Complementary contradictions marked the annual Japanese Traditional Concert as the performing trio – Ava, Shimoji and Sunday fused antiquity with modernity at Courtleigh Auditorium in Kingston.

Mid-set, Isamu Shimoji strummed his guitar beautifully to Yukito Ara’s sanshin (eastern fretless banjo) riffs which were steadied by Sunday’s booming drum. Shimoji and Ara traded wails in the melody of Okinawa, the tropical island south of mainland Japan. The wails had intensified and were matched by thumping percussion. Their Okinawan dialect had listeners mute in utter amazement at their talents.

It’s a sound built on the dominant scale in which opposing major and minor scales are fused. It’s similar to the jazz scale but it existed long before the 20th century with distinct Okinawan phrasing.

“Umi Kareru…” Ara wailed, while playing his sanshin (which means three strings) to the slow beat of Sunday’s percussion. Ara’s voice, referred to as the “Jimmy Hendrix of Yaeyama”, had evoked the ancients more than Shimoji’s modern style. Ara continued his wails for minutes in a piece too long for radio because it existed long before that.

Ara ended with the skilful detuning of one string then played a chord. Shimoji may not be the ‘Hendrix of Yaeyama’, but his deep vocals engulfed the auditorium whilst strumming and vamping all six strings during power chords.

Ara and Sunday were dressed in full black and Shimoji’s rock star hair and jeans physically embodied the trios blending of tradition and modernity.

The mix of tradition and modernity isn’t new in Japan. It is the land of complementing contradictions where bullet trains pass temples as fast as the shrines are old; vending machines line benign rice fields; men in suits ride bicycles and women in kimonos hold Louis Vitton bags.

The trio was born within two years of each other starting with Ara in 1967, Shimoji in ’69 and Sunday in ’71. They were all born on Okinawa or neighbouring islands.