Life with the Sanshin Family

The Song as a Sliding Door

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:52:05 -0700

Rhythm, space and harmony in shamisen and sanshin music. Fascinating topics that I know little about. However, that won't stop me from writing about them now.

The main reason I started this blog was to force myself to get my thoughts down in complete sentences. While I'm listening to or playing music, sometimes hazy thoughts come and go and return, but never develop. In this blog I'll try to think and write about a topic for a few hours, and maybe, eventually, a little more understanding will come. Let me say up front that I have no training in music theory, though that will be pretty obvious.

The present topic of rhythm arises from difficulties I have in learning to sing or play shamisen or sanshin music when it is disconnected from the beat. I grew up listening to Western music including rock and Motown. So I know about the beat. I know everyone has to hit the beat or the music doesn't have drive. Yes, there is syncopation, reggae, samba, tango, etc. but all these have a regular relation to the beat. The beat has been driven into my brain.

So my brain had great difficulty when we were learning the Nagauta piece, Miyakodori, and our Sensei, Lillian, played the second part or kaede. She gradually moved the beat of her part away from our main part and we would unconsciously follow. She would yell at us "Don't listen to me". We learned to keep our beat or rhythm constant while she moved away and back, creating clashing tempos at times. I think this is an example of what William P. Malm (Six Hidden Views of Japanese Music) called the "sliding doors effect". - (see the sliding doors from mboogiedown's flickr geisha set above) Malm likened two phrases of music to two separate sliding door panels. Each panel or phrase has its own beat. When the panels slide past one another, their beats get out of sync, then back in sync. The main shamisen part and accompanying kaede shamisen part were the sliding phrases in Miyakodori. In ensemble pieces the percussion or flute could have their own panels or phrases that might move in relation to the shamisen.

Malm hypothesized that the contrasting rhythms of concurrent phrases create an emotional tension in the listener that is resolved when the phrases get back into sync. (Malm, Nagauta: The Heart of Kabuki Music) He said traditional Japanese music lacks chords or harmony which create the tension and relief in Western music. Malm's theory is that the conflicting and then matching rhythm or beat of the phrases gives the music a dynamism or a sense of forward motion in time.

In Nagauta music the timing or beat can vary even within a phrase, e.g. in ozatsuma sections where the tempo may speed up or slow down dramatically from measure to measure. At times in class, it seemed like our Sensei was deliberately playing a cat and mouse game with us students as we tried to follow her in ozatsuma.

Silence (or space or rest or pause or 間 ma) is important in both Nagauta and Ryukyu Koten music. The vocal and instrument lines, especially the later, have frequent and irregular pauses. The pause in the sanshin line may or may not be filled it with a note in the vocal line. The silences may contribute to the rhythmic separation of sanshin and voice or may provide a space before the beats start together. The pauses or silences can create a dramatic effect.

An easily heard rhythmic feature is the way the singer's vocal line floats above the shamisen or sanshin line. Malm also cited this to support his theory. The singer and the shamisen seldom change pitch on the same beat. The vocal melody does not necessarily parallel the shamisen melody. One line may have a rising pitch, while the other is falling. Different notes may be sung and played simultaneously. At times the changes in one melody line may precede the corresponding change in the other. It's not that the two lines are independent and isolated. They are related, but not parallel. This feature of Nagauta singing is also a characteristic of Ryukyu Koten or classical music. The only way I have been able to learn Koten songs is to repetitively sing along with a recording until I've memorized all the changes. It just doesn't come naturally to me yet. However, once I've learned a song like Kajadefu or Inimajin, I grow to appreciate and love the contrasts of the voice and sanshin.

I think it is significant that Nagauta and Ryukyu Koten music were formally composed and are preserved by written notation. The free and floating feeling with seemingly nature-like or improvisational inflections and undulation was designed into the music.

Singing and playing sanshin together makes me want to dispute Malm's contention that the music lacks harmony. I hear harmony in passing tones of the voice and sanshin. Certainly, as a singer I use sanshin notes even when not in unison to set the pitch of my voice. I just have to memorize what the intervals are and when they occur.

