Ritsuki Nakano was born on 19th January 1975 on Amami Oshima, an island north of Okinawa. She started to sing at the age of four, and from the very beginning she was influenced by the Amami shima uta style.
By the age of 15, she won the grand prix "All Japan Minyo Awards" for traditional folk music and held the title of the youngest winner in Japan. Her debut album, Mucha ka na, was released under the name RIKKI in 1993 and laid the foundation stone to her career: The traditional Amami style merged with pop elements. In December of the same year her first maxi-single Manten no hoshi and a second album, Kaze no koe, were released.
In the following years she performed at various festivals: 1994 at the Nagaragawa Jazz Festival, 1996 at Asian Now, 1997 at the music festival in Cannes and in 1999 at the Art & Culture festival in Romania. However, the biggest honor RIKKI received was the invitation to perform the opening song of the winter 1998 Paralympics in Nagano. She was chosen by the famous composer Joe Hisaishi.
Because of her enchanting performance at Nagano, she was invited to work together with Joe Hisaishi on an image-album - an album which is based on a certain theme, but doesn't represent a soundtrack - to "Spirited Away" in spring 2001. In the summer of the same year she recorded with Nobuo Uematsu the image song Suteki da ne, which was released on July 18th. The success of this single was shown as it ranked tenth on the Oricon Charts, selling 15,000 copies. At the same time, the single was used as the theme song of the role-play game "Final Fantasy X," which rewarded RIKKI with worldwide fame.
In summer 2002 her seventh album Mitsu was released, on which she was supported by rock band THE BOOM. Soon after, her album Mucha ka na, which was sold only in Kyushu before, was re-released, this time being sold nationwide. A few months later, she attacked again with a new album in the familiar shima uta style: Shima uta TRICKLES.
In spring 2003 her single Karatachi nomichi/Shu sagi -toki- was released. In the new single, she produced and recorded the title track together with Kazufumi Miyasawa of THE BOOM. In summer, RIKKI participated alongside nineteen other artists at the Asian Fantasy Orchestra tour and performed in four East Asian countries like Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. After this, she traveled to East Europe and participated at the Moldavian ETHNO JAZZ FESTIVAL 2003. She had the honor to be the first Japanese artist to perform there and became popular in European media.
At the beginning of 2004 she kicked off another tour, traveling again through four different countries for the special event Asia oto tsumagi no tabi, which was organized by NHK Bs-hi. This time she performed in Indonesia, Taiwan, Mongolia and Iran. On June 15th, RIKKI's forth album miss you amami was released in Europe by the British label Rice Records. She kept busy and in fall she performed together with a Mongolian band in Shanghai and Peking and both of her performances were well received.
It was almost two years later before she released a new album in Japan, Yuinu shima e, on January 19th, 2005. To promote the album, she toured from February to March and played in major cities like Tokyo and Fukuoka as well as her home island, Amami. In the early summer, she participated in events in the US and Germany at the Final Fantasy Orchestra Festival. In August she sang at Music Wave, winning the hearts of her listeners.
However, RIKKI's speed has slowed and since 2006 she has focused mostly on live performances. The latest example is her participation at Zenrousai Bunka Festival 2010 in Tokyo on May 16, 2010. As time continues to pass, fans patiently wait for her to announce the intention to release her next new album.
RIKKI's music is very strongly influenced by the "amami shima uta" style, which is a traditional folk style with ceremonial elements used often on the Amami islands. She mixes this with pop, melancholic melodies and vocal inflections to create her own unique blend of sound.
In the western world, RIKKI is known for her collaborations on various theme songs for anime and video games.
