Blending Old Feelings Into New Melodies

For Japanese flutist Michiko Akao, the old ways are the best--and the older the better.

“What I am trying to do is go back to an early form that is the genesis of all music and dance of Japan,” she said. “I am trying to use the ability of performances to evoke feelings like they did to the ancient peoples, but communicate contemporary feelings and attitudes about alienation from nature and some of the shock that comes from exposure to so many different cultures in a city like Los Angeles.”

Akao’s chief interest now is Kagula, an early form of Japanese music and dance dedicated to the entertainment of ancient deities.

“I look at Kagula as a way to focus the audience on feelings and impressions that will bring them more in tune with nature,” she said.

Tonight, at the Japan America Theatre, Akao, Hiroshi Hori and Midori Takada will present a modern version of this oldest of Japanese art forms in “KA-GU-LA: The New Winds of Tradition.”

“I began studying piano at about age 5,” Akao said through a translator, “but after some years, I had reached a point where I started looking for a music that could be my own. During my search, I ‘discovered’ Japanese music. I heard a work for yokobue, an ancient Japanese transverse flute, and was so moved that I decided that here was a good medium for me to work out my own music; I immediately started studying the instrument.”

The transition proved fortuitous, as Michiko is regarded as one of the premiere players in the world. She has performed in Europe, Canada, the United States and, of course, Japan. She has started a program to commission modern works for the yokobue, and the performance tonight includes some traditional and modern works for the instrument.

“My starting point was in the music of the classics, but I discovered Kagula after examining more traditional sources that were the roots of Noh drama and Kabuki theater. Everything I researched kept leading me back to Kagula,” she said.

“In Japan, it is thought that all people have the flute, or the flute sound, somewhere inside them. I can draw on this internal feeling and use it musically. Even people who do not have a cultural understanding of the music respond to the flute. In Berlin, for instance, the audience picked up the fact that I was invoking aspects of nature. These people certainly did not have a pre-defined cultural identification with the music, so something must be happening that transcends the basic notion of the music.”

She pointed out that Hori, one of Japan’s most outstanding puppeteers, will be in tonight’s performance. The choice of a puppet to interact with the music instead of a dancer was deliberate.

“The puppet is an inanimate object. Consequently, a skilled puppeteer, which Hiroshi certainly is, can use the puppet in all types of abstract ways and play off the music. Besides, Hiroshi is a very intuitive artist. We have worked together in the past and he can pick up my music direction very quickly. As he moves the puppet to my music, I am changed,” she said.

“I toyed with the idea of using a dancer but the dancer’s human element would become too obvious. In Japan, anyone who is dressed all in black on stage, like a puppeteer, is not viewed as part of the play; he would be invisible, for all practical purposes, until the end of the play.”

Akao composed the music for this work but the entire score is not notated as a classical Western score would be. “I compose a musical idea, which is written down. Sometimes I used traditional Western notation, but it is impossible to indicate certain subtle musical elements with that notation. This material is then taken and improvised upon during the performance. I can change sections through a set of recognized cues.

“Actually, either myself or Midori (Takada, a percussionist) can give the cues. It all depends on how the performance flows,” she said.

“We hope to create in our ‘KA-GU-LA’ such an animated and lively experience in this space. Performing artists blow a new wind through closed societies. They are the modern-day shamans who use their bodies as the medium to link people to the natural world.”