Another feeling I get while singing and playing is that of an echo or reflection as in a pond. Either the voice or sanshin recalls the melodic feeling of the other. It's not like a call and response, but more naturalistic - an echo, a reflection, or the branches of a tree moving after a puff of wind.

This music is not easy for me, someone who needs a strong regular beat to follow. My brain has to loosen up like a sliding door and become more flexible like the rhythm of sanshin and shamisen songs.

On the Other Hand

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 18:51:57 -0700

Something that people ask me when they hear I play both shamisen and sanshin is whether the left hand fingering is different. From my point of view the fingering is very similar. The main tunings of the 3 strings are the same: hon cho shi, ni agari, san sagari. The most commonly used scales are not too different either. The finger position spacing is different because of the various neck lengths. This results in different fingers being used for the equivalent interval on the different length necks. Generalizations that I was told when starting were that the sanshin never used the ring finger (finger #4 in the Japanese system where the thumb is #1) and Tsugaru style used only fingers #2 and 4. I thought this was because of the short versus long neck. Someone even mentioned a taboo against the use of 4 or shi, meaning death. However, I found later that all fingers may be used at some neck positions on sanshin and shamisen, especially at the high positions. Whatever fits. I guess there also may be some variation depending on the standards or strictness of the teacher or school.

The most important similarity of the sanshin and shamisen to me is that the fingering "falls readily to hand" i.e. is natural and easy. Maybe it is due to having only 3 strings or to the hundreds of years of adaptation of instrument neck lengths and widths to human ergonomics. This is in contrast to the guitar for me. Some of the guitar left hand positions were a real contortion or stretch for me. My hands are not large, so the blues chords with the thumb over the top of the neck on the 6th string, a la Rev. Gary Davis or Dave van Ronk, were impossible. In my youth I tried classical guitar and even 12-string (since I am a fan of Leo Kottke). I practiced barre chords until the callus along the side of my index finger threatened to become a bunion. What a relief to play sanshin and shamisen! No pain! The style of clawhammer banjo also uses fewer full chord fingerings compared to bluegrass banjo.

Speaking of calluses, those on my finger tips are a lot thinner than when I was playing steel string guitar. A consequence of the synthetic or silk strings on sanshin or shamisen, the relatively low tension, and low action (distance of strings from neck). Some women play sanshin with long finger nails on their left hand, so they don't even use finger tips. Mika Uchizato is a very skilled sanshin player with long finger nails. All of us in a minyo group I play with are huge fans of Mika-san and we went to see her perform live and up close in small venues in Santa Monica, CA, and in Ginowan, Okinawa. Her singing and playing are so emotive. She shows that accuracy and the right 'touch' on the sanshin doesn't require finger tips. For shamisen, Nagauta and Tsugaru, the finger tip is often curled so that some of the nail front side contacts the string. This is useful for a smooth slide or suri. The nail of the index finger gets a small groove, called an ito michi or string path. There is a scene in the famous movie, Chushingura or 47-Ronin, when the samurai are under confinement awaiting sentencing after their revenge. A young woman wants to visit her lover, one of the samurai, so shaves her head in a tonsure and dresses like a samurai. However, when she is interviewed by Oishi Kuranosuke he is not fooled because he says that he sees from her hands that she spent a lot of time playing the shamisen (not a very samurai activity apparently, although her lover plays the fue). When Oishi says this, she covers her right hand, but I think that was the actor's mistake and she should have hidden the ito michi on her left hand. (On the other hand, I have seen a slightly displaced little finger of the right hand of players who have used a Nagauta bachi since childhood.) By the way, the lady in disguise committed suicide in despair after being found out by Oishi, but was able to meet her lover while dying. Sasuga for the shamisen player.

Something I'm not sure about is the correct or incorrect use of vibrato with the left hand. I don't use it at all for sanshin, but do use it sometimes for shamisen. I think this started because my shamisen, especially at the beginning, had a dull sound with little resonance. So I started to use vibrato to try to make my sound more like the sound of players with better instruments. Once when I took a lesson from a visiting Nagauta Sensei from Tokyo, he heard me and scolded me - no vibrato. But my Sensei's have never corrected me, or maybe they think my sound is so bad as to be hopeless. Why try to put lipstick on a pig - to use an expression popular at the time I write.

