Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

A few interesting side notes:

Cowell got John Cage to organize a traditional Japanese music concert in Los Angeles way back in the thirties. I believe Tamada played at this, as well as a sankyoku ensemble.

One can guess from the chronology of things that Cowell was already a shakuhachi player before his time in prison. It would be interesting to know if he practiced in prison!

In a biography of Cowell there is a great photo of him playing shakuhachi for Edgard Varese! Varese doesn't look totally comfortable with the experience.

The Universal Flute is a fairly easy piece -- a good one for intermediate students as well as professional performers.

I believe the info in the quote from me above about Cowell meeting Tamada at a fruit stand I got from Rachel Rudich's CD "The Universal Flute," and I seem to remember she got the info from Cowell's wife. Rachel's CD inspired me to add The Universal Flute to my repertoire, and she was kind enough to send me the score at that time.

Last edited by nyokai (2010-01-01 22:56:34)

I've found more information about Cowell and Tamada in a fairly recent article:

Continuity in Composing the American Cross-Cultural: Eichheim, Cowell, and Japan
W. Anthony Sheppard
Journal of the American Musicological Society Dec 2008, Vol. 61, No. 3: 465_540

It's worth checking out if you have access to a library that subscribes (or has online access to the Journal); for those who don't, here are a few highlights.

Cowell met Kitaro Tamada in 1932, and began his study of shakuhachi, which continued through his time at San Quentin--through correspondence and Tamada's visits.

Cowell had presented Tamada in a concert of traditional Japanese music at his home in April 1935; a few weeks later, at Cowell's urging, Cage arranged a performance in Hollywood.

Kitaro Tamada was born in 1894 and first came to the states in 1918. His degree was in agriculture, and he operated a flower shop in Mountain View, California from 1931 to 1940.

Within a few years of Cowell's release from San Quentin, Tamada himself was incarcerated at Manzanar. His camp job was agricultural, but he continued to practice and teach traditional music in the evenings (although the War Relocation Authority was not enthusiastic about promoting the culture of an enemy nation).

In the early 1960s, Tamada retired and returned to Japan; the latest recorded contact with Cowell was in 1962, when he played a house concert in Cowell's home. The articel includes a photo from that performance; Tamada's flute appears to be in the 2.2-2.4 range.

Excellent information, but I thought the composition was written in 1946 rather than 1940...

rpowers wrote:

Cowell had presented Tamada in a concert of traditional Japanese music at his home in April 1935; a few weeks later, at Cowell's urging, Cage arranged a performance in Hollywood.

There's similar information in an article by Mina Yang (2001. “Orientalism and the Music of Asian Immigrant Communities in California, 1924-1945.” American Music. 19(4): 385-416) as well as in Blasdel's The Shakuhachi: A Manual for Learning. The home concert took place on April 1, 1935 and the gathering included John Cage and Lou Harrison. Cowell's composition is dedicated to Tamada.

Last edited by Austin Shadduck (2010-01-02 15:37:09)

nyokai wrote:

Just read Sheppard's article, and the coolest thing in it is a letter Cowell wrote from prison to his parents in which he talks about his shakuhachi practicing, how difficult it is to get sound, etc. etc. It reads just like a post on this forum.

.

Can you post a snippet of the BBQ type banter?

Does anybody know this Sheppard dude? Maybe he would consent to posting it here.

"I don't know whether I told you that my playing on the shakuhachi has taken a turn for the better recently. As you know, it is extremely difficult to produce any tone at all, and to control the tone after it is made. I do not spend a great deal of time at it, as there are so many other things to do, but I have been playing a few minutes each evening, and recently have been getting a very musical tone, so that I might really be able to play something on it that one would like to listen to. I have a shakuhachi record here, and I tried playing along with the record, and was able to play all the main parts with it, although the very refined variations of course were far over my head. However, I am able to play all the notes which the player in the record played, as far as the range of tones employed is concerned, and I feel quite set up over it, as no one who has not tried can quite appreciate how great an accomplishment it really is!" -- letter from San Quentin to his parents, November 25, 1938.

