Panel abstract TBC<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Click on the titles to read the abstracts)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hitoyogiri Shakuhachi, originally known simply as \u201cshakuhachi\u201d until modern variants arose, is an ancient Japanese transverse flute made from a \u201cone-node cut\u201d (the meaning of hitoyogiri<\/em>) of bamboo. This five-holed flute was played most notably by Pure Land and Zen Buddhists such as the monk-poet Ton\u2019a (d. 1372) and Ikkyu (d. 1481). Its free-rhythm melodies, rather than being used in entertainment contexts as with popular music, were used more as a means of contemplation. While the instrument\u2019s repertoire died out some time in the 19th century, its players left behind ample clues and instructive manuals to allow us in the present to reconstruct something close to what was being played, provided that we are allowed to supplement science with some degree of art and intuition. The first task falls in the realm of science, however. From existing score collections and commentaries (written primarily by Omori Sokun in the early 1600\u2019s), we are able to determine the nature of the music (free rhythm, modal melodies that shift with the seasons), the fingerings that are indicated by scores, and the various tones that are employed in each mode, as well as techniques that are specific to the instrument. Much in terms of musical theory can also be gleaned from these documents, and further elucidated by means of theoretical texts of adjacent musics of the same period – namely, Shomyo<\/em> (Buddhist chant) of the Tendai school, and secondarily Gagaku<\/em>. At this stage, the fundamentals are well situated so as to be able to play the pieces, but questions still remain. Where scientific inquiry using primary and secondary sources fails to provide answers, we are not without recourse. Stories from players, as well as the cadence of Gagaku<\/em> and Shomyo<\/em>, can also provide hints for the execution of the music. Once this is in place, the core philosophy of the instrument, which might be put roughly as \u201cexpressing one\u2019s true self,\u201d provides all that we need to fill in any gaps that may remain in our understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her compelling study, Supeena Insee Adler, a highly skilled performer of Thai classical music and an accomplished instrument technician from Thailand, shares her profound insights into a remarkable collection of Thai musical instruments housed at UCLA. This investigation is anchored in a pivotal project she undertook from 2014 to 2015, where she painstakingly restored a historically significant collection of instruments that had long been the responsibility of UCLA. Thanks to her expert care, these instruments are not only restored to their former glory but are also actively used in her Thai ensemble course and performances, enriching the university\u2019s cultural landscape. Adler provides a unique artisan’s perspective on the intricate repair process, emphasizing the deep cultural practices intertwined with these instruments. She vividly recounts the rituals involved in tuning a reluctant gong, showcasing the connection between craftsmanship and cultural heritage. Furthermore, she explores the rich histories of these instruments prior to their arrival at UCLA in the 1960s, highlighting that many were once owned by the legendary Luang Pradit Phairoh, a revered Thai court musician of the early twentieth century, which significantly elevates their importance. In her conclusion, Adler delves into the dynamic social networks that these instruments have traversed throughout their histories. She illustrates how they have fostered connections within Thailand, nurtured collaborations between the musical and scholarly communities in Bangkok and UCLA, and are now bridging a cultural gap with the burgeoning Thai diaspora in the United States \u2013 a community that was scarcely present when these instruments first arrived. Through this exploration, Adler not only honors the legacy of these musical treasures but also illuminates their ongoing role in connecting people and cultures across time and space.