KotoJazz 52: Song Stories – Shiyodamari to Nami (Tide Pools & Waves)

In my last performance at the Royal Room November 30th, I told the stories about how each of the Koto jazz songs I played came to be. The following I hope serve as a glimpse into the koto jazz process as I reflect on a particular part of the natural world and seek to bring out its natural majesty and beauty in a musical tune. Tide Pools l & The Wind, for example, I wrote a few weeks ago.

Shiyodamari To Nami (Tide Pools & Waves) – This smooth jazz song was inspired by viewing tide pools on the Oregon and Washington coasts, feeling the motions of wind dashing upon tide pools and waves; their undulating patterns; their graceful dance on sandy shores. When we leave our world whatever it is and enter the world of the majestic wind, we see that the Wind breathes the Spirit of life onto our world and we can be left with nothing but awe and inspiration.

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Koto Jazz 17: Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises”

Although I have added a few new music samples to the Koto Jazz blog, see “Sample Sounds” and “Buy My Music” pages of this web site, here I take another brief break from the Koto Jazz theme to honor an artistic genius in the film medium.

Here are some Koto jazz and related music about flying and the wind:

KotoJazz 8: “The Wind and The Spirit”

Koto Samples (“lightness of flying butterflies”)

“Matsukaze” (”wind in the pines”), by Taiga Yamaki III (also known as Yamaki Kengyō), and Matsukaze

Koto House Flying Sword Music

Tori No Yo Ni (‘Flying’ Like A Bird, by Sawai Koto Ensemble

Breeze, by Mitsuki Dazai

Tori No Yo Ni (Like a Bird on piano), Kotojazz by Kenji

Also, have a listen to my newly posted short sample tracks while reading on about my take on “The Wind Rises” by Hiyao Miyazaki:

Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor, George Winston style

Springtime in the Dead of Winter

Black Pine Bonsai, and

Wandering Kabutomushi

I had the opportunity to watch Hayao Miyazaki’s final movie (admittedly, I may be the final Miyazaki fan to actually see his final film), “The Wind Rises” (for sound track, see The Wind Rises by Kaze Tachinu and other items about “The Wind Rises”). Despite the apparent limitations of the anime platform, Miyazaki proves again the seeming unlimited capacity for creativity and beauty. His presentations offered magically colorful and stunning scenery. Miyazaki’s art team presents a realistic natural world, and adds a bit of Shinto magic, with the actors revering, honoring, praying to Nature throughout the movie.

The movie speaks of love and innocence in the midst of the global turmoil surrounding the world wars. Miyazaki deliberately steers the movie away from the darkness of the day into a dreamland of gorgeous flower laid meadows, and shimmering streams. Poignant was the time Naoko prayed to the forest pond for Jiro to appear. As Yoda would say, “appear he did.”

Even Jiro’s ongoing dreams about flying and building planes showed reverence to the nature of the wind’s powerful energy, and his building planes pays honor to the wind. We join as active participants in Jiro’s flying dreams. In the film, Jiro’s dreams feel as real as real life. Jiro is the main character in the movie, based loosely on aerospace engineer, Jiro Horikoshi. Miyazaki again nails it with his unique ability to interweave near realistic dreams into the surreal reality of the characters’ life experiences– more realistically than any director (I would argue), and again, more realistic to the real life experience.

It definitely hits a chord with the integral role dreams play in our lives (see Carl Jung’s work on the “Interpretation of Dreams.” While his colleague Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of dreams focused more on the “retrospective”, Carl Jung’s dream approach is and I quote the above link, “‘prospective’– it treats dreams like a map of the dreamer’s future psychological evolution towards a more balanced relationship between his ego and the Self.” This approach is very apparent in Miyazaki’s film.

The story may have glossed over the pain and suffering of his dying lover (Naoko), dying communities during wartime, and the insane violence surrounding war, but this was intended and done so elegantly as the story was not about death and war. In fact, it provided the back drop necessary to evoke the story of a champion of perseverance and Zen-like focus in a world where, at times, there appeared to be none. It brought out the true authentic, peace-loving nature and Shinto spirituality of the Japanese people. In real life, war deceptively shrouded this fact by the blind powers of Japan’s relatively small military industrial complex (small at least compared to America’s own still lingering military industry). There is a message for each of us again, to look inward rather than outward for reflection and resolution.

Given Miyazaki’s place of prominence with this final movie, it is appropriate to comment on this masterpiece and the majesty of his life’s work.

Koto Jazz 16: Bonsai

As a child, I always believed the work of “bonsai” to be the art of imitating natural mountain scenes above timberline. My images were of wind-blown pines standing tall alongside alpine lakes. Growing up partly in Colorado, I spent many days and nights 10k or above traversing the Continental Divide, contemplating the wonder of the crystal clarity in glacial lakes, rushing streams and falls suspended below jagged cliffs. Here are stunning, iridescent meadows interrupted only by the howling wind, or the sweet melody of mountain birds and squeak of pica. The pine trees are shaped and formed into a perfect flowing angle of branches tilted forward to bend but not break, by the powerful, magical hand of the wind. While I’d love to say this is true, it’s not true.

I never imagined it to be an art form which has swept across the Pacific into the creative hands of artists and gardeners across America. As so much of Japanese culture, the art of bonsai can be sourced from China, specifically “penjing”, the art of Chinese landscape. I had the opportunity to see this first hand during many visits to various parts of China. There were featured “penjing” gardens in the areas I visited, of which there seems to be a greater emphasis in the coupling of “penzai” (Chinese bonsai) with uniquely shaped pumice-like stones. The word bonsai does in fact come from the word penzai, both of which are translated to mean tray or pot (bon) and plantings (sai). China doesn’t appear to be as set on miniaturization as does Japan, and it reminds me how so much of Japan’s early ingenuity stems from their unique skills in miniaturizing most all things.

