2010年11月12日
11/11 more Hiros and Friends
I had a plan. I went to the meeting with the intention of interviewing Hiros-san about his music and its development. You know, one of those Charlie Rose sits down with a guest and coffee events. I had mapped out a series of questions following a line that would lead to the heart of things. It never happened. What did happen was wonderful.
Delightfully, Hiros has a great capacity for conveying the sense of things and after turning my very first question back on me,my "interview" was transformed into a conversation. This became a rich conversation in which he unraveled things about Noh and Traditional Music in general that I had never understood. Yet, where he took the conversation from there was more striking.
I began by asking about identity. I wanted to know what it was that brought him to study traditional music, both in India and Japan. To paraphrase his response, it was a polite form of "who's asking?". I confess at being taken aback.
In the next instant, however, I realized that he was setting the stage to clarify his response. After providing a sketch of my history, the conversation returned to him and he offered a story of his early study of traditional music. I haven't the space to recount that story here, so I will simply say that it was a story full of detail and nuance. It was affectionately told with light self-deprecating touch. This was a history of a personal search for the "beautiful" in a form that he confesses to hold mixed feeling about. One would never know it.
Hiros-san's description of the structure of musical form in Noh Theater and the way space is defined in that form was surprising. I mean, in one moment I'm listening to a careful description of the formation of sound points that mark starting and ending of intervals of time, while in the next, a hilarious description of spectators with books full of keys that unlock the mysteries of the plays being performed. Our conversation ended an hour and a half after it began.
Returning to C.A.P. I had the feeling that this had all happened too fast. I wished I had more time.
What was clear to me was that if Hiros is any indication, the men and women who make this music bring to the performance a wealth of technical understanding and a deeply human understanding of their craft. In the next performance, Hiros will play with Mr.Ishikawa and he will be using some rare instruments. This is an extraordinary opportunity and if possible, don't miss it. Hiros-san and his guest Mr. Ishikawa will be performing at CAP Club Q2, Saturday 11/ 13, at 7:PM.
Paul Venet
