Lafayette Campus News (www.lafayette.edu), February 15, 2008 — Allison Shapp ’08 (Plainview, N.Y.) is a Marquis Scholar double-majoring in music and an individualized major in linguistic studies. She is currently working on her senior project entitled “World Music – Exploring Japanese Flutes” with Larry Stockton, professor and head of music. The following is a first-hand account of Shapp’s experiences with her project.
This is the story of how I became a shakuhachi player.
Every senior music major (all six of us this year) has to do a senior project in order to earn the degree. Being a flute player, my initial idea for this project was to do a cross-cultural comparison of a bunch of different flutes. I wanted to see what sort of function the flute might play in different societies around the world, since it seems to be an almost ubiquitous instrument – present in every culture whose music I’ve ever studied.
Dr. Stockton, the head of the music department and the teacher of the World Music Traditions class, was the perfect choice as an advisor for this project. In our first meeting, after he heard what I wanted to do, he rummaged around in his filing cabinet and searched the shelves in his office and provided me with no fewer than four worldly flutes that he just happened to have lying around. The most intriguing of these flutes was the shakuhachi, a vertical Japanese flute that is supposedly one of the most difficult instruments in the world to get a sound out of. So, of course, I started with this one.
Once I took the shakuhachi out of its box, I stared at its two sections for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do with it. There is almost no literature in English on how to play the Shakuhachi available on the Internet (surprising, I thought you could find out everything conceivable on the web.) So, I did a search for videos of people playing the shakuhachi, zoomed in really closely, and figured out how to assemble the instrument and place it on my mouth. Great, I thought – that’s definitely a step forward. Then I blew. Nothing. As a seasoned flute player, this surprised me. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t think it would take me several hours to get even a sound out of the instrument. It did.
Once I accomplished the major triumph of being able to make sound, I was hooked. I never made it past the shakuhachi and my entire senior project became an in-depth study of the shakuhachi and how it exemplifies Japanese aesthetic preferences. Through extensive research in interlibrary loan, I did eventually locate one book written in English that was invaluable in continuing to learn the instrument.
Despite being in English, however, it still had conspicuous holes in its information where I was expected to fill in inherent knowledge of Japanese culture. Since I don’t happen to posses this inherent knowledge, I had to gain it from someone who did. I was lucky enough to get a lesson with Lafayette alumnus Kojiro Umezaki ’91, a Japanese-American who plays the shakuhachi very well. He was also fantastic at teaching it to someone schooled in Western music.
The shakuhachi originated thousands of years ago as a tool for meditation and communing with nature used by traveling monks. (Its bell is actually shaped to double as a bludgeoning weapon for these monks, who were often masterless samurai.) This instrument was not designed to be learned quickly.
Like many Japanese specialties, it is an exercise in discipline and concentration. It is meant not just to be mastered, but to have a relationship built with it over a lifetime. My few measly months of practice have not led to my mastery of the instrument, but have helped me to better understand many aspects of Japanese culture and musical aesthetics, and also how this instrument evolved with and reflects the historical climate that it grew up in.
Shapp is a Reeder House Scholar, a peer tutor, and a writing associate. She is president of the French Club and is a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. Shapp also plays in the flute ensemble, sings with the Concert Choir, and serves as an usher at the Williams Center for the Arts.
