Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Dias Guith Harry -

This is an old recording and I think the only known recording of Watazumi avail. outside Japan. The opening tracks are
Shinobe (horizontal flute), the last tracks are Watazumi on his self-made flutes. Awesome sounds....

Slainche

George

Josh wrote:

Not much info on this cd. The first 11 songs are Watazumi playing shinobue and from track 12 are his shakuhachi recordings.  Sorry, I know that doesn't help much.

It is somebody else playing Shinobue. The Watazumi recording can be found in a better form from Mejiro.

Hi Alex,
  You can buy some Watazumi cds through the Hogaku journals website, http://www.hogaku.com/
Sorry, but it's all in Japanese. Maybe not a problem for you though.

Josh

Hi Josh
  Do you know which Watazumi Cds the Hogaku journal caries off hand?

Chris Moran wrote:

Tairaku wrote:

It is somebody else playing Shinobue.

Rats. Doesn't he play shinobue (and maybe nohkan) on the album Watazumido no Sekai?

There was a two album vinyl set called "Mysterious Sound of Bamboo Flute" Volumes 1 and 2.

The album "Art of the Japanese Bamboo Flute" is a compilation of some of these tracks combined with shinobue tracks from another artist, and then mastered in a moonshine shack by an orangutang. Then no credit was given to the artists.

The "Mysterious Sound of Bamboo Flute" CD that was released a few years back was well mastered and combined the two albums on one disc. Some of the tracks include Watazumi playing weird flutes of his own design, which are not shakuhachi.

I have heard all of Watazumi's LP's and he does play some sideblown flutes and even seems to play with taiko and shamisen on some of them.

This is a good example of the ethical quandary about whether or not to make illegal copies of recordings. Although Watazumi recorded for major labels which are still in business (Polydor, Philips, Sony, etc.) NONE of his recordings are in print or if they are they are impossible to find. The only exception is that poorly mastered and confusing CD which is the subject of this thread. The legal status of that recording is questionable considering that they don't even credit the artists. If nobody copies and distributes illegal copies theoretically Watazumi's playing will eventually cease to exist and until that happens nobody will be able to hear them legally unless they happened to have bought the vinyl in the 60's. The recording industry is obsolete. It would take almost no effort for them to put this stuff up on iTunes (at least) and putting out physical copies wouldn't be too difficult either. The record companies end up being curators of a lot of important music and in this case we can all see how irresponsible they are.