Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

I played Koden Sugomori at a wedding in Kyushu a while back. I think my teacher said that the crane represents a thousand years of life, so its a good theme for a wedding piece. I think it was one of the better solo honkyoku choices, since its short and active.

Kumoijishi seems to be my standard wedding piece, starting from about twelve years ago when playing for weddings started to become an occasional or semi-regular thing.  Before that I had played several duets of Sanya Sugagaki, once in a Shinto Shrine and once up on a mountainside where those in the wedding procession decided to stop and hold the ceremony.  Usually the weddings or wedding parties are in wedding halls (which are specifically created for that purpose here in Japan, now often with a so called "chapel" so that Japanese can experience the "feeling" of a church wedding), though there was one I attended in a greenhouse where they sold tropical plants/fruits and grew rather expensive Japanese melons which had oni (Japanese horned demons) masked taiko drummers, a tai chi performance by a guy in white silk pajamas, a Tsurugu jamisen player, three chord electric guitar (a Canadian who'd had a thrash band in the Canadian heartland somewhere) with a crazy free jazz drummer (who lived out in what was basically a storage shed in the midst of rice fields where he could pound his two drum kits with abandon without worrying too much about what the neighbors would say), and (my) ambient shakuhachi and various percussion using whatever was at hand accompanying a candledance done by a bare chested yogi lookalike (he was a Sannyasan) with waist length hair flipped forward to cover his face and lit candles stuck to the palms of his hands (lights out for that one, of course)...and not to forget at the end, the Japanese mostly middle aged ladies hula dancing class; that wedding was like something out of a Fellini movie; the groom a fifty year old Japanese rice farmer/acupuncturist -- at that time I thought fifty was old! --who would gather mountain herbs on high cliff ridges and liked to tell the stories -- apocryphal? -- of his wanderings through the Himalayas and of his floating down the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in a makeshift outfit of garbage bags while eating cacti) with a blonde British bride twenty years his junior.  But I digress...   I've played Shika No Tone a number of times as a duet, with my sensei and with my Japanese nephew, Rokudan No Shirabe and Chidori No Kyoku (with koto players and another shakuhachi) for several weddings.  Last night I had my third wedding party of this summer, this one at an Irish pub for a mostly twentysomething crowd who had been ordering pints at the bar for about an hour before the live music was to start,  and though I had originally planned to play Kumoijishi, I thought it was best to do something else as the noise level was rapidly rising.  There was a tenor sax player in attendance who wanted to play so we did an on the spot improvization trading solos while getting our beat from a djembe player... then I played "Summertime" on a 2.1.   I agree with Caffeind's comment about Koden Sugomori; I think it's a good choice for a wedding -- short and dynamic.   My sensei Ikezoe Kyodo has done his own abbreviated version of Sokkaku Reibo for several weddings. 
My memory banks are still kicking in here, trying to retrieve information from years gone by....Ginryu Koku, just the solo part from that honkyoku -- that at a Shinto shrine wedding (in the village of Kagamimura -- "mirror" village) along with Kongoseki (another piece one can play a brighter "cheap" version of, as Nyoraku Schlefer sensei would say), Sagariha for an autumn wedding, and solo one deer versions of Shika No Tone, one for a wedding last month in an Italian style cafe.  I've only played at one wedding outside of Kochi prefecture and that was at the All Saints Church in Marlow, England, in the year 2000; again, the old standby, Kumoijishi.

Last edited by Daniel Ryudo (2006-07-31 01:54:43)