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n Gagaku<\/em>\u2014literally \u201celegant\/refined music,\u201d rendered by Nelson (2008) as \u201cproper music\u201d\u2014encompasses court instrumental (kangen<\/em>) and danced (bugaku<\/em>) repertoires for winds, strings, and percussion, with dancers added in the latter. Many pieces follow explicit metres: Satt\u014d<\/em> and Juha<\/em>, for example, use four\u2011beat measures grouped into eight\u2011 or six\u2011bar cycles that repeat sixteen times, each cycle defined by a taiko stroke (Kamata &\u202fClayton\u202f2025). Others, termed jobuki<\/em>, apparently without any metre, rely instead on extended wind phrases sparsely punctuated by percussion. When a piece is performed as bugaku<\/em>, additional choreographic timing demands emerge. How peformers achieve synchrony across these contrasting frameworks makes gagaku<\/em> ideal for examining ensemble coordination beyond metre\u2011centred models. This paper compares ensemble coordination across three contexts: metred instrumental, unmetred instrumental, and metred dance performances. Our empirical analysis employs sound information from multitrack audio, as well as movement information extracted from video using the OpenPose algorithm, to examine the onset timing of each part and the bodily movements of the performers before and after. Building on prior studies of contemporary gagaku performance (Shiba 1971; Nelson 2008; Terauchi 1996, 2011), we first compare the timing features and structural markers across metred and unmetred kangen<\/em> pieces. Audio\u2011visual annotations of onsets, phrase boundaries, and convergence points reveal that in the absence of metre, wind-phrase lengths remain consistent (unlike metred movements, which accelerate), but the alignment between parts becomes more variable. We then introduce preliminary observations from recent recordings of kangen <\/em>and bugaku<\/em>. In bugaku<\/em>, music shows more variation in dynamics and more rhythmic intensity (End\u014d\u00a02000:\u00a0139). Interviewees note that a four\u2011beat unit is counted \u201c1234\u201d in kangen<\/em> but \u201c1and2and\u201d in bugaku, linking this to a great emphasis on the beat (as opposed to melodic phrasing) (2024 interview). The constraints for danceability influence coordination, increasing beat clarity and tempo change. This empirical comparison enriches previous accounts of gagaku coordination and contributes to broader discussions of metre, synchrony, and distributed coordination in traditional ensemble music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n References:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Endo, Toru. 2020. Gagaku: Eiz\u014d kaisetsu vol. 1<\/em>, 6th printing. Tokyo: Shimonaka Memorial Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kamata, Sayumi and Martin Clayton. 2025. \u201cTemporal Structure and Synchronisation in the T\u014dgaku Ensemble of Japanese Court Music (Gagaku).\u201d Analytical Approaches to World Music 12(1). 10.5281\/zenodo.14561020<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nelson, Steven G. 2008. Court and Religious Music (2): Music of Gagaku and Sh\u014dmy\u014d. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music<\/em>, edited by Alison McQueen Tokita and David W. Hughes, 49\u201376. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. 10.4324\/9781315172354<\/p>\n\n\n\n Terauchi, Naoko. 1996. Gagaku no rizumu k\u014dz\u014d: Heian jidai sue ni okeru t\u014dgaku kyoku ni tsuite. Daiichi-sh\u014db\u014d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Terauchi, Naoko. 2011. \u201cSurface and Deep Structure in the T\u00f4gaku Ensemble of Japanese Court Music (Gagaku)\u201d. In. Tenzer, Michael, and John Roeder, eds. Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music. Oxford University Press. 10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780195384581.003.0001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shiba, Sukehiro. 1971. Gosen-fu ni yoru gagaku sofu: maki san kangenkyoku nobegaku, taikyoku hen. Tokyo: Kawai gakufu.