Playing and Playing

Last weekend I had what has become a usual bout with Autumn shakuhachi playing. It just seems to be the way of things here in Japan.

On Friday night, I joined my old friend and koto vituoso, Izumi Fujikawa for a concert in the new addition the Kumamoto Castle's re-building program, Honmaru Goten. We performed for the first time, a piece composed by Keiko Ueda called Mizu no Uta. It was a piece commissioned by Kumamoto City.
On Saturday, I performed in a cafe overlooking Kumamoto City called Lomi Lomi with haiku poet Shinjuku Rollingstone. I've done some of this kind of collaboration before with haiku poet Jim Kacean. It was an interesting afternoon in a nice location.

On Sunday, I performed in a very big production at Sojo University Citizens Hall. It was primarily a Nihon Buyou production with dances covering a huge variety of styles from classical pieces to folk dances. I was one of the accompanying musicians.
The first piece I played in was the second on the program: Tsuru no sugomori. This is a honkyoku piece with two parts, those of the male crane and the female crane. My teacher, Tsurugi Kodo played the male crane part and son n Kawase Junsuke III, Yousuke, played the female part. I and four other members of my local group played in the chorus. The piece was choreographed for 20 cranes with lead parts played by two prominant dancers from Tokyo.
I thought it was an interesting attempt, but in the end, I don't think it succeeded. The nature of a honkyoku piece is very difficult to choreograph to, especially for so many dancers.
Next, I was asked to improvise on a 2.8 for a demonstration of Ni ten ichi ryu which is the two handed sword style made famous by the samurai Miyamoto Musashi. The fact is, I wasn't supposed to play during this demonstration. The sword teacher, a man small in stature but big in aura, said that the BGM wasn't needed. The head Nihon Buyou teacher thought otherwise. I hadn't prepared anything for the piece, but when I was in the change room getting into my montsuki, my teacher informed me that it was on. Moral of the story: always be prepared. Nobody in the audience had a clue that it was thrown together at the last moment.
The last three pieces I played were folk tunes from Kumamoto. They were the finale of the 4 hour show with many dancers ranging in age from 4 to 75. There was also a large contingent of musicians including my daughter Sophie playing koto.

The Wabi Sabi Brothers

Last August I had the pleasure of performing in an intimate concert in Guelph, Ontario with an old friend and bassist for the renowned Canadian band, The Cowboy Junkies, Jeff Bird.
After spending the morning rehashing memories and rediscovering each other's musical identity, we put together a set of crafted and improvised pieces for shakuhachi, wood bass and octave mandoline.
Here are a couple of sound bites, the first being a rendition of the classic shakuhachi piece Choshi performed on shakuhachi and wood bass. The second being and improvisation with shakuhachi and octave mandoline called Is It To Be. And lastly, another improv based on a cross-over of an Okinawan mode and an Indonesian mode called Indonawa.
We appropriately refer to ourselves as The Wabi Sabi Brothers and have entitled the collection 'Dangerous Beauty.'

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Kumamoto Shakuhachi Festival

I've been working on the production of the first Kumamoto Shakuhachi Festival for the past year. Along with my shakuhachi student Naomi Yamaguchi, who has been indispensable in many of the official dealings, we are nearing completion of preparations.
The festival is intended to increase public awareness of the shakuhachi in Kumamoto with respect to its past, present and future. This will be accomplished primarily through a performance that will portray the chronology of the shakuhachi as told to a group of young children by their grandfather who was a practicing Komuso. Performances by leading players from the Kumamoto area and elsewhere, in each of the styles presented in the workshops during the day will be encorporated in the performance. Also, a new piece for 5 shakuhachi, string quartet, horns, percussion and keyboard by Kumamoto-based composer Keiko Ueda will be debuted.
The festival is also intended to allow players of a variety of schools to learn pieces from other schools. This is not commonly done otherwise.
The festival will have five different workshops, one each in Myoan ryu, Kinko ryu, Tozan ryu, modern classical and cross-genre. Each workshop will be taught by a leading proponent of that style from the Kumamoto area. There will also be a symposium paneled by leading teachers of a variety of styles discussing the future of shakuhachi in Kumamoto.
Finally, there will be an ongoing beginner's workshop put on by members of Wakanakai giving anybody a hands-on opportunity to try the shakuhachi. There will be various shakuhachi related services and vendors also present. Finally, there will be an open microphone for any players to present their talent.

Immortality is around the next corner!

I spent some time a week ago in the takeyabu (bamboo grove) with my shakuhachi teacher, Kodo Tsurugi and a few fellow members of Tsurugi sensei's shakuhachi group, Wakanakai. It was a warm, sunny day in the grove on the west side of Kumamoto in central Kyushu, Japan. We didn't really need to search very far as this is a well known grove to us and we knew where to look. Basically, we were looking for bamboo suitable for 1.8 or 1.6 jiari shakuhachi. We found about 20 pieces in a couple of hours. The unusual thing was that Tsurugi sensei encouraged me to dig some pieces that were much bigger in diameter than those that he usually uses. After pulling them from the ground, he would pick each one up and study it. The larger diameter ones would inspire a resounding 'Rrrrramos!' from his mouth. I immediately picked up on the reference to Alcvin Ramos from Vancouver, Canada who comes here every couple of years with his group to experience bamboo gathering with us. Al and many of his group seemed to love the bigger diameter pieces which always brought a smile from Tsurugi sensei. Thus, big diameter bamboo has come to be known as Ramos to him. One of the many roads to immortality.

