#Honkyoku

[thebrownbuddha]

Shakuhachi Day @ Komyoji

This is not really directly a Komuso post, however, since several people in the story are Komuso and it involves Myoanji and Shakuhachi I will post it here. There is I am sure more interest than on the other blog. I will start with this post from Facebook by one of the main people in this story:“When playing shakuhachi – there are always new adventures and a possible expantion of the shakuhachi…

[alphachromeyayo]

Man, shakuhachi is HARD

After a couple of days I can semi-reliably get *some* sound out of it at least 🪈🎍🍃

Needs a lot of practice obviously, and it'll be a very long journey, but yay!

[philosohappy]

Honkyoku are the pieces of shakuhachi or hocchiku music played by wandering Japanese Zen monks called komuso. 

Komuso played honkyoku for enlightenment and alms as early as the 13th century. In the 18th century, a komuso named Kinko Kurosawa of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism was commissioned to travel throughout Japan and collect these musical pieces. 

The results of several years of travel and compilation were thirty-six pieces known as the Kinko-Ryu Honkyoku.

[teconozcomascarita]

Komusō con shakuhachi

[robertoguillermogomes]

Honkyoku

Honkyoku (本 曲, “piezas originales”) son las piezas de música de shakuhachi interpretadas por monjes zen mendicantes de Japón llamados komuso. Los komuso tocaban honkyoku para alcanzar la iluminación y por las limosnas ya desde el siglo XIII. Honkyoku es la práctica de suizen (���zen soplado”). La secta fuke que originó esta práctica dejó de existir en el siglo XIX, después de lo cual se formaron…

[yuzenshakuhachi]

Playing a piece (Daiwagaku or Big Harmony) on a historic instrument. The maker of the instrument (Jin Nyodo) composed the piece sometime in the early 20th century.

[neuro-chaos]

Kumoi-San. Japanese Jazz improvised by Modular Synthesis. #ambient #jazz #shakuhachi #modularsynthesis #audulus

[shakuhachi-notes]

鹿の遠音 (Shika no Tone) played by Yoshimi Tsujimoto

Various copies of the video of the cover of Smooth Criminal by Yoshimi Tsujimoto and her associates were unfortunately removed at the request of the copyright owner. It seems rather silly that they did not capitalise on it instead by getting people to be redirected to their own version of the video, and hence earn advertising revenue as recompense.

Anyway, other videos such as this one are still online. This is a honkyoku piece, the name commonly translated as "the distant cry of the deer". Based on the caption supplied on YouTube, I guess that it was performed in Isesaki city in Gunma prefecture, Japan. It may have been performed in the evening as there is another video of the same piece, apparently at the same venue, but clearly in the morning or afternoon.

[themeander]

artist: Miyata Kohachiro | track: Honshirabe 

Sometimes we need to zen out and feel time as no-time, the non-evasive slow, the long now.

[thebrownbuddha]

Sakura Komuso Takuhatsu -24’

サクラコムソー拓殖 -24′ There are about a couple of thousand registered Komuso in Japan. Not all of us live in Japan, but majority do; the rest are registered here through their teachers. Among those in Japan, only a few are consistently active, meaning they have the necessary paperwork but don’t always show up for events. Nowadays, most Komusos only attend Komuso-related events. To my knowledge, there…

[illimitablespaces]

"Tsuru no sugomori (nesting cranes)," performed on shakuhachi by Kohachiro Miyata.

[somossopa]

Yamato Choshi (honkyoku performed on 2.8 shakuhachi)

"Honkyoku (本曲, "original pieces") are the pieces of shakuhachi or hotchiku music played by mendicant Japanese Zen monks called komusō. Komusō played honkyoku for enlightenment and alms as early as the 13th century. Honkyoku is the practice of suizen ("blowing Zen").  Suizen (吹禅?) is a Zen practice consisting of playing the shakuhachi bamboo flute as a means of attaining self-realization."

[yuzenshakuhachi]

Recorded in Naperville IL USA December 2016.

[truetunes]

??? - An Elegy For My Mother

[shakuhachi-notes]

Lesson #55 with Chikuzen

This lesson was on 20 October 2015. Yes, my lesson logs have finally caught up with my lessons! Hope these will not be famous last words...

Following the theme of revising the shoden repertoire in preparation for testing, we went over Kyorei and Banshiki. In retrospect maybe I should do Honshirabe instead since it is supposedly the first honkyoku piece in Dokyoku style that I learned, but no big deal I suppose as I will no doubt return to the piece later.

If you have been following this blog since 2010, or more likely read through the archives, you will know that Kyorei is the very first piece that I ever attempted to play on shakuhachi. Coming back to it was a great experience in that I could tell that I certainly am a better player than I was from years back, but it was also humbling because I stumbled over the part with repeated ロ大メリ、ロ in nayashi. Michael opined that that was the most difficult part of the piece. The key here is getting the bell of the flute up and lowering my head for ロ大メリ, then getting the bell back down and doing the looking in the top corner trick so that the ロ sound is not flat.

I am happy that I remembered quite a bit of Banshiki even though I only practiced Kyorei before the lesson. The main stumbling block was actually my tendency to drag out notes (as per Kyorei) when the score indicated that they should be cut off quickly. Another problem was that at some point my kan register イ would drop to the otsu register when I repeated it. This is probably just a lack of focus.

Well, I have much to practice. Maybe I will go over these again for my next lesson, and then go over a duet or even a sankyoku. Speaking of sankyoku, I am undecided: I am most familiar with Sandan no Shirabe, but Kurokami is a classic.

My next lesson will be on 3 November!