Left-hand techniques common to sanshin, shamisen and banjo are 'hammer ons' and 'pull offs' to use banjo/guitar terminology. A string is struck or plucked with a finger of the left hand. This can be done on the off beat to give a syncopated or bouncing sound. It also helps to instrumentally parallel the song's melody or vocal inflections. These techniques can give a softer or more flowing sound compared to the crisp or staccato sound of a sequence of bachi hits. Connecting all the possible note qualities into a coherent lyrical phrase is something I wish I could do and you can hear that skill in the pro players' videos on this site. The shamisen, Nagauta and Tsugaru, but especially the latter, uses a rapid alternation of pull offs and bachi notes to give a tremolo sound. The characteristic trills of Tsugaru music are often a set pattern of pull offs and up and down bachi moves. A left hand technique I think may be unique to the Nagauta shamisen is the strum or arpeggio with the left fingers. It is hard to do because the entire left hand position must be quickly shifted around the bottom of the neck.

Finally, I'd like to mention what I think of as phantom sounds. These are hammer-ons that make little or no sound. They occasionally occur in Nagauta or in Okinawa Minyo songs, but reach a high degree of sophistication in Okinawa Koten classical music. There could be as many as three of these soundless notes in a sequence. There are even several types of these soundless notes that are indicated by special symbols, e.g. a quick soundless note versus a regular soundless note. Playing alone in a quiet room I can hear a sound, but it is undetectable otherwise except visually. It is true that the voice or koto may fill in some of these silent sanshin notes. And playing the phantom notes keeps the sanshin in time. Moreover, in a song like Inimajin, that we are learning for the upcoming koto concert, I feel like these phantom notes are formal gestures that pay homage to the spirit of the song.

The World-Wide Okinawan Community

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 21:47:32 -0700

I just returned from sanshin practice at Sensei’s place. At one time there were 12 people in the small front room. In part this was due to rehearsals for the big concert that is coming up in October. The koto master, who is arranging the concert, Katsuko Teruya Sensei was there too. She brought a boy who will be playing taiko to practice accompanying my Sensei’s young nieces, who will sing and play sanshin. It’s fun to watch other people practice. Last weekend there was a big rehearsal with all the koto and sanshin players and the dancers. Everyone is working hard and I enjoyed seeing the results of their work.

One reason for everyone’s seriousness is that guest performers from Okinawa will include Terukina Choichi, a National Living Treasure of Japan, and Miyagi Nozo, the head of the Miyagi dance school. This is evidence of how artists in Okinawa remain connected with Teruya Sensei and other Sensei’s and students in Los Angeles. The previous blog post talked about the many cultures in LA. This entry is about the Okinawan culture that has spread over the world.

The world-wide influence of Okinawan culture can be seen on the web. There are sanshin web sites and photos and videos on YouTube from all over the map. I saw a mention of the Teruya koto concert on Richie’s Karakui blog from Hawaii. I saw a mention of Terukina Choichi on Tarou’s blog from Hiroshima. Those two, Richie and Tarou, are doing a tremendous job to electronically spread Okinawan culture and sanshin. (I’ve just added links on this site to the almost 300 song lyrics that Tarou-san has given us.)

I saw the strong connections between Okinawa and people from all over the world at the 2006 Uchinanchu Taikai (picture above from flickr). With hundreds of people from many countries, I walked down Kokusaidori, while the residents of Naha lined the street and called out “Welcome Home!”. For a while it felt almost like I had been born there. (I can’t imagine that would happen in my actual birthplace, Detroit Michigan. Or rather I can imagine what they would yell at me just before they ran over me with an Escalade, if I walked down Woodward Ave.)

Little by little, I’ve been drawn into the Okinawan community in spite of myself. I’ve never been a “joiner” and my whole life has been the complete opposite. But I find myself participating in Okinawan community activities more than I ever intended. In one case It was because I accidentally volunteered for something because I didn’t understand what was said to me in Japanese. However, in most cases I was happy to help out because of the welcoming attitude of the people and because everyone was pitching in and working together. And I’m not the only outsider who has been welcomed in.

