Are there any cultural visionaires on the list who are willing to venture a
guess as to what the shakuhachi world will look like 100 or even 200 years
from now?
Will the center of shakuhachi still be in Japan, or will the diaspora
(non-Japanese) shakuhachi people
be plentiful enough to shift the center to SF, NYC, or Australia? Is there
any chance that 100 years from now young Japanese players will feel a need
to make study pilgrimages to NYC to learn from the world's greatest
shakuhahci msusicians?
Is there a sense that the value ascribed to this music is continuing to
decline in Japan, or is there a chance of a shakuhachi renaissance sometime
in the future?
And how many accomplished shakuhachi players are there in Japan right now?
From the small amount of Japanese shakuhachi CDs on sale here, I get the
sense that actually very few people are still playing this instrument at
all. Does someone know how many people, world-wide, are studying this
instrument with any degree of seriousness? I think I recall someone
conducting some kind of shakuhachi census at some point...
I would like to hear your musings for a number of reasons...mostly because I
see shakuhachi as a dying art, and I find it intresting to compare its
struggle to that of a persecuted nation or of endangered species fighting to
stay alive. Also, I would be happy to learn that my opinion is very
misguided, and that in fact this insturment is not a dying art at all..
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