I'm enjoying the ongoing discussion on tradition, changes, flow...
Phil said "Perhaps it is the music, not the instruments that are the
pursuit of old men" In Kochi, Japan, I suppose you could say that many of
the shakuhachi players are old men but a good number of them started
playing shakuhachi when they were young men, and some remain in the music
tradition they started with while others have followed various musical
changes in society through the years. Phil also asked "Why would a 21
year old be attracted to sankyoku?" That's a good question, but there's no
accounting for personal taste, is there? It's taken me a long time to
appreciate some sankyoku pieces, but a lot depends on the music experiences
one has had and the music one has been exposed to. We have a young guy in
our shakuhachi group who is about 24 years old and he's quite into the
sankyoku; he started playing shakuhachi when he was fifteen years of age.
I have too much of a pop sensibility to get that deep into sankyoku, I
think, though I appreciate gaikyoku pieces (if they are played well) much
more than I used to. That's interesting what you saw in Tokyo -- younger
people playing untraditional music on traditional instruments -- but in
some ways Tokyo is quite removed from the rest of Japan...what's happening
in Tokyo could take years to filter down here; it's like saying what
happens in NYC applies to south Georgia. If it becomes a popular trend in
Tokyo then it may get down here fairly quickly, however. "Some of the
players are trying to play the music correctly, not trying to discover
something fresh and vital each time." Yes, yes, yes! I have to agree
with that completely; that's one of the main reasons the traditional music
culture is stagnating, I think. In some cases there is too much of an
emphasis on getting the music down exactly as the teacher does, and it just
becomes a lifeless repetitive thing...
Bruno Deschenes stated "When a Japanese learns a traditional instrument he
or she wants to modernize it." I guess it all depends on who you meet --
maybe you're in contact with a number of exceptional people because most
Japanese players of traditional instruments I've met in the part of Japan
where I live have been just following the examples set by their teachers;
then again, this is inaka. And Karl Young said "With the good shakuhachi
teachers I've encountered there has always been a genuine element that felt
something like the most important thing is what your flute/body feels like
right now." It sounds like you have been lucky to encounter very good
teachers...not to say that the teachers I have studied with have been bad
but the emphasis has always been on playing the music correctly -- rhythm,
fingerings, and pitch -- regardless of one's physical/mental condition at
the time, and if one didn't happen to practice during the week between
lessons then one heard about it from the teacher (as did the other students
present)...
I think that a really good teacher is able to pinpoint what kind of
difficulty the student happens to be having at any particular time and help
the student overcome that hurdle; I had an experience along with another
shakuhachi player a decade ago when we were getting ready to play the
sankyoku piece Yugao for our first concert together with koto in a fair
sized concert hall and there was one short segment of the piece we'd never
been able to get right even though our teacher here in Kochi had gone over
the piece with us many times. We were quite nervous about going onstage as
it was in front of several hundred people so shortly before we were set to
go on we asked the iemoto, who had come down from Tokyo for the concert, to
help us out. In just a few minutes time he could see what we were doing
wrong, and could explain it to us clearly and had us playing the section
confidently ...
Happy Blowing,
Dan Ribble
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