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n In this presentation, it will be demonstrated that the field of Japanese sh\u014dmy\u014d <\/em>offers a unique avenue for the advancement of Asiatic Music Historiography. This will be shown with reference to two specific sub-genres of pieces in the sh\u014dmy\u014d<\/em> repertoire, namely, the bonsan<\/em> and the kansan<\/em>. The bonsan<\/em> and the kansan <\/em>are both esoteric Buddhist hymns of praise, the former with 7th<\/sup> century Sanskrit texts in Sino-Japanese transliteration, and the latter with 8th<\/sup> century Chinese translations of those same Sanskrit texts. While the bonsan<\/em> represent a rare instance of notated, medieval Indian Sanskrit Buddhist chant melodies, these melodies have been somewhat obscured through their adaptation to medieval Chinese and Sino-Japanese phonology, transliteration schemes, and musical theory. Nevertheless, at least three elements of ancient Indian recitation theory can be seen to be at work in the bonsan<\/em>, namely, the mapping of melodic types to chant texts based on prosodic features, including syllable weight, the use of scale-degree-specific ornamentation, and the use of registral modulation. In the bonsan<\/em>, these three elements are intricately connected with each other, revealing an interdependence of prosodic structure, scale, register, and ornamentation that may have roots in ancient Indian Sanskrit recitation practices. While the bonsan<\/em> demonstrate features of medieval Indian Sanskrit Buddhist chant melodies, the kansan<\/em> offer rare insights into the way by which those same melodies were adapted fully to the prosodic, phonetic, and semantic environment of medieval Chinese and Sino-Japanese. All three of the elements listed above will be shown to have been mapped from the bonsan <\/em>onto the kansan<\/em> on the basis of certain criteria. In short, the bonsan<\/em> and the kansan<\/em>, when taken together, are an important window into one of the most impactful musical interactions on the medieval Silk Roads, namely, that between religious practitioners from the Indic and Sinitic cultural spheres. It is hoped that this presentation will stimulate interest in expanding the scope of this neglected field of study, one that offers clues that may advance our understanding of the nature of musical exchange in the ancient and medieval worlds from Japan, China, Central Asia, India, and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The solo pieces for the Japanese shakuhachi<\/em> composed by the monks of the Fuke sect, a Zen Buddhist sect, during Japan\u2019s Edo period (1603-1867), have few aspects that are distinctive from most other musics of our world. For example, they are made of short phrases, some of them with a single tone, separated by obligatory breathings and silences that break the flow of the melody. Most of these solo pieces, either from traditional or modern repertoires, have no rhythm as the term is commonly defined, except possibly for a kind of irregular pulse in some pieces. It has been suggested that the composition of traditional Japanese music is based on predefined patterns that are rearranged to create new melodies. Although the issue of patterns in honkyoku<\/em> solo pieces for the shakuhachi<\/em> has not been thoroughly tackled, as is the case with some other traditional Japanese musics, in particular shamisen<\/em> music (e.g., kabuki<\/em> theatre), one aspect that has not been explicitly raised regarding these solo pieces is the grouping of phrases, that is, groups of phrases that reappear together within a piece. Bruno Desch\u00eanes will present his analysis of a few pieces that clearly show that particularity in some old pieces of these solo repertoires. Grouping of phrases is not as present in modern repertoires. As a shakuhachi<\/em> player himself, he shows that the grouping of phrases is not solely a matter of structure but also, and possibly more so, a matter of performance.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n TBC<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Panel abstract TBC (Click on the titles to read the abstracts) Presenters’ bios TBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conferences.iftawm.org\/conferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nick Bellando (Ind. Scholar), “Hitoyogiri Shakuhachi: Resurrecting an Ancient Tradition”<\/summary>\n
Supeena Adler (UCLA), \u201cFamily Heirlooms as Social Objects: The Thai Musical Instruments at UCLA\u201d<\/summary>\n
Sayumi Kamata (Tokyo Nat. Research Institute) and Martin Clayton (Durham University), \u201cComparing\u202fmetred,\u202funmetred,\u202fand\u202fdance\u2011framed\u202fcoordination\u202fin\u202fgagaku<\/em>\u201d<\/summary>\n
Stephen Ithel Duran (Oxford University), “Japanese Sh\u014dmy\u014d <\/em>and its Role in Asiatic Music Historiography: Focusing on the Bonsan<\/em> and Kansan <\/em>Sub-Genres”<\/summary>\n
Bruno Desch\u00eanes (Ind. Scholar), “Groupings in Honkyoku music for the Japanese Shakuhachi”<\/summary>\n
Martin Regan (Texas A&M), “TBA”<\/summary>\n
\n\n\n\nPresenters’ bios<\/h2>\n\n\n\n