Back in the 80s there was a band in Japan called Tama. Their music was hip, with a dry sense of humor about Japanese culture that was also very affectionate. The highly unusual Toshiaki Chiku, one of band's founders, went on to perform on an album of Beatles tunes all played on ukelele. That should tell you something — but one thing you may hear, if you listen to Tama is an almost Beatlesque sensibility as well.
My favorite Tama song is on their first album: Sandal, called The Ozone Dance. I won't pretend to say I can translate the lyrics with any precision except to say that the song is about a youth who dances barefoot in the moonlight with a kind of bliss — and my favorite line in the song is:
"ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten ten bokura wa ten ni naru, aoi tsuki no ... ni odoru, hikari no tsubu ni naru."
Translators of haiku know that there are many homonyms in Japanese, making the meaning of any given word filled with the resonance of all the other meanings heard in the sound. The word "ten" repeated in this lyric can mean "dot" or "point" as in "points of light," or it can mean "sky" or "heaven" or for that matter it can mean "legend." In this line, I have always heard "ten" as meaning "sparkling points of light" since light is the subject of this part of the song, if not the whole song. So a rough translation of this line might be:
"So many sparkling points of light in the heavens, we are all sparkling lights, dancing beneath the blue moon, we are seeds of light."
And thus the connection to Hanukkah, and the solstice celebration when we honor the return of the light at the time of deep darkness. And my message for today: we are seeds of light. Lets dance and celebrate, honor and nurture that light.
For those of you who'd like see and hear the song performed by the band in all their strangeness, you can follow the link. Or watch the animation done by a fan and found on youtube below:
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