Ain't That a... Shamisen

[There are 3 MP3s at the end of this post.]

Niigata Prefecture, on the Northwestern coast of Honshu Island, facing the Sea of Japan, is home to one of the richest rice-growing regions in the world. It is also an area that experiences unrelenting winters featuring annual snowfalls rivaling anywhere else on the planet. (Back in 1986, the town of Yuzawa received a Biblical dumping deeper than 7½ feet in one day!) Niigata, along with other prefectures along the Japan's Western seaboard, is also known for a peculiar musical tradition dating back four centuries.

The life of the itinerant musician has never been a cakewalk. Despite the ubiquity of the Bauls, griots, and troubadours passing through the towns of human history, most cultures have treated these rootless oral historians as second-class citizens. In not-so-ancient Japan, the inferior status of women and the disabled have long been a bafflement, so you can only imagine the island nation's treatment of its unsighted females. Cast out by a disdainful society, these doubly afflicted souls nevertheless crafted for themselves a new identity as wandering musicians, spreading news and social commentary while eking out a threadbare existence of alms and free lodging along the road. (Occasional rice-crop failures leading to undernourishment along with the unrelenting brilliance of the snow may have lead to a high frequency of blindness in the region.)

Known as goze, blind women shamisen players have been traveling and performing a circuit of remote villages dating back to the early 17th century. Living and working under harsh conditions the goze organized formal associations, which helped earn them a measure of honor and legitimacy (not to mention a yen or two) from a dubious populace. Precious few recordings of this archaic folk tradition are extant—the last active goze, Haru Kobayashi, died in 2005 at the age of 105—but the tracks that are available reveal raw and riveting performances miles beyond the mere light entertainments you might expect:

[Three MP3s after the jump!]

Goi Yamamoto bends strings and minds with this harrowing effort, a little ditty about a fellow ritually crucified in 1653 for presenting a petition of grievances to the local feudal lord:
Sakura-Sougorou (MP3)

Misao Nakasizu sings this ancient tale of the son of a provincial lord who winds up horribly deformed when his girlfriend's father tries to kill him with a horse:
Oguri-Hangan (MP3)

Famed goze Kikue Sugimoto delivers this manzai, a humorous presentation that dates to the Edo period (1600-1868). Some scholars point to performances in this style as being historical antecedents to a type of stand-up comedy now popular in Japan. Dig the hip-hop flava of her delivery in the middle section:
Mikawa-Manzai (MP3)

[Many thanks to listener Kota for introducing me to the world of the goze and for providing the MP3s.]

Comments

pretty interesting stuff. as a westerner, i can't help but see this as the japanese counterpart to the blues.

[Charles]

Sounds a bit like Nick Drake :)

(great post, btw).

[Doug Schulkind]

Here is a little backstory on this post:

Two weeks ago, I received an email in the middle of my Friday radio show. I had just cued up the first song in a set of Japanese music (during the fourth set of this program) but I didn't have time to read it. Only after I made some announcements and then started the first track of the set did I have time to read the message. It was from a listener who was responding to an email I'd sent almost three years ago to the day answering a question the listener had. This listener, Kota, was all apologetic for not having seen my response -- it had gotten lost in an old mailbox or something -- and to make up for this, Kota sent along an MP3 (the Goi Yamamoto song, above) with a brief description of the music of the Goze. Kota likened the sound to Son House and that REALLY caught my attention! I clicked on the MP3, was blown away, and had the track playing over the air within minutes. After a couple of back-and-forth emails with Kota, I've wound up with MP3s of two amazing CD collections of Goze music. (All thanks, of course, to Kota.) Wow!

[김일정]

By "Sea of Japan" I assume you mean "East Sea".

*cough*imperialist pig*cough*

[sha]

thank you Doug!
Goze is coming to your house now!

[Joe]

Yeah, this stuff is mind-blowing. Loving it. Thanks, Doug (and Kota).

[maria]

wow Doug-- wonderful stuff! I wonder if it is the same as something I heard many years ago from a tape of a wkcr show, japanese female vocalists doing some minimal soul music. I can still remember the melody, but never know any info. Thanks for telling me the story.

[kota]

I believe it's cool if this music could be an opportunity to think about souls & blues everywhere around the world, not only western world.
Thanks Doug & listeners!

[Andrew]

It would be cool to get some translations.

[tony c]

Chinese folk music, and American via Africa folk music share a kindred spirit. It's that old pentatonic scale, the blues scale. All those fake Hollywood chinese scores use the black keys on the piano. Ask Hoagy Charmichel.

Ah heck, forget about the piano. Ask Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Chinese Blues, fer sure.

[kota]

No, Blind Lemon Jefferson is Americanish Goze, Lightnin Hopkins,too.

Originally the guitar & the piano came from Europe, much older from Islamic culture. The pentatonic scale is came from Scotland. The mother of the blues from Africa was all killed. Who kills? Martin Scorsese's blues film is too easy for me.

I'm just a listener, not a scholar. I just respect the music of Kikue Sugimoto, Nic Jones, Son House, Nusrat Faten Ali Khan, Bernardo el de Los Lobitos, Atahualpa Yupanqu, and of course Blind Lemon Jefferson is great.

Cheers,

[Cam]

Amazing stuff. Thank you for the information and the background for the post. Absolutely fascinating.

[linas]

Impressive! I'm looking for more Mikawa Manzai. Is it possible to get it either on-line (mp3) or off-line? I try to google for it but this kind of music seems to be quite rare.

[ScottieBear]

I am a long fan of the Goze and the biwa hoshi. I also found the Yoshida Brothers on youtube and they have become one of my favourites.

thanks for the mp3's of the goze and for the wonderful pictures of a forgotten era in the memories of those of us in the West.

Scottie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RERXiliJfdI

[Rocky]

to Doug Schulkind

how can i get a copy of those 2 cds of goze music? i absolutely love this stuff.

[Shamisen]

From
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Berlin-Phonogramm-Archiv-1900-2000/dp/B00004YUCI

There's something oddly potent about the preserved echoes of long-dead people, and this box offers five riveting hours of such things. Like the last Japanese "goze", recorded in 1964: these blind women-minstrels, who accompanied themselves on the shamisen lute, formed a social institution in a region of Japan where eye-disease was endemic.

From http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/archive/previous_site/EARvol6no1.htm

Some music or traditions died out or were modified since they were collected. In Japan, the guild of blind women, known as goze, generally sang epics and accompanied themselves on the shamisen. In 1964, Eta Harich-Schneider recorded Sugimoto Kikue, who the government declared a national treasure. The last goze retired in 1977.