#utasanshin — Public Fediverse posts

This was an intense summer. After winning the First Newcomer's Prize in the contest organized by the Ryūkyūkoku Min'yō Kyōkai on the 3rd of august, I was busy with the #eisa training every day. I still played a solo mini-concert ath the Presentation Ceremony in Katsuren Haebaru for the Sanshin Donated to the French National Museum on 24th of august.


The Henna Eisa rituals happened from 7th of september on.


I left seven days to train the hallyangmu dance in Korea.


After that, I came back to Okinawa to perform the kajadifuu dance on the juuguya ashibi in Henna on october 12th. Yesterday, the temperatures dropped for the first time to 26 degrees, so automn is coming now. My next performances will be dancing nubui kuduchi at the keirōkai of Shioya on november 23rd, and singing and playing sanshin at the Performance Art Festival organized by the Ryūkyūkoku Min'yō Kyōkai on november 24th.


#utasanshin

--- english ---

I came to the island of #Okinawa this May to learn its folk songs (‘uchinaa min-yō’ or simply ‘min-yō’) and traditional dances. A min-yō singer sings (‘uta’) and plays the three-stringed lute sanshin at the same time. This double role is called #utasanshin. This double role is also central to the courtly (‘koten’) music of Okinawa. Before that, I had already learnt min-yō and eisa (a type of traditional Okinawan dance) self-taught in Switzerland and then regularly gave group lessons in eisa and min-yō. I was the only teacher for both in Switzerland. If you learn without a teacher, you get stuck at a certain level and it's difficult to develop in areas of finesse. But I wanted to develop further, and for that I needed good teachers. I have now found them in Okinawa. I learn min-yō from Kamiya Kōichi, who is the best teacher for me. I learn the traditional dances from different people.
I enjoy singing and dancing together. I don't necessarily need a stage for that. What this certainly needs is a gathering of people. The more of them actively sing or dance along, the happier I become.
I am interested in the traditional songs and dances because I recognise in them a truthfulness and deep wisdom that can only emerge through the maturity and cultivation by dozens of generations. In contrast to Switzerland, where such songs and dances are hardly practised any more, Okinawa has a significant proportion of the population that practises them. This practice is very visible to the public.
If I compare my skills with those of my teachers here on Okinawa, I am clearly still a beginner. The kind of maturity that characterises my teachers can only be achieved through decades of practice. However, such maturity is my goal. It will take me decades to get there.
I really like teaching. I am aware that there are many more suitable teachers than me here on Okinawa. But every teacher has their own unique qualities. Who knows, maybe one day I will be your teacher?

--- 日本語 ---

私は今年の5月に沖縄の民謡と伝統的な踊りを学ぶために沖縄に来ました。それ以前は、スイスで独学で沖縄民謡とエイサーを学び、両方を教導しました。どちらもスイスで唯一の先生でした。先生なしで学ぶと、ある一定のレベルで止まってしまい、繊細な部分を伸ばすのが難しくなります。しかし、私はもっと成長したかったし、その為には良い先生が必要でした。私は今、沖縄でその様な先生を見つける事が出来ました。民謡は神谷幸一先生から習っています。伝統的な踊りもいろいろな人から習っています。
一緒に歌って踊るのが楽しいです。その為に必ずしも舞台が必要なわけではありません。確かに必要なのは人の集まりです。積極的に歌ったり踊ったりしてくれる人が多ければ多いほど、私は嬉しくなります。
私が伝統的な唄や踊りに興味を持つのは、そこに何十世代にも渡って熟成され、大切にされてきた物だけが持つ真実味や深い知恵を感じるからです。この様な唄や踊りを殆ど実習しないスイスとは対照的に、沖縄ではかなりの割合の人々が実習しています。その実習風景は、一般の人々にもよく見えます。
沖縄の先生方と私の技量を比べても、まったく意味がありません。なぜなら、私はここでは明らかにまだ初心者だからです。私の先生方を特徴づける様な成熟は、何十年もの練習を経なければ達成できません。しかし、その様な成熟が私の目標です。そこに到達するには何十年も掛かるだろう。
私は教えることが本当に好きです。ここ沖縄には、私よりも相応しい先生がたくさんいる事は承知しています。でも、どの先生にもそれぞれの良さがあるんでしょう。何時か私があなたの先生になるかもしれませんよ。

