The Last Biwa Singer PDF Download

Author: Hugh de Ferranti
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1942242433
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Author: Hugh De Ferranti
Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This work is an exposition of the traditions of Japanese blind singers who accompanied themselves on the biwa, and of the complex identity of Yamashika Yoshiyuki (1901-1996), a man widely portrayed as the last such "living relic" of the medieval bards called biwa hoshi. The author draws upon approaches from Japanese historical and literature studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology in an examination of history, which yielded on the one hand images of blind singers that still circulate in Japan, and on the other a particular tradition of musical story-telling and rites in regional Kyushu, of representations of Yamashika in diverse media, of his experience training for and making a living as a professional performer and rituals from the 1920s on, and of the oral compositional process in performances made between 1989 and 1992.

Author: Matt Gillan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317052625
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, Okinawan music has experienced an extraordinary boom in popularity throughout Japan. Musicians from this island prefecture in the very south of Japan have found success as performers and recording artists, and have been featured in a number of hit films and television dramas. In particular, the Yaeyama region in the south of Okinawa has long been known as a region rich in performing arts, and Yaeyaman musicians such as BEGIN, Daiku Tetsuhiro, and Natsukawa Rimi have been at the forefront of the recent Okinawan music boom. This popularity of Okinawan music represents only the surface of a diverse and thriving musical culture within modern-day Yaeyama. Traditional music continues to be an important component of traditional ritual and social life in the islands, while Yaeyama's unique geographical and cultural position at the very edge of Japan have produced varied discourses surrounding issues such as tradition versus modernity, preservation, and cultural identity. Songs from the Edge of Japan explores some of the reasons for the high profile of Yaeyaman music in recent years, both inside and outside Yaeyama. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork carried out since 2000, the book uses interviews, articles from the popular media, musical and lyrical analysis of field and commercial recordings, as well as the author's experiences as a performer of Yaeyaman and Okinawan music, to paint a picture of what it means to perform Yaeyaman music in the 21st century.

Author: Alison McQueen Tokita
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351925512
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Alison McQueen Tokita presents a series of case studies that demonstrate the persistence of Japanese sung narratives in a multiplicity of genres over ten centuries, including the way they flourished and declined, together with factors contributing to development and change in narrative performance. Performed narratives are examples of a shared cultural heritage, which in the past have given people a sense of belonging to a community. Narratives that were continually re-told and recycled in different versions and formats over a long period of time served to build people's sense of a common identity over space (the geographical extent of 'Japan') and time (the enduring power of many specific narratives such as The Tale of the Heike). Much scholarly attention has focused on Japanese pre-modern literature and drama, but the tradition of oral narrative has barely been touched. Tokita argues that it is possible to identify a continuous tradition of performed narrative in Japan from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. The elements of variation and change relate to the move away from oral narrative to text-based performance, and from a simple narrative situation with one performer to complex theatrical narratives with dancers, singers and other musicians. The resulting complexity led to the pre-eminence of the musical aspects in some cases, and of dramatic or dance aspects in others. Tokita includes substantial musical analysis and exploration of theoretical issues, as well as documentation of important performance traditions, all of which are extant.

Author: Jennifer Post
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113670518X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
Ethnomusicology: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of ethnomusicology. The book is divided into two parts. Part One is organized by resource type in categories of greatest concern to students and scholars. It includes handbooks and guides; encyclopedias and dictionaries; indexes and bibliographies; journals; media sources; and archives. It also offers annotated entries on the basic literature of ethnomusicological history and research. Part Two provides a list of current publications in the field that are widely used by ethnomusicologists. Multiply indexed, this book serves as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared in the field over the last decades.

