Some very interesting discussions on this list recently!!
I am about to head back to the states after a few weeks here in Japan on one of my rare visits to this wonderful culture.
I am very surprised that it seems that some tradtional music instruments are coming back, so to say. There are tsugaru shamisen players who have become pop stars and are on tv and in ads.
Last night, i performed with one of my trios at Club Waon in Tokyo. This is a very interesting performance space in that it focuses on traditional japanese instruments yet it rarely has any traditional music being performed. And many of the shakuhachi, koto, shamisen, biwa, etc players are young people! It seems to me to be fairly apparent that if these beautiful instruments are treated as museum objects playing Edo period music or pre Edo period music, then they will eventually disappear. But Club Waon is presenting music of today, jazz, computer music, avant garde music, pop music and other forms that are more relevant to young people, thus the appeal to younger people to pick up and learn some of the older instruments.
Also, it seems that traditional instruments are now back in the public school systems and thus people can be introduced to the music at a very young age. Each time i have been in Japan i meet Japanese people in their teens, 20s and 30s who have never seen or heard a shakuhachi. It is nice that the schools have brought these instruments back to young peoples ears and eyes!
Reg Tanaban wrote,
> ... My general impression is that the
> shakuhachi is still generally regarded as a pursuit of old men in Japan --
I always found this to be the case but the past 2 weeks are making my opinion change. Perhaps it is the music, not the instruments that are the pursuit of old men? Why would a 21 year old be attracted to sankyoku?
Reg also wrote
One might speak of the "decline of the flute in America"
> since I rarely meet anyone here who enjoys classical music (but that's just
> my personal experience)
Classical music is still the main form of music education in America besides young, mostly males playing guitar to imitate their fave rock/pop stars. Classical music is still integrally a part of American culture in many ways. I do not find this to be the case in Japan with traditional music but my limited experience here obviously does not give me a good view.
Reg also wrote,
I rarely see any old school jazz on
> any TV channel here (but then I don't have broadband).
Well, traditional jazz is a very politicised African American musical movement and thus was removed from the mainstream for a variety of reasons, most i think are political and deal with power relations and the creation of taste in American popular culture. One never sees geniuses like Duke Ellington or John Culture in american pop culture though Ellington was a pop star back in the 30s. Instead we are force fed rock and rap stars, most of whom do not have anyway near the talent of Ellington or Coltrance or the other many musical giants of the jazz world.
Stav Tapuch wrote
> > > Is it merely because the western, modern flute is just more efficient at
> > > making music, or is the shakuhachi just a victim in a greater cultural
> war?
Why is the western flute more efficient at making music than shakuhachi? The western flute is certainly easier and is easier to play some melodic passages on it. But shakuhachi is more efficient at creating a variety of timbres and to my ears, honkyoku is as much about timbre as it is about pitch (at least in the approach by some of my fave honkyoku players). However, there seems to be a strong movement in the shakuhachi world to remove some of the timbral variety and make it more flute like.
Many contemporary flute players like Robert Dick, James Newton and Matthias Ziegler are obviously very influenced by the shakuhachi use of timbre and are opening up the technique of the western flute technically, to be able to adapt some of these ideas.
best wishes and happy new year to all of you!
phil
www.philipgelb.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:50 PST