I’m sure the same spirit of working together will be present in the upcoming concert too. I saw it in past concerts where dance Sensei whose students weren’t performing, still showed up early to help others to put on their kimono. Or where multitudes of home-made dishes appeared to feed the performers and helpers.

So Okinawan music is great, but there are greater aspects of Okinawan culture that create strong world-wide connections.

Traditions

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:43:43 -0700

Los Angeles is huge: people, cars, buildings, travel distances, the variety of ethnic communities that preserve their own culture and traditions. (photo - section of the 2,754 ft long mural ‘The Great Wall of Los Angeles’ painted by SPARC in a flood control channel). Flavors of the cultural variety of LA are experienced in its restaurants, neighborhoods, and concerts of music and dance.

Shamisen, sanshin and banjo classes also have given me a greater appreciation of the cultural richness of Los Angeles. I had not been aware of their existence until searching for them, but I found groups of people who have devoted years, if not most of their lives, to play and study these traditional musical instruments. My brief encounters with international musicians through the Durfee program showed me that the same is true for traditional musical instruments of other cultures.
I’m convinced that Los Angeles has accomplished players of any musical instrument that exists.

In the shamisen and sanshin groups I have seen, the Sensei are highly skilled technically and artistically in their chosen musical tradition. Usually in class we concentrate on a few songs, repeating them over and over. However, I’m always impressed when I see the Sensei outside of the class routine, e.g. accompanying dancers and singers or at a party, when they seem to be able to play any song that comes up without having written music in front of them. I can’t imagine being able to do that myself. In part because of a lack of talent on my side, and also because of the many years of practice required to build up and perfect that large repertory. It probably required dedication, devotion and concentration focused on that single music genre. As I understand it, the dedicated study by each of the Sensei had been under the guidance of a School. That is, a School in the Japanese (guild or Confucian or feudal) sense with a characteristic style or repertory under the leadership of an Iemoto. When a person gains the privilege of being admitted to a School, that person learns and protects the unique (perhaps secret) principles of the School, gives absolute obedience the School’s Masters, and devotes their life to the School (including fighting and defeating all rival schools).
:-D Either I’m joking or I watch too many samurai movies. (-8

But seriously (for a moment),
I think that Schools of shamisen or sanshin have the great strength of preserving and passing on their musical traditions by carefully guiding their students, and also the potential disadvantage of fostering a competitiveness with and separation from other musical styles or genres.

That’s just my superficial impression as a relative outsider. And the various classes express varying degrees of the positive or negative features depending on the group, Sensei or student.

It may reflect two sides of Tradition itself: preservation and conservatism. Protecting the past and keeping things as they were.

In the American versions of the Schools, I have not experienced the rigid control described in the book, “Shaped by Japanese Music: Kikuoka Hiroaki and Nagauta Shamisen in Tokyo” by Jay Keister, Roughtledge, 2004. Although my Nagauta Sensei sometimes made allusions to the control. And there have been hints of it from people trained in Japan.

I think another manifestation of Tradition’s power is the surprising rarity of crossover between the musical genres. Few people play the shamisen or sanshin music of groups other than their own or even attend the other group’s concerts. There may be factors at work that I know little about, e.g. rivalries between prefectures. And it may be that most players wisely choose to excel in a single area. (I on the other hand, play many instruments poorly) Still I sense a parochial attitude within the various groups.

I don’t mean to over-emphasize the potential negative aspects of Tradition.
The bottom line is,
I greatly benefit from the teaching of musical Traditions by the groups I have joined.

Bachi

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:04:15 -0700

These are Bachi used to play shamisen and sanshin.
The drumsticks that taiko drummers use are also called bachi. While I don’t know the etymology of the word 撥ばち, all these bachi are used to strike down on a drum head or the strings of a drum-headed lute.

The two in the foreground are for playing the sanshin. I use the smaller black one to play minyo sanshin and the larger one to play koten or classical sanshin. A lady in the music store in Okinawa told me that one was softer than the other and I thought she meant the material was softer. I think they are both made of water buffalo horn. After bringing them both back home and playing with them, I now understand she was talking about the sound. The sound made by the light-colored one has a sharper attack, possibly because the edge of the tip is sharper and the bachi is heavier. It seems to bring out more of the higher resonance of the sanshin. I think the clear, precise sound fits koten music. The smaller black one gives a more rounded sound and a smoother sequence of notes. It is lighter and easy to move rapidly. All this may be in my imagination. When I look a veteran sanshin players, many different kinds of bachi are being used for all kinds of music, not necessarily fitting what I think for my bachi.

