Welcome to a very special holiday edition of Hyphenated. 

As it's the season of giving, we're dropping a new episode featuring Youka Snell of the band Mitsune.

But in return, you have to give something back. So how this is working is that I'm inviting you to click on the link in the show notes below to make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. 

CLICK HERE TO DONATE! (https://tilt.fyi/6rNeZ6p5hf)

Once you've done that, you will receive via email a link to a Google Drive folder where you can listen to and/or download the episode and also a PDF of the episode transcript.

If for some reason you are unfamiliar with Doctors Without Borders, they are an organization of doctors and healthcare professionals who volunteer to go to areas of conflict, disease, outbreaks, natural and human-made disasters. Since their founding in 1971, they've helped tens of millions of people and grown from a group of 13 doctors and journalists to an international movement of nearly 70,000. 

Please give what you can.

So let me thank you in advance for your donation as well as your continued support of this project. Meanwhile, Hyphenated will return in the new year with new episodes of artists exploring the boundaries and frontiers of music and their identity. So as always, please like and subscribe to ensure you get the latest episodes in your podcast feed.

Happy holidays.

EPISODE SUMMARY:
Youka didn't really consider what it meant to be half-Japanese until she reached adulthood. As she says, she was just busy “doing her thing and growing up in Australia” and training as a violinist. But once she began to explore this side of herself, she found herself “magically” drawn to the shamisen, the traditional Japanese lute instrument. And now based in Berlin, she and her bandmates in Mitsune are making shamisen music for our not-so-traditional times.

Please like and subscribe. Also, consider buying some of today's artist music or adding them to your streaming playlist. Or better yet, go see them play live. A playlist of music in this episode, transcript, as well as links to more information about the artist, can be found at our website http://www.hyphenated.eu. It's also where you can find other episodes and discover more hyphenated artists. And if you'd like to support this series, please tell a friend.