This report comes courtesy of its author:
World Shakuhachi Festival, 1998
Boulder, Colorado, July 5 -10:
A brief report by Lewis Phelps, Professor of Music, whose attendance
was underwritten by a Mount Union College Austin-Montgomery Faculty
Development Grant
Slight, shy, sixty-five-year-old Goro Yamaguchi, the most revered
shakuhachi player in the world and a designated Japanese Living
National Treasure, steps onto the platform, sits, adjusts the music
stand, lifts a small bamboo tube to his lips, and plays the first
haunting phrase of Shika no tone [Distant Cry of Deer], a honkyoku
classic. Two-hundred rapt Japanese and American shakuhachi players
listen. Nobody moves. Statue-like, Yamaguchi attracts no attention
to himself, but invites all four hundred ears to focus on the
sound and silence of this ancient piece.
So began the first masterclass of the World Shakuhachi Festival,
1998.
Attendees numbered 336; about half of them came from Japan. A
translator was used in all masterclasses and workshop sessions;
despite this welcome service, those speaking only one tongue wished
for instant knowledge of the other language, just for a week!
Five Special Guests (including Yamaguchi) and fifty-two other
performers were invited. Ohio was represented by two participants:
a student from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a professor
from Mount Union College.
The professor characterized himself as an intermediate beginner.
Six lessons and an investment of roughly 200 hours of practice on
the shakuhachi prior to the Festival allowed him to experience
again the clumsiness that accompanies the learning of any new skill
or art. He had first heard the shakuhachi on a Nonesuch recording
of Yamaguchi about the year 1970, had purchased an instrument in
1975, had blown it a little and experienced great frustration, had
looked for a teacher without success until 1996 when he located
Daniel Mantey in Cleveland. After six lessons, Mantey moved to
Japan. Since then the professor has continued to practice without
instruction. Of the many instru- ments he has heard -- western
and non-western --, the shakuhachi is, in his view, the most
expressive, subtle, and challenging.
The two chief schools of shakuhachi playing, Kinko and Tozan, differ
in style and notation. The professor from Mount Union College is
learning to read Kinko notation, an example of which is included
at the left margin of this page. [These symbols represent the
melody of the first phrase of Auld Lang Syne.] Lectures, discussions,
concerts, and workshop sessions on notation, style, circular
breathing, various genre, and specific pieces kept the Intermediate
Beginner busy Monday through Friday from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The final concert, Living Treasures of Japan was presented on
Thursday night in Boettcher Hall, Denver. The Five Special guests
and their accompanists performed. When the last tone had faded,
the crowd stood, applauded, cheered, and whistled as if the event
had been a rock concert. David Wheeler, one of the organizers,
offered the microphone to Yamaguchi. Shyly, Yamaguchi backed away.
The crowd cheered louder. Again Wheeler offered the microphone to
the Living National Treasure. Again the volume of the cheering
increased. Finally, Yamaguchi said a few words which Wheeler
translated into English. Then the other Special Guests spoke
briefly, and after each the crowd resumed its applause. Riebo Aoki
II, the fifth master, spoke for everyone present when he said
quietly, his voice trembling a little, I will never forget this
evening.
The professor from Mount Union College will not soon forget the
World Shakuhachi Festival, 1998. He returns to Ohio with greater
knowledge, skill, commitment, potentially helpful contacts, new
friends, enthusiasm, and desire to share all of this with students
in MU 352: World Music.
He expresses thanks for the Austin-Montgomery funds which made this
experience possible.
He agrees with William Malm who claimed that Music is a universal
need; it is not an interna- tional language; it consists of a whole
series of equally logical, but different, systems. After a week
in Boulder, the professor is reconvinced that music does not easily
go into words. Does music communicate? Oh yes, but it does so
more eloquently than any spoken language.
The professor, still an Intermediate Beginner in the realm of the
shakuhachi, descends from the oracle with otsu no ro [middle D,
the basic pitch] ringing in his ears, and with the haunting tones
of Yamaguchis Shika no tone echoing forever in the private chambers
of his soul.
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