It is likely that “penzai” made its way to the Island of Japan from China somewhere between 600-800 A.D. when Japan initiated a number of Imperial missions to mainland China. However, bonsai first appeared in Japanese paintings in the medieval period (1100-1200, according to Wikipedia).

Here are some nice explorations of bonsai koto jazz style music:

Black Pine Bonsai, by Kenji

Bonsai Garden (album), by Midori

My Tree, My Bonsai – Feng Shui Garden

Other:

Bonsai Bop, by The Ryoko Trio

Bonsai Juju, by Bonsai Garden Orchestra

Hunting Bonsai from World War Tree (album)

Bonsai as an art form may be of interest to you. You can find additional information about bonsai at the following sites:

National Bonsai Penjing Museum

Bonsai Gardener (good introduction)

Bonsai Northwest

American Bonsai Society

Bonsai Kits

Bonsai on Wikipedia

Penzai on Wikipedia

KotoJazz 8: The Wind and the Spirit

While originally secularly founded by Yatsuhashi Kengyo in the early 17th century, Koto, “the music of Japan”, flourished in the 1800s. Koto composer Nakanoshima Kengyo (1838-1894) created and dedicated “Matsukaze”, “the wind in the pines”, imitating the sounds of Gagaku, Japanese court music (see http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~rgarfias/sound-recordings/japan.html). It is a composition in continuous gentle, fluid motion, sometimes wandering yet never searching. It is as confident and steady as the wind in the pines, bending but never breaking; as subtle yet serene as a cool ocean breeze (though I believe the vocals does this piece a disservice). 🙂

A few additional koto and other instrumental tunes worth noting about the wind and the Spirit are:

Kozan No Kaze [or Alpine Wind (Storm)] (the 1st song in this medley, more “chaos jazz” than koto jazz),
– Koto Jazz medley live at the Brass Tacks, Seattle (July 5th). Kozan no Kaze is inspired by world renowned jazz piano player, Li Pui Ming’s style of jazz which I call “chaos jazz”. I will also feature this piece at the Royal Room, Seattle in September (see events section)

Kaze no uta (Song of the Wind), by Sawai Tadao, from Spell of Spring: Selected Works of Sawai Tadao (Volume I).

Whisper of the Wind, Bali Spa- Kecapi Meets Koto, Volume 6.

Song of the Wind with Shakuhachi and Tea Ceremony, The Satsuki Odamura Koto Ensemble.

Matsukaze, “The wind in the pines”, Taiga Yamaki III (also known as Yamaki Kengyō) performed by Namino Torii and Minoyu Otaka, with assistance from Steven Otto and Hiromi Sakata.

Yamato (Japan): III. Fu (Wind), by Aiko Hasegawa, Relaxing Sounds of Japan

Ballades for Koto Solo – Summer – Under the White Wind, by Miki Minoru

Temple Spirits, by Ameritz Sound Effects, Music of Japan

Kitaro’s Spiritual Garden album;

Dream Wind, by Taka Koto Ensemble

East Winds Ensemble, by Youmi Kimura / Yumi Kimura and Joe Hisaishi (theme music of Hayao Miyazaki Anime)

Breeze at Night, by Circus Band, Sound of the Orient

White Winds – by Andreas Vollenweider

The Wind and the Wolf – by Keiko Matsui

Nanbu Wind Chimes – by Victor, The Sounds of Japan

Kaze No Oshaberi – by Ayaha, The Sounds of Kyoto: Maboroshi

The Spirit – by Peter Kater

Aerial Boundaries – by Michael Hedges

Wind Machine and Voices In the Wind – by Wind Machine

New to “Sample Sounds” is a brief excerpt of a beautifully performed melodious composition by a very, very special, gifted person. While I attempted to give insight into the basic western chordal structure and show how many songs are based on them, this unique musical talent composed a piece called “Wind-chimes”. Wind-chimes graces with delicate simplicity and inspires with its spontaneous peace and joy. Though you can discern smooth, flowing patterns up and down the scale, the melody captures a gentle breeze tapping the tunes of flower pedal-like wind-chimes. The second “windchime” sample called “Rain Drops from Trees” evokes images of a cool breeze releasing rain drops from branches of a tree, or a tributary trickling downstream in a fresh green mountain meadow and gurgling over creek pebbles. It is a “must hear”.

John Denver spoke of the wind as “the symbol of all that is free,” in his masterfully sung spiritual ballad, Windsong. Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) suggests that we “listen to the wind of the soul” in his spiritual journey called “The Wind”. To introduce a hint of the trans-formative nature of the wind, I reflect on the western tradition. Probably the most telling story-lines passed on through perhaps hundreds of generations is the story about Jesus who spoke of the One who is to follow. He said we may speak wrongly about himself and the Father and it will be forgiven us, but we may never speak wrongly about the Spirit. There is only one description in the good book I know of where Jesus explicitly defines the Spirit in human terms and that is, “The wind blows where it wishes and we hear the sound of it. We know neither from where it comes nor to where it goes, and so it is with those of the Spirit.”

The wind is the breath of this small and fragile home we call earth and is not to be tampered with nor taken for granted. If we feel the wind and the Spirit in our own lives, we live in unison with who we are intended to be, what we are intended to do. Then and only then, regardless of where we are or who we are, we are part of the living Spirit through whom we truly “breathe, we move, and we have our being.”

Let us dare to care for the wind, take heed of each moment it pays us a visit as if it were the One who is to follow, and in JD’s words ” welcome the wind and the wisdom she offers. Follow her summons when she calls again. In your heart and your spirit let the breezes surround you. Lift up your voice then and sing with the wind.” (Windsong)