The two bachi with handles are used for playing shamisen. The middle one with the tortoise shell blade is for playing Tsugaru shamisen. It is a bit heavier and sturdier in keeping with the more percussive style. Comparing with Sensei’s bachi and those of professionals in pictures, lighter colored tortoise shell must be better for some reason. Even so, mine was pretty expensive. I had asked my brother to buy it in Kyoto, and he and I were surprised at the cost. It was the same as I paid for my sanshin. The white bachi is what I used to use for nagauta shamisen. Now I use a white plastic bachi because I broke the one shown in the picture. The one pictured is ivory and was wonderful to play with. It was light and the tip seemed hard and sharp. The ivory didn’t get so slippery during performances because I think it absorbed some of the sweat from my hand. In fact, the ivory was stained by the previous player so I could see where his or her fingers had gripped. I felt the spirit of the previous player(s) traveling up my arm. I don’t know its history because I bought it from someone who found it a thrift store that sells donated, used items (a Goodwill store). There’s probably quite a story behind that. I knew it was risky to use the ivory bachi all the time, but I couldn’t help myself. Then I broke the tip off. It didn’t even happen while playing. After a performance, I was helping to move chairs and mics off stage, holding my shamisen and bachi in one hand. When I looked, the tip was gone. It was kind of like the feeling after a car crash. The other tip had been repaired in the distant past with a spliced piece of ivory, so maybe I can have the bachi repaired. For now, it’s plastic for me.

The picture also shows my clawhammer hand. I hit the strings of the banjo with my middle finger. The downward striking technique is similar to that used with the sanshin bachi, but my finger is less accurate and less clear. Of course that’s not the case for the pros. I wish I could get the sound of banjo players such as those in the videos. When my fingernail is broken or short, I use a reversed plastic finger pick. Not knowing any better, I started playing the sanshin that way. Until the first real sanshin players I met laughed me into learning how to use a real bachi.

Looking at the accompanying photo, I see there is significant size distortion caused by closeness to the camera. The sanshin bachi are actually smaller compared to the shamisen bachi and my hand, than they appear in the photo.

Why do all these styles of playing use the technique of striking downward on the strings? This is in contrast to the plucking style used for many (most ?) stringed instruments such as the guitar, sitar, oud, bluegrass banjo and apparently even the sanshin’s predecessor, the sanxian. The downward hit gives a more percussive sound that can be sharper, louder and more rhythmic. But the sound dies away quickly. The small size of the skin head of the sanshin and shamisen contributes to the fast decay of sound. The sawari vibration of the shamisen adds some sustain. A sustained note on the sanshin and shamisen often is attained with rapid back and forth picking. Speed is a mark of skill in all except koten sanshin. The strong rhythm and beat is important in dance accompaniment by the sanshin (minyo and koten), nagauta shamisen (buyo and kabuki dance) and clawhammer banjo (contradance). The bachi often intentionally strikes the skin head to make a sound in the Tsugaru style and almost soundlessly as part of the follow through in the nagauta style. The bachi is never supposed to hit the head of a sanshin. I’ve sometimes, but infrequently heard the finger tap the banjo head for effect. All these instruments are used to accompany singing. For sanshin (or uta sanshin) singing is primary. Nagauta shamisen is usually played in an ensemble with singers and drums. While contemporary, popular Tsugaru shamisen is usually instrumental, I play in a group with singers who perform Aiya Bushi, Jongara Bushi, Yosare Bushi and other songs. Clawhammer banjo music can be instrumental or can accompany singing. Do all these songs have something in common? Are they more rhythmic and less lyrical compared to songs accompanied by wind instruments? I think that is definitely not true. Is it just due to history and tradition that instruments played by striking the strings (as opposed to plucking or bowing) are used? Or is there some special sonic and musical character of these instruments that people have heard over the centuries?

The similarities and differences of the downward striking of strings of drum-headed lutes are good subjects for further contemplation.