Videos added to Kodo Earth Celebration entries

Just a quick note to say that videos have been added to three of the Kodo Earth Celebration entries. If you would like to see them in context, please scroll back to the previous three entries. Or you can view them in this entry, without the intro.

Miyakejima Hozonkai


Kodo Friday Night Concert - Pre-concert fun


Friday morning performance of Okinawan music and dance

The Miyakejima Hozonkai at Earth Celebration

Part of Friday evening's concert, and Saturday morning’s fringe festival was the Miyake-Jima Hozonkai. If you have ever seen a Kodo performance, live, or on video, it is likely you have seen this piece performed. It is one of Kodo’s old standby numbers, like the Odaiko solo, and Yataibayashi. I believe that Kodo’s continuing performance of this piece has perhaps been a large reason for the widespread popularity of this piece in the taiko world. If you search for Miyake Taiko on Youtube, you will probably find several videos of the song, all performed by different groups.

Although Kodo has helped make this song one of Taiko’s most recognizable, they did not compose it themselves. Miyake Taiko is one of many traditional taiko pieces “kept” and performed by a hozonkai. A hozonkai is a type of cultural preservation group. They seem to be usually dedicated only to a very specific part of culture. For example, the Miyake-Jima hozonkai dedicates itself to the performance and preservation of this single piece of music, which is actually only a few measures of music repeated over and over again. There is also a vocal part which is inserted into the drumming from time to time, but this is also merely a few lines of music.

Perhaps, dear reader, you know the song, “Dueling Banjos”. Imagine a group of people who simply focused on the learning, teaching and performing of this song. If you wanted to learn to play “Dueling Banjos”, you would join this group. The group is dedicated to preserving the folk art of this one piece. From my understanding, this is what a hozonkai does. We have actually joined a hozonkai here, for the song, “Shin Matto Bayashi”. I will write more about that very soon, I hope.

We were able to see the Miyake Hozonkai twice at the Earth Festival. Once during the Friday evening concert with Kodo, and then again, at the Fringe Festival at Kisaki Shrine the next morning. Although the performance at the concert was impressive and enjoyable to watch, the Fringe performance was less restricted, involved more members of the group and lasted nearly 45 minutes. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy the concert, but regarding the Miyake Hozonkai performance, we got a much bigger taste of it the following morning.

I am not good at estimating numbers of people, but I would guess the hozonkai probably had about 50 members with them that morning. They set up one drum on stage, and three more drums on the ground in front of the stage. If you have seen Miyake performed, you know the stance used is very low to the ground and is one of taiko’s most physically demanding positions. Those of you who knew this already may have been surprised when I said they played for nearly 45 minutes. Obviously, with 50 members and only 4 drums, they were not all playing at the same time. Each drum has two people; one is playing the base rhythm (kind of like swing eighth notes - doo ba doo ba doo ba doo) and the other is playing the “melody”. I would say that they switched out players every minute to two minutes. In spite of the short playing time, it was still quite strenuous.

After seeing both Kodo’s performance and the hozonkai’s, I noticed some differences in the music and performance styles.

1. The placement of the drums. Kodo, and most groups that perform this piece, place the drums on a horizontal stand, which is close to the ground. The hozonkai placed all their drums except two directly on the ground. This makes the drum lower to the ground and forces the performer to take on an even lower, more physically demanding stance when playing.

2. Kodo will usually play this song with about 5 drums set up in a V shape. The two performers at the front/center both face the audience, forcing them to mirror each other’s movements. So when one player is hitting the drum with the left hand, the other player is hitting with the right hand. (We tried practicing like this on Sunday, and it takes some getting used to.) The hozonkai did not mirror the person on the other side of the drum. On each drum, one person was facing the audience, and the other had his/her back to the audience.

3. The stance of the person playing the jiuchi (base) rhythm was different. The Kodo players will usually play the jiuchi part with one knee on the ground, while the hozonkai remained on both feet, with their legs spread apart and bent about 90 degrees at the knees. I think they both have advantages/disadvantages. While it is easier for the hozonkai to transition back and forth between the jiuchi and the melody, it seems to be very strenuous for the legs to hold that position for so long. Whereas Kodo’s style of kneeling gives the legs a brief rest, it is more difficult to jump back into the playing stance for the melody and it takes a lot of practice to do it smoothly. It is impressive, though, to see how cleanly they can transition.

4. The hozonkai only played a rhythm of a few measures over and over, whereas Kodo seems to have added different sections in between this “chorus”. They often appear to be improvisations, but I have been told that improvisation is not really a part of taiko playing. Just about every note and movement during a song is planned out.

5. There was also some slight variation in the position of the sticks as they played, but I will not bother to explain that here because it is probably too difficult to illustrate without having a visual aid.

With all their differences, the two playing styles of this piece which we saw were both extremely enjoyable to observe. My wife and I have performed a version of this piece on a few occasions, and we hope to continue to perform it, but after seeing the performances at the Earth Celebration, we could see many areas in which we need to improve. We will continue to work hard and hopefully reach an acceptable level for performance.

Please enjoy this video of the Fringe Festival performance.

