Strange Yet Natural: Why Gagaku Doesn’t Need Everyone to Be Whole | Taro Ishida“RA”#03

//Summary - Level-B2//

Composer Talo Ishida shares his surprise at learning that in Gagaku, Japan’s ancient court music, a piece can be complete even when played by just one instrument. Unlike Western classical music, where instruments have fixed roles, Gagaku allows each instrument to express the same melody in its own way. Ishida compares this to an ecosystem, where different beings coexist naturally. He believes this flexible and harmonious system could inspire other fields, such as biology, architecture, or art. Ishida encourages us to see Gagaku not just as music, but as a broader model for understanding coexistence and diversity.

Heicho Etsudenraku

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ0lcZKFQ5M

1)
00:02

Hello, this is Talo Ishida. In today's episode, I'd like to talk about something that really surprised me when I first began studying Gagaku, Japan's ancient cult music. In gagaku, it's not uncommon for a piece to be performed by just one instrument, say only the Ryuteki or only the Shō or even just the Gaku-biwa.

2)
00:44

That alone is considered a complete performance. This was a big shock to me at first. I had grown up with classical and Western music, where that kind of things just doesn't happen. Imagine going to a Beethoven symphony concert and being told tonight we'll be performing the Fifth- Symphony with only the cellist.

3)
01:10

You'd probably think wait that's not music anymore. But in gagaku, playing a piece with only one instrument doesn't make it feel incomplete. Even with one, two, or three musicians, the music still works. In classical music, instruments are usually assigned functional roles. The flute plays high notes, the contrabass plays the low ones.

4)
01:40

This instrument carries the melody that one provides the harmony. Everything is highly structured. Of course, gagaku also contains some functional roles. For example, the Gaku-biwa often plays a bass-cassic or timekeeping role, but the underlying logic is very different. Each instrument in gagaku plays the same melodic core, but from its own angle, its own character, its own breath.

5)
02:17

It's not about full lead or complete follows. It's more like a group of beings coexisting in the same time and space. Like animals in a forest or creatures in the sea, each living their own lives yet forming one ecosystem. That's the feeling I get from Gagaku. And I find it deeply beautiful. And surprisingly, it doesn't feel unnatural to me at all.

6)
02:49

In fact, I find it to be one of the most natural forms of music I've encountered. Say there are four players, Shō, Biwa, Hichi-riki, and Gaku-biwa. Even if the show player can't make it that day, the remaining three can still perform no problem. The piece still holds. I think that's an incredibly rational and economical way of making music.

7)
03:24

But honestly, I haven't heard of many musical traditions like this anywhere else in the world. Maybe jazz comes close, like when a Torio is missing a bass player but still performs with piano and flute, but playing a jazz piece with only the contrast that's not something we usually see. So here's something I'd like to ask not only musicians but people in other fields too.

8)
03:57

Is there anything in your domain that resembles this gagaku like structure where the same idea or form is expressed by different agents at the same time each with their own voice without strict heali maybe something in biology architecture visual art or even medicine I've been thinking that perhaps gagaku is no longer something we should confine to music education alone.

9)
04:32

It might be time to start understanding it as something much broader, something that reflects how systems and beings coexist. If anything like this comes to mind from your field, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. For me, the closest comparison is still nature itself, forests, oceans, and ecosystems.

10)
05:00

Many beings living together, creating a soundscape that isn't driven by dominance, but by co-presence. I'm not a scholar or a researcher, just a composer who's thinking through these things slowly through music. Today, I talked about why people say that all instruments in Gagaku play the same melody and what that really means.

Next week I'll be on Iri-omote Island for a week, but I hope to record from there and continue the conversation. Thanks for listening. This was Talo Ishida.

Strange Yet Natural: Why Gagaku Doesn’t Need Everyone to Be Whole | Taro Ishida“RA”#03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zGrTCKPYY