Tradition Japanese Music!

Traditional Japanese music usually refers to Japan's historical folk music. One of the defining characteristics of traditional Japanese music is its sparse rhythm. Regular chords are also absent in the music they play. It is impossible for a person to beat time to the music. All of the rhythms are ma-based, and silence is an important part of the songs. The focus is on creating music that flows in an attempt to mirror the behavior of nature itself. It is regular for songs to start of at an extremely slow pace and to pick up speed as the progress. Then, they get slow again before transitioning into long and drawn out finishes.

Traditional Japanese music has three main types. Instrumental, court music, and theatrical. One type of music is the Kabuki. Kabuki music can be divided into three categories. The first category is Gidayubushi, which is similar to joruri music. Joruri is a type of narrative music that uses shamisen (picture above) and has four styles. The second type of kabuki music is Shimoza ongaku and is played for kuromisu (lower seats) below the theater stage. Another for of theatrical music is called noh. The hayashi-kata play Noh music. They use taiko, kotsuzumi, fue, and otsuzumi instruments to make the sounds. The oldest Japanese traditional music is Gagaku. Gagaku is a form of court music. Gagaku includes dances, songs, and a blend of other genres of Asian music. There are two styles of Gagaku. There are Kigaku, which is a form of instrumental music, and Seigaku, which is a form of vocal music.

Many of the musical instruments which are popular in Japanese music first came from China. These instruments include koto, shakuhachi, and wadaiko drums. A koto (see picture above) is a stringed instrument that shares a similarity to China's guzheng. It is Japan's national instrument and is made of kiri wood. It uses thirteen strings over thirteen bridges that are movable over the instrument's width. You have three picks on your fingers which is used to play it. 

Hope you all enjoyed this blog and learned something new about traditional Japanese music and hope you found it as interesting as I did when I was researching it!

                                                            ~The Man Who's A Fan Of Japan