Furusato: home of the heart

Many years ago, I met a Japanese woman at an in-patient hospital where I volunteered as a music entertainer. Patients would sign up for me to play music by their bedsides to lift their spirits. This Japanese woman was overjoyed at the prospect of speaking Japanese with me, and would frequently ask for my visit.  She would exclusively ask for Japanese folk songs, mostly children’s songs, which we would sing together as I played my portable piano.  She was ostracised by her family after marrying an American man after WWII. She moved to America with her husband and never returned to Japan. She told me about her long struggle with loneliness in America, and how she feels lonely once more now that everyone she loved, including her husband, has passed. The secret in coping loneliness, she told me, is to sing Japanese folk songs as it always brings her heart closer to her homeland.  

This composition in four short movements is inspired by my time with this woman and her remarkable strength and courage in reclaiming her freedom and identity in a foreign land.  The work loosely incorporates three well-known Japanese children's songs. 

I.   Prologue
II.   Amefuri (Rainfall)
III.  Hamabeno Uta (Song of the Seashore)
IV.  Akatombo (Red Dragonfly)