10/4 Japan Diary #1 - Gagaku

Even after reading about gagaku and watching a video of it on YouTube, I wasn’t truly prepared for seeing it live. As with most musical styles, nothing compares with the live performance. Chris-sensei and I took a short train ride from school, and a short walk later, arrived at the towering stone torii of the Hiejinja shrine. I distinctly remember thinking everything was gray. The sky, the city, and the huge torii. It cast an otherworldly pall over an otherwise ordinary night.

As we crossed through the torii, we climbed up a hill to the shrine on narrow escalators. It felt uniquely Japanese, this blend of modern and traditional. The transition from industrial city to natural shrine was so subtle that this fairly big shrine was almost hidden, blending into the rest of the city. The gray stone and white lights gave way to large trees with reaching, deep green boughs that shaded the grounds. The walkways were marked by loose stones, giving a resounding crunch beneath the audience’s feet. Gray skyscrapers rose high above on all sides, surrounding the splash of red-painted pagodas and creating a kind of barricade against not only the noise and rush, but also the day-to-day feel of the city.

As we met with the group from the other university, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how many people came out to see this very traditional style of music. Whenever I go to see the livestreams of opera in my hometown, it’s usually just me and a handful of grandparents.

Of course, opera’s not a very good comparison for gagaku considering gagaku’s much older, and stylistically and theoretically they don’t really have anything in common. It’s just that neither are considered “modern” or “popular.” At least with opera a modern ear can hook onto some of the melodies or perhaps recognize a famous aria. With gagaku, the Western ear just has no precedent.

Click here to hear some gagaku!

The show opened with a rousing drum performance. I felt a palpable sense of ceremony as those first pulses of the drums echoed off the skyscrapers and set the tone for the evening. Next was a kangen, or instrumental piece followed by a series of bugaku, or dances and their accompaniments. Several dances included young women dressed in vibrant traditional clothing with golden hairpieces that sparkled in the light of the stage. They danced with very deliberate movements, at once delicate but firm.

Watch some bugaku from a Setsubun event here!

I tried listening for the sound ideals I had read about a few days prior. Gagaku definitely sticks to the chamber music sound ideal, where the tone color of each instrument can be definitively identified. The shou sticks out in my memory. It has a nasally, droning effect that reminds one of chanting Buddhist monks…or maybe a chorus of ducks. Underneath that though, you could still hear the gentle plucking of biwa and koto, and the hollow ring of the kakko drum. I also picked up on the structural ideal of three-part division. Often I could hear three instruments playing at once or three melodies being played from the different voices.

For me, the performance was refreshingly different. Whenever I go to see a type of music I’m not familiar with, it’s kind of like a palate cleanser. I walked away from the experience feeling refreshed and revived, ready to dig into my next uniquely Japanese experience!