Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

"I feel sorry for poor Alice who started this thread only to see it hijacked! Hopefully she'll still want to play shakuhachi after all this!"


No worries, thanks for the concern.  I am quite amused that all of this got tacked on to my first post.  I just spent 45 minutes reading all of it instead of doing homework!  It has not scared me away from the flute or the forum.  I now have a Yuu, and I'm loving it though I can't do much with it yet.

jeff jones wrote:

nSkky... I am in every way a shakuhachi purist, I don't think it should have a place in jazz or any other type of music except for where it has been for quite some time now. But that's me. I've been reading this discourse for quite awhile now and am bored. Turning the musical world upside down is only going to happen when it happens naturally.l used to work at a club in Chicago called South End Musicworkes as the sound engineer, our club held concerts of the people you mentioned in an earlier post, Evan Parker Lol Koxhil etc. only free jazz (80%). All normal people. Ive picked up Evan at the airport, went to China town( and drank beer.. lots of beer) with Peter Brotzman, and believe me those people didn't go out of there way to turn any thing upside down, it was a natural progression for them.

fascinating that you are a fan of Evan Parker (one of my favorite musicians!) yet are a purist to the shakuhachi?  Out of curiosity, i wonder why you think one particular instrument should be kept in its place while others should evolve?

phil

philipgelb wrote:

geni wrote:

geni
p..s has anybody read Pat Metheny interview about Kenny G?

oh yeah. that was a hilarious read!
Methany should do another recording with Ornette!

phil

LOL. That Ornette recording was fantastic. It proves that Metheny is a capable musician.

On the other hand I recently saw a video of Metheny that was some of the most putrid squiggly fusion wanking imaginable, all accompanied by grimacing and not all that dissimilar from....................

KENNY G!

Ironic.

Tairaku wrote:

"...some of the most putrid squiggly fusion wanking imaginable..."

•

The Horror! The Horror!

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eB

Dear Alice,

I will use this name vs. Samantha as it fits more exactly what I want to say. What I have to discuss is passion. Something I suspect brought you to this point in the first place. What I found interesting in the flow of all the heart thrown into this play of words is that few people presented themselves to you or your true reason for being here. “Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall” A few of us may remember when Gracie Slick sang those words. Yeah, White Rabbit was about addiction, trips and perhaps a vision. Drug induced, but a need for vision none-the-less.

Music, I believe, is what this site is about. Music is the biggest human addiction in history. It belies all other forms of highs. It is the single most driving influence in our lives, at least for most. My opinion and the opinion of some notable research as well.

Of all the arguments I have seen on this thread, from the material used to create a Shakuhachi to Kenny G, the infinite question that seemed to create the most passion was, “will the Shakuhachi ever become famous enough to explode within the recording industry?”

And I sat and thought for several days on these questions and why I have invested so much of my time in music and it occurred to me, partly from my own history and partly from a few books I am reading on the subject, that this drive for perfection seems to miss the point of music. From here on out, you will hear my OPINION. I am not trying to force feed an idea. I am simply presenting it. Passion for music because it simply exists as an exquisite force in our lives.

I spent two years playing Djembe and Djun Djuns after a life time spent singing and dancing in the civic theater. After listening to my mother play the classical piano and pipe organ, I found myself exploring the deepest root, the deepest beginning of this human experience. I become entrenched in the understanding of tribal knowledge.

If you were to travel to an African tribe and tell them that you do not dance or that you do not sing, the look of astonishment on their faces would blind you. Music, dance, rhythm, in the most basic setting, belongs to everyone, not one recording artist. To become great or to allow a particular genre to become great is not the point. The point is that this vibration that we call music is deeply imbedded in all of us. And the discussion of “what is the correct way” is of little value if that discussion dissuades us from following our internal path to that passion we so deeply love.

I was drawn to the didgeridoo, the Shakuhachi and the NAF out of a passion to explore what kind of magic each could pull from me. And as I look at Alice, striving to find that same passion, I am in love with the fact that she took that step to find it within herself. And I am excited to see that she chose the Shakuhachi to pull the truth from her deepest core: That vibration of life that started it all. For that is what music is. The central most profoundly entrenched part of us. It is this internal need to express the love of creative flow that has driven all of us to this discussion.

So I have a simple request, that we stand back and breathe a bit and realize what we all have in common rather than focusing on the differences. Music brought us to this point. Alice found her passion as she stood ten feet tall in the real high of music.

Music is what this is about. Even in their drug induced stupor, Jefferson Airplane knew this. Music is the high we share. Our drug is the instrument of CHOICE. Whether it be voice or upright bass in the orchestra, music is the passion that drives us. The instrument is simply a tool we use to amplify what is already within each of us.

It should be the heart where the music lies that guides our thoughts, our words and our actions. Because as we love music, so will we remember to appreciate and care for each viewpoint that emanates from such a gift.

D.J.

LOL! Brilliance!

I just discover this plentiful topic. About the materials :

Odile Vivier (in Varèse, Solfèges, Seuil, Paris, 1973) says :
"Platinum, as gold, is only an external sign of élégance because, as Bouasse observes in his Traité sur les instruments à vent, 'the physicist knows that the material, which composes the wall, has no importance ; a flute sounds the same, even if it's made of silver, wood or cristal.'"

No matter who is right or who is wrong. I mean it's only a question of pertinence and viewpoints. The physicist has scientific methods : he uses scientific experiment to verify a hypothesis. The flutist is an artist : he uses his sensations, his musical competencies and his ears to give an advice about a sound.

If an experimented flutist says that gold doesn't sounds like silver, or bamboo like wood, of course he's right. No physicist can seriously say he's wrong, because scientific methods only verify hypothesis and never institute the truth. Musicians and scientists just have different viewpoints.

I tried many flutes from different brands in France, Japan and Germany. There are similarities between different models in the same brand ; manufacture is more important than material, scientists agree with that. But I'm sure there are similarities between two 14K gold flutes from different brands, even if played by different flutists. Maybe the problem in the scientific methods is the quality of listening and the musical competencies of the listeners.  My beginner pupils sometimes don't hear any difference between their flute and mine : the fineness of listening is the result of a long work and a long experience.

Last edited by JF Lagrost (2007-02-05 06:24:17)