Author: Catherine Grant
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199352178
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In response to increased focus on the protection of intangible cultural heritage across the world, Music Endangerment offers a new practical approach to assessing, advocating, and assisting the sustainability of musical genres. Drawing upon relevant ethnomusicological research on globalization and musical diversity, musical change, music revivals, and ecological models for sustainability, author Catherine Grant systematically critiques strategies that are currently employed to support endangered musics. She then constructs a comparative framework between language and music, adapting and applying the measures of language endangerment as developed by UNESCO, in order to identify ways in which language maintenance might (and might not) illuminate new pathways to keeping these musics strong. Grant's work presents the first in-depth, standardized, replicable tool for gauging the level of vitality of music genres, providing an invaluable resource for the creation and maintenance of international cultural policy. It will enable those working in the field to effectively demonstrate the degree to which outside intervention could be of tangible benefit to communities whose musical practices are under threat. Significant for both its insight and its utility, Music Endangerment is an important contribution to the growing field of applied ethnomusicology, and will help secure the continued diversity of our global musical traditions.

Author: Keith Howard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000095967
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Presence Through Sound narrates and analyses, through a range of case studies on selected musics of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Tibet, some of the many ways in which music and ‘place’ intersect and are interwoven with meaning in East Asia. It explores how place is significant to the many contexts in which music is made and experienced, especially in contemporary forms of longstanding traditions but also in other landscapes such as popular music and in the design of performance spaces. It shows how music creates and challenges borders, giving significance to geographical and cartographic spaces at local, national, and international levels, and illustrates how music is used to interpret relationships with ecology and environment, spirituality and community, and state and nation. The volume brings together scholars from Australia, China, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the UK, each of whom explores a specific genre or topic in depth. Each nuanced account finds distinct and at times different aspects to be significant but, in demonstrating the ability of music to mediate the construction of place and by showing how those who create and consume music use it to inhabit the intimate, and to project themselves out into their surroundings, each points to interconnections across the region and beyond with respect to perception, conception, expression, and interpretation. In Presence Through Sound, ethnomusicology meets anthropology, literature, linguistics, area studies, and – particularly pertinent to East Asia in the twenty-first century – local musicologies. The volume serves a broad academic readership and provides an essential resource for all those interested in East Asia.

Author: Adam Thorin Croft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429748892
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Politically the 1910s and 1920s were dark days for Japan: economic instability, frequent political assassinations, and increasing violent military interventions at home and overseas affected many. This book explores the literature of the period, showing how it contributed to this overall mood. It focuses on the Tatsukawa Library, an unusual collection of military chronicles based on traditions of popular storytelling found in the yose — a network of small theatrical venues that provided the masses living and working in Japan’s major cities with affordable entertainment. Capitalising on local advances in Western-style printing, the series facilitated a ‘new wave’ of literature that appealed especially to young, marginalised, economically-insecure urban youths. This book discusses how the narrative content of the Tatsukawa Library, which focuses on historical samurai struggling valiantly against adverse circumstances, helped inspire a generation with admiration for violence. This work also examines how this outlook fitted with the Japanese state’s reintroduction of imperial propaganda.

Author: Robert C. Provine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351544292
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 2195

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Book Description
This volume explores not only the close ties that link the cultures and musics of East and Northeast Asia, but also the distinctive features that separate them.

Author: Gerald Groemer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317409906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
This book presents a thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study of the emergence, development, and demise of music, theatre, recitation, and dance witnessed by the populace on thoroughfares, plazas, and makeshift outdoor performance spaces in Edo/Tokyo. For some three hundred years this city was the centre of such arts, both sacred and secular. This study outlines the nature of the performances, explores the social relations which lay behind them, and reveals vast complexity: an obligation of gift-giving on the part of observers; performers who were often economic migrants fallen on hard times; relations of performance to social class; a class system much more finely gradated than the official four caste system; and institutions of professional organization and registration, enforced by government, with penalties for unregistered performers. The book discusses how performing, witnessing, and rewarding performance were closely bound up with economy, society and government, how the interaction between various groups related to socio-economic advancement, how the system of street performance reinforced social control, and how the balance between different groups shifted over time.