Earth Celebration - Weather

As I mentioned in the last post, if I am able to return to the Earth Celebration next year, I would really like to participate in some of the workshops. Otherwise, the options seem to be somewhat limited. Our options were even further limited on the first day because of the weather. After two or three weeks of very hot weather and blue skies, it decided to rain on Friday morning and afternoon on Sado Island.

We had heard rumors of the possibility of such weather, but the only preparations we had made were two umbrellas. This might have been sufficient, except for two problems. First problem: both the fringe event and the evening Kodo concert were outdoors and seating was on the ground, which became wet, of course, after it rained. Second problem: umbrellas were not allowed at the evening's concert because they block the view of other audience members. (Keep this in mind, if you ever have a chance to go). So we were expecting to watch the concert sitting on wet grass while being soaked by the rain.

I also mentioned in my previous post that we had miscalculated our budget by forgetting about $80 worth of fares and fees. As soon as we arrived in Ogi, we sat down and wrote down everything we still needed to buy (meal, parking, hotel, etc.). We had just barely enough, as long as we didn't eat to fancy, or do any of the touristy things, like boat rides and such. We set aside about $20 in an emergency fund because we were not sure if we had enough gas to get home or not. Anyway, we decided that sitting in the mud and getting soaked while watching the concert was enough of an emergency to dip into the $20 and get some rain coats. As it turns out, we were not the only ones unprepared for the weather. Of course many of the other guests had not expected rain and were buying raincoats, but the shop owners in Ogi were also ill prepared and had not stocked up on coats. They were quickly selling out. The first three or four stores we went to had just sold their last ones. Luckily we found a little shop that still had some and we bought their last two. We were relieved to know that we wouldn't get completely soaked for the concert.

A little side story, as we were leaving the shop where we got the raincoats, I saw something moving on the floor. At first I thought it was an enormous spider. Japan, being a semi-tropical country, large insects and such are not uncommon. It turned out to be a little crab. This section of the town was quite a ways from the coast and the shop keeper was about as surprised as we were to see it. She shooed it out of her shop with a little broom.

How does this story end? It rained on and off just about up until about 5:30, when they began seating people for the concert. After that, it didn't rain again that evening. Our raincoats ended up being a barrier between our bottoms and the soggy grass. The grass was actually not even that wet and we were able to enjoy the concert fairly comfortably.

Here some unedited video of the Okinawa dance and music performance at the fringe festival. I apologize for the poor vantage point. I'm not sure if you can tell from the video, but there was quite a steady stream of rain coming down. We were sitting under a tent to stay dry. Unfortunately it was situated to the side, and somewhat behind it.



Again, I will close with some pictures.

The Audience at the Fringe event trying to stay dry.

Okinawan dancers performing at the Fringe event in the rain.

Waiting in line at Kisaki Jinja to go up the hill to Shiroyama Koen (Park), where Kodo would perform that evening.

The stage at Shiroyama Koen before the concert.

Earth Celebration

We woke up at 4:40. We meant to wake up at 4:30, but the first alarm did not go off. It was lucky we set two alarms. We finished packing last minute items into our bags and were on the road by 5:07. My first road trip in Japan went smoothly overall. We did, however, neglect to figure in highway tolls in our budget. If you're American, you might be thinking no big deal, but in Japan, tolls are quite a bit more. The ca. 200 km drive (120 miles?) cost about 4150 yen ($36?). So this was not such a minor mistake, yet we survived. We did not get lost, though, which was my biggest worry. We had to drive from Kanazawa to Naoetsu harbor in Niigata prefecture. From Naoetsu, we boarded a ferry to Sago Island, which was another 2.5 hours or so. The drive turned out to be about a 2.5 hour drive, so we arrived at the docks with plenty of time to pass before our 9:30 ferry.

We traveled to Sado Island to see the Earth Celebration put on by Kodo each Summer. The festival lasts three days. There are many events going on during the day, such as workshops by the drummers and guest artists, cultural presentations and what they called a "fringe event", which took place at a shrine near the concert venue. From what I understand, anyone can perform for the fringe event, as long as they register. The fringe event sometimes featured taiko, sometimes dancing, other times just a soloist and a guitar. It's kind of a nice way to pass the time, if you haven't registered for any workshops, or if you don't have a way to get around the island. There is also a harbor market/flea market right when you get off the boat. The harbor market seemed to attract a lot of Japanese hippie type of people. It was interesting to look around at what people were selling, and the people watching was interesting as well, but I didn't see much that I would have wanted to buy. By the time we decided to go to the Earth Celebration, all the workshops were full, but I think that if we are able to go back next year, I will definitely want to participate in some workshops.

Most of the workshops are put on by members of Kodo or other musical guests. An example of some of the workshops available:
Miyake style taiko drumming
Onna Uchi taiko - Women's taiko drumming styles
Making your own taiko - a small one
Okinawa style dancing
and many others.

There's much more to write, but for now, I'll close with a few pictures.

Arriving at Ogi harbor, Sado Island


View from the 3rd deck of the ship.


Our ferry in port at Sado Island, Ogi


A street in Ogi. It was near the restaurant where we finally were able to eat dinner. I know that 4:30 is a bit early to be eating dinner, but almost every restaurant in Ogi seemed to be closed. The first one that we found that was open told us they were just closing up because they had run out of rice. I guess it is an island and it's difficult to get supplies, but one would think they would be better prepared for what is probably the biggest weekend of the year for the island.