit preacher in Nevada who gave her my number. I asked her why me and she said because her people and my people were cousins. (I am Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Scottish and the Aoki family have Ainu roots, the indigenous people of Japan. Striking similarities connect the Ainu and the Diné, as Navajo people call themselves.) But she couldn’t have known that, she didn’t even know my name.

Brenda's Great Grandmother Alice from Edinburgh, Scotland

Years earlier in 2000, Togi Sensei, the master Mark studied with for 26 years, wanted to do a Gagaku ritual at Canyon de Chelly, to greet the rising sun at the dawn of the new millennium. Togi Sensei was the lineage holder of the Gagaku family who had played the music of the Sun Goddess for the Emperors of Japan for the past 1500 years. But Togi-Sensei said the music was even older than that - its roots extended through China, India, Tibet and Persia. One of Sensei’s senior students, Mas Kodani, asked the Diné elders for permission and showed them a video of the dance. When the elders saw it, they said they didn’t know Gagaku but they knew that music and that dance. And that they would join the ceremony.

Mark remembers driving a jeep - racing across the sand in total darkness trying to keep up with the Navajo guides. Racing in order to not get stuck in the sand. Racing before the sun rose. No audience was allowed. No photographs. A real ritual - just musicians and dancers. Mark remembers playing sho, as Togi Sensei danced Bugaku just the sun began to rise on the horizon - one of the most spectacular moments of his life.

In 2021 Mark and I celebrate our 45th anniversary as creative artists. We are so grateful to our teachers Togi Suenobu & Nomura Mansaku. Our mentors Yuriko Doi and Jael Weisman. Our incredible artist collaborators, who have continued to work with us for decades. Thank you to our funders and those of you who continue to contribute to the First Voice Family of artists. We are in the time of No Water. There are coyote sightings in San Francisco every day now. In our 45 years as artists we’ve performed all over the world, met medicine people, wisdom keepers, cultural bearers, politicians, rich people, poor people and beloved Everyday People everywhere.

We’ve learned that we are more connected than we know. That art will lift us out of the quagmire. The Art of Kindness. The Art of Love. The Art of sharing Universal Truths, each of us in our own unique way.

We wish you Peace, Prosperity and Good Health in the New Year,

Brenda and Mark

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