#沖縄 #沖縄民謡 #唄三線 #minyo #uchinaa-minyo

In the near future, I might present on the fediverse some audio or video material of me playing traditional Okinawan (utasanshin), Korean, Persian, Japanese or Alpine Central European music. Feel free to consider these publications as an invitation to a friendly, stimulated and respectful conversation about music.

In view of some unpleasant experiences I've had in my life, I feel the need to announce the conditions under which your responses to it fulfill my demands of respect. I'll insist on your adhering to them. After all, it's me opening up these spaces for conversation and inviting you in. Thanks for taking care.

• If you feel "strangeness" in these traditional musics, please say something like "It sounds unfamiliar/strange/foreign to me, because it's the first time I've heard such music". But please do so only if you show interest at the same time. Without your interest, your statement will be of no value. Don't forget: The purpose should be the conversation between the listener, you, and the musician, me. Please "respond" in the sense of making a dialogue happen—instead of "react" as in influencer reaction clips.
  
  
• Do not kill the conversation in an arrogant way claiming that you're the expert and that you already understood everything about these musics. Implicit to that, do not explain these traditional musics with modern western music theory concepts. They won't do them justice. Crucial concepts would be missing, like hâl (certain emotional states) or ho-heup and ki-ai (certain body movement/breathing and awareness work), just to name some. Refrain especially from using the terminologies "microtonal" and "xenharmonic". I'll show you why. People formed by modern western musical education (Jazz schools included) understand the so-called twelve-tone equal temperament (12ET) as the norm. They brand all other tonal systems as off-norm, applying the terminologies "microtonal" or "xenharmonic" to latter (go ahead, just look these words up, and see for yourself in the definition of these words). They tend to forget that 12ET was an arbitrary design choice made by some individuals, quite recent actually, and adapted by only some groups of some societies. Yes, it has been mostly adapted by the music industry. But 12ET is not a norm, it's not universal, neither geographically nor temporally. It even doesn't represent "Western" nor "European" culture.
  

Now that we don't have 12ET in the traditional musics, what do we have then? While 12ET is not following natural principles (you cannot tune your instrument according to it without using a modern device called "tuner"—to be purchased), the traditional musics do follow natural principles. Which is a matter of course. To be able to recreate the same tonal system over and over again (imagine yourself tuning your instruments), you have only the laws of mathematics, physics and acoustics at hand. We're talking about consecutive 6000 years of tradition of using advanced instruments here. For all that time there were no tuners around.

At a musical showing two days ago, I was asked about the pitches I'm playing on the taepyeongso. This question is a very interesting one, because there's so much useful (and very old) knowledge related to this topic. I'm always happy to share this knowledge. It was also not the first time for me to do so. So I started to answer: "They're based on natural harmonic intervals...", but I couldn't talk further. I had to put up with a wall of objections from three persons. "No, they're not natural!" "No, they're weird!" "No, they're microtonal!" "My friend studied Jazz, he knows!" They were confirming each other. I was (metaphorically speaking) kicked out of the conversation. That was not fun.