Here's another anecdote that's a little related. I have a student named Charles Rotmil, a very interesting old man, who first heard shakuhachi back in the early 1950's on a radio show Cowell had in New York. Charles called him and he recommended a teacher in New York, from whom Charles bought his first flute. I don't know who the teacher was, but Charles still has his handwritten copy of Hi-Fu-Mi Cho from an early lesson. Well, after several lessons with the teacher Charles never got any kind of decent sound out, but as a photographer he was well connected in the avant-garde art scene of the time and several years later the dancer Deborah Hay invited him to accompany her on shakuhachi at the first Judson Church group dance concert in 1960, a very famous event that is considered the birth of "post-modern dance." Rauschenberg was there, and Cage, basically EVERYBODY in the NYC avant-garde scene. Charles got no pitched sound out, just air, but people thought it was intentional and Cage even complimented him on his work. Twenty years later, Deborah Hay met another shakuhachi player (me) and I worked and toured with her for a couple of years. She mentioned the shakuhachi at that Judson show, but didn't say too much about it or mention Charles' name. Then another couple of decades go by and Charles calls me in Portland Maine, where he and I both now live, looking for a teacher. He comes over and shows me the old H-Fu-Mi score and a nice letter from Cowell (unfortunately it doesn't mention the name of the NYC teacher, and Charles has forgotten). He also shows me his flute. It is a very bad flute, and also has a serious crack. "Has it always had this crack?" I ask. "Yes," he says, "nothing has changed about the flute since I got it." There is no way to get decent sound out of the flute, which is why he was able to be so avant-garde at Judson, and to impress Cage. So I sold him a Yuu, and in a couple of months he started making some pitched sounds. Now one of my students teaches him, and he's still very much a beginner, slowly working his way through Choshi. So Charles took literally more than half a century to get pitched sound out of the shakuhachi, but became an interesting footnote to the history of modern dance and music in the process, all thanks to Henry Cowell.

Last edited by nyokai (2010-01-02 18:35:34)

Tairaku wrote:

He's in JAIL, but can't find more than a few minutes a day to practice? Wow, didn't know there was so much to do in jail.

Good point. You'd think all those hard surfaces would make for a lovely natural reverb.

Not many Kinko flutes longer than 2.1 from that era, although I have seen some 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4. But if Cowell recommended Nyokai's student's teacher in NYC and he was Myoan, maybe there's a connection and Tamada was Myoan as well. Isn't shakuhachi detective work fun?

Nyokai wrote:

he was well connected in the avant-garde art scene of the time and several years later the dancer Deborah Hay invited him to accompany her on shakuhachi at the first Judson Church group dance concert in 1960, a very famous event that is considered the birth of "post-modern dance." Rauschenberg was there, and Cage, basically EVERYBODY in the NYC avant-garde scene. Charles got no pitched sound out, just air, but people thought it was intentional and Cage even complimented him on his work. Twenty years later, Deborah Hay met another shakuhachi player (me) and I worked and toured with her for a couple of years. She mentioned the shakuhachi at that Judson show, but didn't say too much about it or mention Charles' name. Then another couple of decades go by and Charles calls me in Portland Maine, where he and I both now live, looking for a teacher. He comes over and shows me the old H-Fu-Mi score and a nice letter from Cowell (unfortunately it doesn't mention the name of the NYC teacher, and Charles has forgotten). He also shows me his flute. It is a very bad flute, and also has a serious crack. "Has it always had this crack?" I ask. "Yes," he says, "nothing has changed about the flute since I got it." There is no way to get decent sound out of the flute, which is why he was able to be so avant-garde at Judson, and to impress Cage.

Great thread! I heard The Univesal Flute performed in 2006  by Ralph Samuelson, Elizabeth Brown, Ned Rothenberg and Shoji Mizumoto. They each started in the four corners of the space and slowly migrated to the stage. It was a wonderful way to experience both the piece of music and the instrument.

Thanks for sharing this Phil. Please have Charles contact me. Deborah Hay's book was the first I ever read on the subject of choreography and I am also very influenced by Judson Church and the Post Modern movement. I will gladly donate my time to mend his flute.

I searched and came up empty. Sorry Ed. I failed. What was Tamada in San Quentin for? Being Japanese?

Tamada was not in San Quentin -- he was in internment camp (the one at Manzanar) during WWII, yes, for being Japanese.
Cowell was in San Quentin from 1937 to 1941 for having consensual sex with a 17-year old male. He had been sentenced to 15 years but due to overwhelming support from the musical world, "good behavior", and the government's assessment that he could culturally help the war effort, he was let out after 4 and fully pardoned a couple of years later.
So ironically, it was the war mentality that helped get Cowell free shortly before it incarcerated Tamada.

edosan wrote:

And it's OK not to find somethin', if'n it's not there ]

.  Thanks Ed. I feel redeemed. Hell, if Ed can't find it.........

Varese looks like he's listening attentively, like a good chap, and I'm not sure the man was totally comfortable with any experience, based on
his music 

[Fun fact: Edgard Varese was Frank Zappa's favorite composer, bar none, and Zappa aspired to be as accomplished as Varese was.]

Last edited by edosan (2010-01-04 00:41:07)