"Is this a realistic idea for someone my age or do you need to start
studying this instrument at a very young age to achieve any level of
competence?"
What is realistic? I started the shakuhachi at age 32, and after three
years made what some might consider an unrealistic decision to stay in
Japan for a few more years more for the sole purpose of studying the
instrument further. At 38 I was given the junshihan license after learning
about half of the chuden level gaikyoku pieces (whether competently or not
is open to question) and performing a number of them in recitals with koto
and shamisen players. By that time I was also playing some of the honkyoku
in concert, at weddings, funerals, and other events, and of course, for
friends and family. As some of the members of the list pointed out, people
often won't know if you are competent on the instrument or not, unless they
are accomplished players themselves or avid listeners, perhaps.
"How many years of study does it realistically take to play solo honkyoku
music well enough to be pleasing to the ears?"
This may depend on whose ears you want to please. Looking back, I think it
took me about five years of playing before my honkyoku were pleasing to the
ears of some of the more discriminating listeners (but not all). Honkyoku
are difficult pieces to master...if they didn't present a challenge, they
wouldn't be nearly as fun to learn or to play. I'm not a fast learner...I
know others who learn pieces at twice my speed, but it's not a race against
time...the important thing is to enjoy the whole process of learning and
playing. Actually I think that some of the hardest pieces to play
pleasingly are not the honkyoku or gaikyoku, but rather, some of the
simpler Japanese folk tunes, as they are so well known and simple in
structure that one cannot disguise one's sound with any technical tricks.
Yesterday I played the honkyoku Taki Otoshi for an mid-afternnon enkai
(dinner party) at a 432 year old Japanese shrine way out in a tiny hamlet
in the mountainous countryside outside of a town called Kagamimura
("mirror" village) -- I was lucky to be invited out there, miles away from
the city's rat race. There was a fall festival procession where the
omikoshi (portable god's shrine) was carried out of the wooden shrine
building by white robed assistants up a road beside a fast flowing mountain
stream, accompanied by tengu (men in dark red long nosed goblin masks),
lion dancers, two men beating a huge taiko drum with a giant stick, other
participants carrying long poles topped with onagadori (long tailed
rooster) plumes, followed by many small children, including my own, eagerly
waiting for the omochi nage (throwing of rice cakes) out to the middle of a
rice field where everyone sat down around the omikoshi and the Shinto
priest blessed the participants with waves of sacred branches and made
offerings of rice cakes and sake to the gods. The sky was a brilliant
blue, luckily for us the rains had stopped in the morning. The priest's
chanting was followed by the omochi nage where people jump and dove to
catch rice cakes as well as tangerines and even several large nashi --
japanese pears -- hurled by the shrine attendants before the procession
made its way back to the ancient shrine building. Everyone got fueled on
sushi and sake at the meal in the shrine afterwards and the country folk
were surprised at the foreigner playing a shakuhachi piece, some of them
saying I was more Japanese than they were. My wife, however, is still not
satisfied with my sound; she says it's too immature... so I'm having to
start over again from the beginning. What is a pleasing sound? It's a
never ending quest for the musical muse -- which makes it all the more
interesting. I don't think age has any bearing on it, however... as long
as you have breath...
Dan Ribble
Kochi, Japan
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