Truck driver, pool-hall hustler, glass-factory worker, pineapple picker, propannegas delivery man, driving instructor, chef--you name it, Isamu Asato seems to have done it. These days through, he's quite happy with just three jobs. By day he is a fisherman who doubles as an electrican on Taketomi Island, Okinawa,and at night he is a musician at the local Asadoya ''snack'' bar.
With the release of his debut CD in Japan and an upcoming first consert on the mainland, he might find he will have to devote more time to the music Asato, 51, sites in a chic Harajuku cafe, during a recent press trip to Tokyo and recounts the story of how a part-time everything suddenly become one of the hottest Okinawan musicians.

Isamu Asato / Uminchu ~Yaeyama Nasake-Uta / RES-12

1. Yonakuni-syonkane-bushi (Instrumental)
   
2. Chindara-bushi ~kubayamakuiji-bushi
   
3. Mafueeratsu-bushi
   
4. Asadoya-bushi
   
5. Kumoma-bushi
   
6. Densa-bushi
   
7. Kunnora-bushi
   
8. Yonakuni-syonkane-bushi [2:40_RealAudio][1:28_AU]
   
9. Hatoma-bushi
   
10. Agarouza-bushi
    
11. Tubarama [3:01_RealAudio][1:05_AU]
    
12. Tubarama (Instrumental)
    

Success comes late but sweet
for Okinawa folksinger Asato

''I met the designer Jun Mimura while he was on holiday on a small island in Okinawa,'' Asato says, ''He was swimming and wa started talking and somehow just hit it off and become friends. He would then visit me when I was living in Taketomi, but Ihad no idea what he did or that he was famous or anything, for 10 years, and he also didn't know I played music.
''He then brought his friend with him to Taketomi, Toshiki Arai, who is the editor of Switch magazine. I was a fisherman by this stage, and the three of us would often go around the islands catching fish, and I would cook them and serve them up. We would drink and eat and then I would get out my sanshin (Okinawa shamisen) and play for them. I had been playing sanshin since I was 8, but never professionally or anything'' Arai likede what he heard, Asato made a demo tape and Arai started peddling it around to his friend in the music business. Although from Yaeyama, the nearest of the Okinawan island to Taiwan, Asato's music was different to the usual Yaeyama minyo. If Okinawans think of Japan as the foreign mainland, then Yaeyamans think of Okinawa in the same way. For years, Yaeyamans lived under the oppressive Ryukyu goverment and were forsed to pay high taxes.
Most Yaeyama minyo are of the yunta or ''working song'' variety, up-tempo, originally just vocals and hand claps since they couldnŐt afford any instruments. People sang them as they worked in the fields or at sea to cheer one another up. Asato sings nasake uta, the slow, tragic type of song. ''About 400 years ago, wa had to obey the goverment in Okinawa and our life was so hard. The songs tell of such sad experiences, almost too tragic to tell. For example, men and women couldnŐt marry whom they wished.''
Asato learned to play from the greatest current players from Yaeyama. He studied with both Tetsuhiro Daiku and Yukighi Yamazato, the current standard-bearers of Yaeyama, traditional music, during a three-year stay in Naha, Nevertheless, he says he can't quite believe the attention he's getting.
''I'm afraid of everything,'' he says. ''I think I need to study more and more. But I hope people can be moved by listning to know about the traditional Yaeyama music and history.''