Japonaiserie

The event I went to is a Japanese music event called “Japonaiserie”. “Japonaiserie” means traditional Japanese style, so the music in the event is traditional Japanese style music. There are five songs in this music event, and most of the songs are composed by Japanese musician Yoshihisa Taira.

Yoshihisa Taira is a Japanese-born French composer, who studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts, and arrived in France in 1966 and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris.  Yoshihisa is a well-known composer; he has won several composition prizes throughout his career.  For example, the Prix Lili Boulanger prize in 1971, the Grand Prix de Composition de la SACEM in 1974, and the Prix Florent Schmidt from the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1985. Yoshihisa Taira’s works have been performed by many main institutions and festivals of contemporary music, such as Royan, Metz, Orleans, Tokyo, New York and many others.

The setup of the event is quite simple but standard for music event, the music instruments they use to perform the music were piano, contrabass, saxophone and marimba. I have never listened to Japanese traditional music before, so when I saw these instruments, it made me curious about how they are going to perform Japanese traditional style music in western music instruments.

Here is the instruments: Piano and marimba

Here is marimba and contrabass

The first song of the event is “Penombres VI”, is a saxophone and piano ensemble. When the saxophone started the first note of the song, I was shocked, because it started with a high pitch noise; at the beginning I thought he was tuning the instrument, but then it gets worst. More and more “noises” kept coming to my ear, than the piano kicks in, along with the saxophone, creating even more unpleasant sounds. It forced me to ask myself, is this really music?

Usually, the best part of a music event is the music. However, in this event; this was not the case. The music they performed in this event was the weirdest thing I ever heard in my life! The melody was extremely weird, and I can’t find any rhythm in the music, the whole song sounds just like some baby were messing with the piano, or some rookie was tuning the contrabass, or some kids were playing the saxophone.  Everything sounded very odd. 

This the the first song: Penombres VI (1996), is performed by saxophone and piano

This is the second song: Convergence II (1976), is performed by contrabass

This is the third song: Sonomorphie I (1970), is performed by piano

This is the fourth song: Convergence I (1975), is performed by marimba

Most of the audiences in this event were common American folks, some were with their family, and some were the student of University of Minnesota.  Everyone was listening to the music, but there were doubts showing on their face as well. There were only few Japanese students in the event, and they seem to enjoy the music.

The event wasn't very long, it only lasted an hour. After the event, as people were leaving, I saw many faces with questions, including myself. Then I suddenly realized, this event is truly an intercultural event, because I have never felt this eager to want to learn more about the Japanese cultural.

The cultural presented in this event is clearly Japanese cultural, more specifically, the high context cultural value in the Japanese cultural, and the outlet for expressing this cultural identity is the music composed by Yoshihisa Taira. As we know, high context cultural values spiral logic and indirect communication, which most of the meaning in their communication is not easy to understand, because is not straightforward. Just like the music in this event, is very euphemistical and abstract, not like low context cultural music is more liner and easy to understand.

By composing the music, Yoshihisa was able to communicate his cultural identity to the audiences, and as an audience, we can receive his message by listening to his music. However, if the audience is not familiar Japanese cultural, the message gets lost or misinterpreted. In this event, this is the case. Because by not understand the cultural of Japan, I feel the music is totally nonsense, not musical, and also lost the cultural information that is within the music.

During the event, I very much feel like an outsider. But is not the environment that makes me feel like an outsider, is the content in the event making me feels like an outsider. The other reason for me to feel this way is because I view the event through ethnocentric lens, and caused me to feel the songs they performed is abnormal. While I was in the event, I experienced cultural shock. More specifically, is the affective part of cultural shock.When the event was half way, I was really want to get out to be somewhere else. The main reason for that is because i don't understand what they are playing, all I heard is just noise.

The whole event is actually cross cultural communication, For example, the composer Yoshihisa, he is Japanese, but he went to Paris to study music, his action, in some way caused intercultural communication. Then, when he wrote the traditional Japanese music but is performed by modern western music instrument created intercultural properties for his music. In the end, when they performed this traditional music to American audience, is another intercultural communication. So I think every aspect of this event is intercultural communication.

I think the most important thing I have learned from this event, is that to understand a cultural, cultural value is the essential. Because cultural value is the ideas that tells us what is right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical. Cultural value is the mechanism that guides our behavior, control our thought, and help us to remind ourselves of who we are.

I'm really glad I went to this event, because it made me learned so much about intercultural communication. I have learned that there are many kind of representation of cultural. Cultural does not only come in books, or words, cultural come in many other forms too, in this case, is music.

PS: I highly encourage you to watch the video, most importantly to listen to the music, see if you understand it, and think about how you feel