OTHERLANDS COLLABORATION #21
Date: Mar. 9, 2020 • Location: Kamakura, Japan
I boarded Kamakura's picturesque Enoden electric railway on a rainy spring afternoon with my good friend Yuiko (Yui) Inoue. She was the organizer of my first tour of Japan many years ago, so we had ridden a few trains together. However, this excursion was going to be different than any I had back then. Visiting Yui was a priority for my family and me on our Japan travels. She was now living in Kamakura, a small beach town south of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, which is how we came to be here.
My past trip was mainly focused on playing gigs and giving workshops. Most of the musicians I came in contact with were bluegrass and jazz musicians. So, I was eager to find traditional Japanese folk musicians to collaborate with. Yui proposed the idea of meeting with a local biwa player and singer named Reisui Ban. I immediately looked up some biwa music. Yes. Reisui and I would rendezvous of local cafe called Wander Kitchen, with Yui there to help with translation if needed.
We arrived to the cozy back room of the cafe to find Reisui dressed in a kimono and ready with her biwa. I mentioned that she hadn't needed to get dressed up for our casual meeting...and she replied with a smile that this was her casual kimono. Our time together unfolded very easily and by the end I was not only learning to play the biwa but also given some privileged information that kimonos are great for hiding all sorts of things.
Since I wasn’t very educated in the ways of the biwa or the biwa musician, I started in asking many questions and received a great introduction.
The current form of the biwa dates from the 6th century A.D. It is a descendant of a Persian instrument and spread via the Silk Road. The biwa has similar roots to the veena in India and the pipa in China. Reisui's biwa is around 100 years old. The strings are made of silk and yellowed by turmeric that is used to deter insects.
The role of the biwa musician is as a minstrel, keeping history through song, unaccompanied by other instruments. The voice and song are the primary focus so the volume of the instrument has been kept naturally lower. As a result of the solitary and vocal-focused nature, the biwa is tuned to the voice of the performer. In Reisui's case, from top to bottom string, hers is at G#, lower C#, unison G#, and higher D#. (I tuned my fiddle 1/2 step lower when we played together to achieve certain open-string sounds.)
There are four frets to change pitch but in my limited time with Reisui, I noticed that frets 2, 3, and 4 were primarily used. In terms of the chromatic scale, Fret 1 is a whole step, Fret 2 is a minor 3rd above that, Fret 3 is another whole step, and Fret 4 is a minor third from that. So, starting on the C# string, the frets would give you D#(1), F#(2), G#(3), B(4). The biwa also has a way to give you all the notes (and I mean every note) in between the frets, and that is through applying more pressure and bending the string down towards the fingerboard. I was surprised to find the silk strings can handle lots of pressure. During my lesson, I winced while working on my bends—partly from feeling like the string was about to break, and partly from the pain on my soft fiddle fingers as it seemed they were nearing the slicing point.
As for the plectrum...if I thought it was big for the shamisen, then it’s giant for the biwa. The technique for holding it is slightly reminiscent of the violin bow, with the middle two fingers together, and the first and fourth fingers spread apart. A few different plectrum techniques I witnessed were playing a single string, striking the top of the instrument for a percussive effect, and sliding along the length of the string for an effect with indeterminate pitch. (Note: Further reading leads me to believe Reisui plays a Satsuma biwa.)
Since I had never heard biwa other than a bit online, I was eager to have a demonstration up close. Reisui performed a part of the epic poem called the Heike Monogatari or the Tale of the Heike. The story starts with a teaching of Buddhism—Life is impermanence, nothing is permanent. Reisui mentioned the song is an excerpt from a long storytelling, speaking about the beauty of having a glorious end or death.
Vocal phrases were largely a capella, broken up by short biwa phrases (what I would call "fills" in bluegrass) and what appeared to be verses were separated by longer melodic interludes on the biwa. There wasn't any similarity to how I think of a singer-songwriter strums a guitar underneath the song. She held her posture looking squarely forward through the entire song (something I needed repeated correction with during my lesson later on). Her voice was beautiful, strong, and steady, communicating a sense of importance in the story that was being recounted. She stayed in a lower chest register most of the time and used a great range of dynamics on the biwa, at times punctuating quite loudly.
Afterwards, I grabbed my fiddle and we tried to teach each other a couple melodies. I showed her a bit of the American fiddle tune Angelina Baker and she introduced me to a Japanese classic, Sakura, Sakura. (You can hear Sakura in my collaboration with Yutaka Oyama and Akihito Obama). Reisui mentioned that Sakura was about 150 years old, so I assumed and asked if it was considered traditional. The answer caught me off guard—no, not traditional. Apparently it's not old enough by Japanese standards. We didn't try to work up any arrangements of these songs, but just enjoyed introducing new melodies to each other.
After some free improvisation, and aware that the time was getting on, I asked to hear one last song. Reisui invited me to choose between the 8min or the 14min song...14, please! As she began another part of the Heike epic, I sat and listened with my fiddle resting in my lap—for about half of it. I started to notice a couple recurring musical ideas. Keeping a close eye on her plectrum hand and an ear towards vocal phrasing, I couldn't resist punctuating a few plucked notes with her. The more the song continued, the more I felt I understood what was happening, so I thought I'd try adding some bow—playing it safe with long low drone notes and double stops to let the song remain the focal point. And then, almost as soon as I started to use my bow, the tonality and scale of the song shifted and I no longer knew what to expect. At this point I was scared that I would ruin the moment, so I did a lot more resting, listening and watching intently for clues...playing it tasteful and hoping for the best. I feel extremely honored to have touched just the smallest part of this very deep tradition. When we finished, Reisui seemed to genuinely enjoy our shared musical moment and as I listen back, we made some good textures together.
Our meeting concluded with me playing a song for her, sharing some food, and talking about the strange predicament that musicians, and more universally the world, were in as the Covid-19 coronavirus was starting to take over. At the time of our meeting, it hadn't been declared a pandemic yet, but it would be in a few days. Gigs were cancelling, travel was becoming restricted, and we were both thankful to be sharing music together.
Before parting, I was informed I now had a responsibility to help spread the word about the biwa. Check.
Shoulders straight! ;-)
CREDITS
Song: Excerpt of Heike Monogatari (Tale of the Heike, Traditional)
Music Arranged by: Casey Driessen & Reisui Ban
Biwa & Vocals: Reisui Ban Fiddle
Audio & Video: Casey Driessen
SPECIAL THANKS:
Yuiko Inoue
Kuni Kurosawa at Wander Kitchen