The Economics of It All

I've been involved in collecting shakuhachi for some time here in Japan. It's generally had many rewards. For example, I've been able to pass some of my collection on to eager learners who otherwise don't have access to well-made instruments and reasonable prices. I've also had the great advantage of being able to play many instruments of varying quality and age. I decided to do this as a means to an end. That end is to build a recording studio and chronicle the many traditional musicians that live in these parts of Japan and who would otherwise live and die without being heard from or of. As a musician and specifically a shakuhachi player and teacher, I considered this to be a pity. I quickly realized that my unique situation would in effect kill four birds with one stone. Get the studio built and outfitted, record these living treasures and add an aspect of recognition to their lives and those of their families outside of their work-a-day lives, supply qulaity instruments to folks who didn't have reliable access to them, thus giving some happiness to them and finally, having the chance to play and increase my own collection through the avenues that I travel in order to get the shakuhachis in the first place. However, this, like many pursuits these days is taking a back seat to the world economic crisis. Movement of instruments has slowed down somewhat and that means that everything connected must also slow down. That's okay. I can wait. And in the mean time, I play.

Of Old and New

I'll have the opportunity to do something quite unusual on March 16th on the main stage of the Kumamoto Prefectural Theater in Kumamoto, Japan. I was invited to perform along with members of Pro Musica Nipponia, a professional Japanese traditional instrument performance group. It's an honour for me to do that, though it isn't the first time for me. I also had the chance and honour about 5 years ago when we performed Taketori Monogatari (The Legend of the Bamboo Cutter) which is a story put to music much like the larger Heike Monogatari. Though I'm thrilled to be doing it again, that isn't the point I want to make here. It has more to do with the choice of music for us to perform and a couple of the players who will be joining in.
As for the piece of music, we will be performing a well known composition by jazz pianist Chick Corea, entitled Spain. I'm not at all sure what possessed the organizer of this performance to go that route (I must ask them), but something tells me that it was an attempt to validate traditional instruments to some degree (I hope that's not the case). Of course attempts have and continue to be made using Japanese traditional instruemnts in the performance of a variety of modern works outside of the genre, so that in itself isn't new. But certainly, in the local area of Kumamoto, Japan, it hasn't been done on a large stage for a large audience. None-the-less, it will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Now the second point of interest is that I and PMN will also be joined on stage by an upcoming koto player who has only been learning the koto for 6 years. That person's name is Sophie Cairns and she is my daughter. Though she has played on many stages locally with local players, and in fact did her first solo performance of the very difficult piece Tori No Yo Ni (Like a Bird) by Sawai Tadao last December, this will be her first chance to play with such an elite group of professional players on a big stage. I'm excited for her and the other Kumamoto players who will be performing in the show. I'm also looking forward to it very much.
At this point, I don't know exactly who the other players will be, but the instrumentation will be piano, koto, shamisen, biwa (I understand that the very gifted Satsuma Biwa virtuoso Kumiko Shutoh will be playing), shakuhachi and wadaiko. I'll report again after the performance.

Isolation and Change

The realities of shakuhachi practice in Japan are such that cells or pockets of players have developed as a means of self-identification/justification and/or a way of continuing the peculiarities of a teacher.
The reasons that these cells (ryuha) have developed are many, but probably were inspired by the relative imobility of Japanese in history. Being an agrarian society by-in-large promotes stationary life. Crops need tending to, animals need care, land needs maintaining. The concept of distant travel was relegated to those with the luxury of time, which often equated to disposable money. Domestic travel with shakuhachi in hand was, for many years, was the mainstay of wandering itinerate monks known as Komuso or Monks of Emptiness. Theirs was not a teaching excersise, but rather a response to the call of the universe and a means of setting themselves in it. It wasn't until the post-WWII era that Japanese in general started to search out new things with their newly found disposable wealth. Along with this travel came the spread of many things Japanese to the outside world; including the shakuhachi. Naturally, any player who ventured outside of Japan would take their particular learned mothod with them and expose any who would listen. What was heard became the represented norm to outsiders. The concept of 'shakuhachi' became one thing. With that, and the realization to those new listener/learners came the idea that isolated schools of thought were not a necessity and could/should be grasped equally. Interestingly enough, to many, the original sounds of the Monks of Emptiness resonated and that is where their real learning began. The evolution then went from isolated pockets to more isolated pockets but in a culturally different setting. All of this changed with the advent of the internet. Now learners can not only purchase high quality instruments, but get online lessons from not just one teacher, but many. One wonders what the outcome of this will be. Will we see the isolationism of the past fade? Will we see the defining lines of the ryuha dissapear? The future is indeed interesting.