Kurahashi Workshop

Begin April I attended a group workshop given by the most friendly and polite person mr. Kurahahsi. For me its quite rare to meet and play with a Japanese master of the Shakuhachi. He visited the Netherlands for a week and hopefully returns for the European Summer school, wich I will attend in July in Leiden. See the post below this one for details. More details can be found at the ESS-site, link to the right -> or at the Kaito site (also link to the right->). During the workshop we were taught or trained in the details of the song Kumoijishi. The same copy of that song made by Kurahashi can be found here: Kumoijishi PDF More honkyoku are on his site: visit the site of Kurahashi a good recource. We played version 1, on page 1. The second version is to be played on a 2.0 C and can be played together with version 1 on a 1.8 D. The picture above depicts a version coming from jinashi.com site.

info from the ISS about this song:
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This is an Edo Period (1603-1867) piece that originated at Itchoken, a famous temple in Hakata City on the southern island of Kyushu. The song has another name, Neagari Jishi, and was popular in Kyushu because of it's beautiful melody.

The meaning of this piece comes from the fact that songs with "shishi "("lion") in the title are generally played quickly and "kumo" of "kumoi" is the character for "cloud(s)". This honkyoku is, hence, played almost completely in the upper (kan) register and with a fast tempo. Kumoijishi is often it is used as an omedetai kyoku or a song played at joyous celebrations. It is more upbeat and auspicious than many of the sadder sounding honkyoku.
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The difference is that in the workshop we played the song quite slowly, not as fast as by the example below wich is from Tai Hei Shakuhachi:



I'll post pictures of the workshop later and maybe try to record a version of this song as well to track progress.