The day after, I told my friend who was at the showing how I felt. She understood and told me that she would pay attention from now on. The thing is that I don't blame her and her Jazz musician friends. It's not their fault. It's the educational system's fault. It trains us to show intellectual strength/superiority all the time instead of interest and practicing the art of listening. And it teaches us to create an unnecessary trench and hierarchy between "us normal ones" against or over "them strange ones", like when I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher twenty years ago, and the music professor at the educational school was showing us "Swiss" future teachers a recording of Korean court music only to harden "our" common feeling of strangeness towards it... That was another moment when everybody except me was agreeing, not even considering that some people, like me, would feel actually very familiar with that music. I guess they could never imagine that I spent every summer on an alp (alpine pasture) hearing my uncles playing Alphorn and singing Naturyodel until I was six years old and then two years in Japan hearing and singing Japanese children's songs.

What I could have shared when being asked about the pitches of the taepyeongso... well, I believe it's very rich and nourishing. But that's up to you to decide for yourself.

So, the traditional musics use natural pitch intervals. And yes, modern western science considers them as such, even calls them "pure", in contrast to impure ones to which 12ET intervals belong.

The Persians made up catchy names for the natural pitch intervals used in traditional musics:

• 2/1 hangâm or hengâm. The word means time, hour or season and describes well the periodical usage and character of this interval. Apply the analogy between the time domain and the pitch domain here, and you got a very important natural principle in music.
  
  
• 3/2 chireh. The word means prevailing, dominant or victorious and describes well the convincing character of this interval which is, just like hangâm, immediately recognizable when the two pitches spanning the interval are played simultaneously. Thus, hangâm and chireh are used to tune instruments.
  
  
• 4/3 dang. The word means share or part and describes well that this "part", combined in a sequence with the chireh interval, actually fill up to a complete hangâm interval.
  
  
• 32/27 vostâ-ye qadim. This word means the position of the middle finger on the neck of a lute. It's achieved through the so-called up-and-down principle. This principle puts hangâm and chireh intervals in a sequence and is described in ancient literary works, of which the oldest found is Chinese, where it's called sān-fēn sǔn-yì (balance of trisection method).
  
  
• 9/8 tanini. This word means resonant, reverberative or tonally nice. It's the smallest and most frequent interval in 5-tone (pentatonic) songs formed by the correct tone class (zhèng yīn jí in Chinese). It's also achieved through the up-and-down-principle. And because it's a small interval, it's very easily trainable and body-memorizable with your vocal organs. The meaning of tanini refers to that.
  
  
• 256/243 baqiyeh. This word is borrowed from Arabic and means remainder or remnant. This interval appears in your tonal system if you extend your 5-tone system to a 6- or 7-tone system by continuing the up-and-down-principle. This "remainder" together with the tanini interval fill up to a vostâ-ye qadim interval. A hangâm interval can in consequence also be filled up with only the intervals tanini and baqiyeh (five and two of them, respectively).
  

All six pitch intervals mentioned above are irrefutable due to the natural principles moulded into them. All traditional musical instruments can play them.

Some cultures added to those intervals a seventh interval, to make the music even richer. The Persians call this interval mojannab, a word which is borrowed from Arabic and which means bended, turned aside or hit sideways. It's not natural, thus its value cannot be defined exactly. Instead, it's variable and can take a value within the range of about 112 and about 182 cent. It actually varies strongly between songs (or modes) and also between groups of musicians (or regions or epochs). You find the mojannab not only in the middle east and central Asia, but also in cultures such as the Kanuri in Niger (example) , the Korean (example) or the Okinawan (example) who incorporated it into their own cultures through trade contacts.

Before I end this post, I'd like to point at these two academics who mention in their work how power has been used in modern history to discredit people using tonalities other than 12ET (In case you'd like to hear others talk or write about this topic):

• Yannick Wey - "Transformations of Tonality: A Longitudinal Study of Yodeling in the Muotatal Valley, Central Switzerland"
  
• Kofi Agawa - Tonality as a colonizing force in African music

#philosophy #music #utasanshin

The 5 Sanshin donated by the Sanshin Sending Project arrived today!
So soon I will be able to start a class :-)
To keep up to date, connect on fediverse with @utasanshin 唄三線
#utasanshin #三線 #唄三線 #sanshin