Mitsune carves out their own space between worlds. With roots stretching from Tokyo to Greece, the band brings together musicians from diverse backgrounds who fuse centuries-old sounds with raw, contemporary edge. Their music pulses with ritualistic intensity. On stage, Mitsune becomes a force of nature, layering trance-like grooves, primal vocals and explosive rhythms into a live experience that’s both grounded in tradition and completely untamed. We spoke with bandleader Youka Snell about the journey behind their transcultural identity, and the raw heartbeat that drives everything they do.
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Introduction
What does the name ‘Mitsune’ mean?
The word “Mitsune” contains two Japanese kanji characters. The first character refers to something sweet like nectar, and the second means sound. So together, it loosely translates as “sweet sound” or “nectar of sound”. But it’s also a play on the word “mitsu”, which means “three”. That number holds a lot of meaning for us. The band started out as a shamisen trio. Three women from three different cultures: German, Japanese, and Australian, coming together through our love for the shamisen. Even the word “shamisen” has the character for three in it. So the word “mitsune” is like wordplay with some personal meaning behind it.
How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard you before?
The elevator pitch is: Japanese folk music fused with psychedelic, cinematic and ritual music, delivered with a punk mentality. It’s raw, primal and emotionally charged. Rather than harmonies we use modes, so most songs are built around a single root note. Which can make the music trance-inducing. We don’t have many chord changes, when we play in ‘D’ it’s just ‘D, D, D, D’. It’s something that really grounds you. Someone once described it as “primal,” and that stuck with me. I think folk music always has something primal. Especially the kind of music that we make: there’s screaming, there’s a lot of emotion. It’s straight from the heart.
What are your songs about?
About half of our repertoire is traditional Japanese folk music. Songs that are about physical work, fishing and paying taxes. Others are festive, like “matsuri” summer festival songs. The other half we write ourselves, exploring the tension between everyday life and times of celebration. There’s this Japanese concept we explore a lot with Mitsune: “Hare to Ke”. It’s like Yin and Yang of life – the balance between the ordinary and extraordinary. To have a successful life, you need to balance these two things. Mitsune leans into the celebratory side. Daily life is too full of work and screens. Our intention is to offer an explosion of joy to balance that out.
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Roots
What influences shaped your sound?
We have a crazy mix of influences. Each member brings a totally different musical background and has a wide range of influences. Petros, our percussionist, is Greek with a background in Afro-Latin hand percussion. He has travelled a lot in Morocco and collected several instruments along the way. Shiomi, the lead singer and shamisen player, grew up playing Min’yo and is now a regular on Berlin’s experimental and improvised music scene. Daigo, our bassist, is a jazz head who plays six nights a week around Berlin. I started as a classical violinist, and moved through hip hop and R&B. We all love improvisation, performance art, and trippy psychedelic stuff. We try to bring these influences in, in a non-obvious way. It’s like Min’yo is the Petri dish, and we each bring different bacteria into it.
How do you approach fusing these styles in your music?
Sometimes we’re very intentional. With our upcoming album, we literally made a list of sounds and influences we wanted to explore. At one point I was obsessed with khaliji rhythms from the Gulf countries, so used this as the initial inspiration for one track. There were many other things on the list and somehow everything made it onto the album. Other times we just jam and let our influences flow out of us naturally. They sneak into the music because they’re part of who we are.
What kind of traditional instruments do you use?
The shamisen is our core, it’s the love for this rare instrument that brought us together. We amplify the shamisen, run it through guitar pedals, and mix it with all kinds of sonic textures. Shiomi also plays the shakuhachi and shinobue, two Japanese flutes. Daigo plays a Yamaha electric upright bass. Petros’s setup is wild: a Moroccan goatskin drum, metal stove parts he found in Vietnam, whistles and bells that he’s picked up everywhere, gongs from Thailand… Recently we bought ceramic bird whistles in Portugal, we all got super excited and immediately added them to the show. If it makes an interesting sound and we love it, we use it.
Do you see Mitsune as building bridges between cultures?
Absolutely. Although it’s not explicitly our goal to do that. It’s not something we write into our mission statement, but it’s built into how we work. We’re constantly navigating cultural differences, communicating, compromising. It’s part of who we are. It’s woven into the fabric of the band. Xiaomi, for example, started playing shamisen again during a trip through the Silk Road, using it to connect with people when language was a barrier. That sense of openness and exchange defines us as a group of people. We always try to be open and curious to all the people that come across our paths.
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Live
What do you want audiences to feel during your live shows?
We probably all have different goals, but the common goal is that we want to surprise. Every show should be a little bit unpredictable, both for the audience and for us. We even made a rule for ourselves: every show, each of us has to do something unexpected, to keep it fun and alive. A weird scream, a twisted riff. Whatever it takes. If we’re not bored, the audience won’t be either. Personally, I want people to see something fresh and to leave thinking, “What the hell was that? I didn’t know I needed that in my life.”
Is there a live moment that stuck with you?
Recently at Ethno Port festival in Poland, we were about to play a song called Tubo Nekko “Flying Roots.” It’s quite an emotional song for us, because we all have very different roots. We have our ups and downs as a group, but we really love each other. Shiomi shared on stage how she’d been through burnout and depression and how much it meant to be there, exchanging energy with us and the audience. That moment, so raw, honest and loving will stay with me forever. I’ll never forget that.
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Inspires
What’s next for Mitsune?
Touring! We’re on the road through mid-August, playing across Europe. Then in the fall, we’ll release our new album. Finally! It’s been in the works for over two years. After that, more shows, more music. We’re already writing the next album, and we’ll likely record it in spring next year. There’s so much more to come.