Takahashi transforms traditional music

By Y. Bintang Prakarsa

JAKARTA (JP): Many Asian musicians have preoccupied themselves with the question of how to transform traditional music. In Java, many innovations have concentrated on exploring new sounds through new instruments or new ways of playing the gamelan.

At concerts for the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival many groups of musicians could be heard playing an amazing variety of imaginative contraptions. It seemed that they were trying to extend the meaning of gamelan in every direction imaginable.

Often, innovations like that are hailed as exciting and original, when in fact they have no significant impact on the musical structure of traditional gamelan itself. Tradition remains untouched and untransformed.

Japanese composer Yuji Takahashi, whose visit to Indonesia was supported by the Japan Foundation on the occasion of the Third Art Summit Indonesia 2001 International Festival on Performing Contemporary Arts, explores a different style.

He attempts to transform traditional music from within. He uses its basic premise to create entirely new music with a new philosophy.

His music still sounds very Japanese, though his use of the traditional melody (Zen?) is infrequent, and the way he mixes music and speech, even the simultaneous narration of different texts or sentences, is obviously non-traditional. It's surprising, then, to hear from the composer himself that his understanding of music has nothing to do with Zen Buddhism.

While many Westerners seek inspiration and enlightenment by studying Zen philosophy, he choose a different path. Lately he has come into contact with meditational practices of Theravada Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism that prospers in South and Southeast Asia.

This, in turn, has influenced his musical practice. Music is not a fixed object, but changes in relation with the environment. Everything that happens outside -- the movements of the hands, the sounds, etc. -- is drawn inside, while the player looks inward in constant observation.

When observing, one tries to relate what is inside with what is outside, and makes continuous adjustment.

The first session of Yuji Takahashi's concert with his group Sora (Sky) at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta on Sept. 16 and Sept. 17 was a concert of mainly traditional instruments: sangen or shamisen (lute), koto (zither) and flutes (the percussion were more or less mixed). From the traditional, he takes the techniques (such as fingering patterns of koto or flute playing techniques) and fills them with new music.

His compositions for traditional instruments performed at the concerts are based on this principle. The notation has to be realized with improvisations. Therefore, no two performances are alike, because in every performance players have to make different sound utterances in concert with his or her colleagues' moves.

He also expands the possibilities by incorporating foreign techniques and patterns into his music. In the first piece, Sangen, played by Kazuko Takada, there is even melodic fragments resembling Arabic music and sounds taken from a Malaysian jaw's harp.

The second session featured mixed media, including a slide show. Here, the music is more outward-looking and straightforward, and more appealing for those unfamiliar with the traditional Japanese idioms. Illuminated with projected artwork by Taeko Tomiyama, the two works speak more direct and immediately stir emotions.

The Prayer in Memory: Kwangju, May 1980 was a succinct, moving interpretation of the people's uprising at Kwangju, South Korea, against the U.S.-backed military following the assassination of the authoritarian president Park Chung-hee.

Tomiyama's mostly black-and-white woodcuts and quotations from Korean folk songs and student protest songs enhance the poignancy of the music, played on piano by Takahashi with Yukihiko Nishizawa playing flute.

One of the songs is a children's song about the peasant revolt at the end of the 19th century. A song of hope for those who were defeated.

The Fox Story: Illusion by the Cherry Blossoms and Chrysanthemums is another story about Japan in the 20th century. Here, the paintings are more exuberant, with foxes marching to war and defeat, and the rise of prosperity that in turn attracts protests by Asian countries.

The music is also for piano and flute, and full of musical borrowings, quotations and allusions.

A passage including a Western military horn call and Japanese pentatonic song (while the slides show the march of foxes waving Japanese flags) is quite obvious symbolism.

Others, like the Korean songs or the Burmese harp techniques transformed for the piano, are presented more subtly. This is not music of victory.

The hero is a young village boy who joined the army and was killed during World War II. Becoming a ghost, he sees how Japan prospers. He also sees a boat carrying people from Asian countries, protesting and bringing new winds of change to Japan.

Takahashi, who was born in Tokyo in 1938 and learned both Western (with Iannis Xenakis among others) and traditional Japanese music, says that what he does is only open doors that have been closed for centuries. Back in ancient times, musical cultures were more open and prepared for cross-cultural influences. Then each tradition closed itself and developed along narrow paths.

"If we can step back a little to learn about musical cross- fertilization in ancient times, then we will be able to enrich our music with many musical traditions that are available," Takahashi said.