I next met Fumon the weekend of 22-23 July 1995, again at Takasaki Fine Arts College. The session began in a similar way to before and I completed a simple version of kuzure, the piece I’d started learning the previous December.
The second day, Fumon performed for the group. This was my first time hearing a recitation on Satusmabiwa.
I was given a copy of the song text with Fumon's markings on it which I still have. It’s beautifully written in Fumon's hand, even though he indicated at the end of the text that he wrote it in a rushed manner. Fumon told me at one point that he studied calligraphy in China while he was posted to Manchuria as a railway engineer, prior to being conscripted during World War 2. He lived in Chintao as a lodger with an old Prussian Family who’d been there from before the first world war. This was when he began to study German.
Despite my efforts to learn Japanese in my first year living in Japan, there was no way I could read anything on the page. My fellow students were not able to relate the meaning of the text to me, but I didn't mind this at all. I treated it purely as a musical experience.
The recitation begins
After a prelude on the instrument, he started to sing. While the pitch was exact, the timbre of his voice made it so unlike anything I was familiar with. I could not call it song. Nor would I describe it as chant. It was something in between, like words spoken in song.
The instrument never accompanied the voice; Fumon alternated between instrument and voice from start to end. Sometimes he played short three- and four-note idiomatic patterns on the open strings, with occasional longer interludes, particularly after a florid melodic line in the voice.
I was surprised with the range of pitch on the instrument with just four frets and four strings. The sound of the plectrum striking the faceboard was really unexpected. The myriad of different plectrum strokes fascinated me. I couldn’t believe how delicately Fumon used the plectrum - this piece of wood which I could hardly hold. The visual experience of seeing the manner in which his arm synchronised with the poise in the flow of sound was absorbing.
We arrived at the fast tremolo section, known as kuzure, of which I’d just spent two weekends learning one small section. Unexpectedly, the plectrum disappeared in a whir of movement that produced a sound beyond anything I had thought possible on such an instrument. The rhythm was measured to knock the listeners’ expectations, yet leave them fulfilled. It was a feast for the eye and the ear and the presence of the man grew to an immensity that I had not felt in any person before.
Even with my experience in making music, all my study of music theory, and my research into ethnomusicology, I wasn’t prepared for this performance. I couldn’t get my bearings. It was too foreign to me. In the end, I was overwhelmed to the point that I deliberately tried not to take the performance in but merely be present in the space.
The performance was very intense and long, almost thirty minutes. I was deeply impressed to see this 84-year-old man singing and playing with every fibre of his being.
When the recitation finished, I knew it had been special. The other students were greatly moved, too, and spoke to Fumon at length.
At this time, I hadn't any means of understanding what the recitation was about. As I became more proficient in Japanese, I began to understand the nature of the subject matter of many of these songs. In the next post, I would like to introduce the recitation Fumon sang that day, and the difficulties I found with this kind of material.
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