My parents were fluent in Italian. They decided not to hinder their children’s education by confusing them with another language. And as most readers of this understand, it had to do with assimilation into mainstream American culture. They watched their families struggle to fit in, and were determined not to let it happen to their children.
Other than Italian, it was in high school that I was confronted by another language. This time it was Spanish. I still remember the first three sentences in the textbook. That is as far as I progressed. When I think back, in all likelihood I passed the class due to social promotion more than academic achievement.
My father, a kind soul, was diagnosed with dyslexia at the ripe old age of sixty five. And to continue with my excuses, I think I inherited a touch of it. My academic career was long and in the end successful, but I felt like I put in twice the hours as the next person to get to the same place.
Now with that said, I can get to the reason for this commentary, shakuhachi music notation. Yes, that’s correct. Can I think of a more riveting topic you ask, and I am prone to agree but read on.
Many will be familiar with guitar tablature, written for guitarist that do not sight read the various dots, lines, and other squiggly symbols that make up western music notation. Tablature shows where to place fingers on the fret board, and which strings to pluck or strum. It is a visual representation of a guitar’s playing surface. Many legendary jazz and rock guitarist cannot read music and so rely on memory, intuition, tablature, and pure talent to play.
The shakuhachi also has tablature. It uses the iconography of katakana and adds its own set of squiggly lines. The music is written vertically, and read from right to left. Each Ro, Tsu, Re, Chi, Ri denotes a note and the specific fingering to play it, but it is more complicated than that.
Shakuhachi is a pentatonic (5 note) folk instrument that developed a chromatic (12 note) repertoire. Covering ¼ to 1/2 of one or several of the five holes, and altering the angle and the speed of the air blown into its peculiar mouthpiece accomplish it.
To make matters more complex, a shakuhachi is a piece of bamboo harvested from a grove, and each varies as only a natural substance can. Modern shakuhachi makers go to great lengths to standardize their creations. But there is a tradition of rough sounding flutes played with great aplomb. The sound they produce may lack the sophistication of the newer flutes but in the right hands is evocative.
To hear a flutist blow one flawless note after another in contrast to another’s wild abandon listen on YouTube to Rodrigo Rodriguez and Watazumi Doso Roshi respectively. Their uncompromised commitment to each note is overwhelming.
Music is intangible. It is beyond a score written with dots on five lines or written in katakana right to left. Practice is of course important for without technique the rest is futile. For me though the score is a place to start, and as with chanoyu a great teacher is a necessity.
So, I humbly ask if mastering Ro, Tsu, Re, Chi, Ri may excuse me from fumbling over the simplest Japanese phrase and pronunciation, even after all these decades.
June 2020
