BETWEEN LOCAL AND GLOBAL

Ideologies, practices and protagonists of the SHAKUHACHI in Japan and European countries.

                                (M.A. in Ethnomusicology of Asia)

ABSTRACT 

This graduation thesis proposes a type of work that is typically ethnomusicological. The object of study is the end-blown Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi and its practice in contemporary Japanese and European society. The use of this traditional instrument has transcended into a cultural fabric so deeply different from its origins. In Japan, the shakuhachi has seen a shift from an ancient to a contemporary society, whilst in the case of Europe there has been a huge geographical shift. This has led performers and audiences of this music to rethink its ways of appropriation and fruition. Originally spread in Japan as a religious instrument of a Buddhist Zen sect, nowadays the shakuhachi is played in many places around the world and in different manner. The discourse about its practice, therefore, spans time and geography, where the sound of the shakuhachi began in ancient Japan and echoes in modern day Europe.

This work is divided into four parts, preceded by an introduction which describes, in general, the traditional Japanese music and its methods of transmission. The first part is a presentation of the instrument: it describes the different types of shakuhachi that appeared in Japan, the manufacture of the instrument, the basic techniques of playing and its repertoire. The second part describes the events that led the shakuhachi to switch from hōki, or zenki, a religious instrument used by the “monks of nothing” as element of their meditative practice, to gakki, a musical instrument useable, at least theoretically, by everyone. This shift saw the emergence of shakuhachi schools, and the dissemination of different styles. Many of these traditions have survived to this day. In the twentieth century, a general movement of ‘modernization’ (beginning with the advent of the Meiji government in 1868) touched the musical context and allowed the development of new ways to utilize the shakuhachi and its music. The third and fourth parts are devoted to the analysis of the present state of the shakuhachi in contemporary Japanese and European society. The Japanese section examines new approaches to the practice of the instrument and presents some of the protagonists of the current scene, while the European section proposes an attempt to describe the image of shakuhachi in Europe, through two examples of ethnographic study.