Mitsuo “Milt” Yonezu demonstrating his ocarina skills during a tour of Cambodia by the Khmer Ocarina Project.
Led by 27-year-old ocarina virtuoso Mitsuo Yonezu, the four-person Khmer Ocarina Project wowed audiences during their two-week tour of bars and schools in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, playing covers of jazz, samba and bossa nova songs, re-written to be performed on the ocarina. The instrument, while resembling a bullet-ridden egg, is capable of producing a soft flute-like sound when air is blown correctly through its surface holes.
He then embarked on a career as a professional ocarina teacher and composer, which has seen him write the soundtracks for several Japanese television shows and a movie by director Shusuke Kaneko.
“I started learning about 16 years ago, when the ocarina was not so popular and only a limited amount of people were playing it. Compared to other musical instruments, the ocarina has a special structure. This instrument makes a really round and heart warming sound that I find very attractive.”
Ocarinas are already widely used in kindergartens and primary schools in South Korea and Japan, Machiguchi explained, and the purpose of the Khmer Ocarina Project is to promote their use in Cambodia as a cheap, locally-made alternative to recorders and flutes which can be used to teach music easily to school-aged children
Ocarinas are constructed from clay or glass, and are simple to make. A series of Cambodia-specific ocarinas in rabbit, turtle and pigeon shapes have already been commissioned by the Khmer Ocarina Project and produced by potteries in Kampong Chhnang.
They will then be distributed to four schools in the province, along with another 200 ocarinas donated by South Korean manufacturer Zin Ocarina.
The ocarina belongs to a very old family of instruments, believed to date back to over 12,000 years. Ocarina-type instruments have been of particular importance in Chinese and Mesoamerican cultures. For the Chinese, the instrument played an important role in their long history of song and dance. The ocarina has similar features to the Xun , another important Chinese instrument (but is different in that Ocarina uses an internal duct, whereas Xun is blown across the outer edge.
In Japan, the traditional ocarina is known as the tsuchibue (kanji: ; literally "earthen flute"). Different expeditions to Mesoamerica, including the one conducted by Cortés, resulted in the introduction of the ocarina to the courts of Europe.
Both the Mayans and Aztecs had produced versions of the ocarina, but it was the Aztecs who brought the song and dance to Europe that accompanied the ocarina. The ocarina went on to become popular in European communities as a toy instrument.
The ocarina was featured in the Nintendo video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, attracting a marked increase in interest and a dramatic rise in sales.
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