Shamisen Rock Stars
Posted: August 16, 2009 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Japan, Music | 9 Comments »While looking at Enka music on Youtube, I found something a little different. This video introduces a Japanese musician named Umekichi (うめ吉), who is a recent celebrity there for her skills with the Japanese shamisen, a three-stringed traditional instrument:
Here, a famous comedian is meeting Umekichi and inviting her to teach him how to play the shamisen (with a few silly jokes and flirtations mixed in). Despite the appearance, Umekichi is not a geisha. Notice the lack of white makeup for example. Instead, I found her English language biography, and it stated that her music and performances are inspired by traditional Japanese culture, including an experience she had while watching real geisha perform. So I guess you can think of her as a kind of “pop-geisha” or “shamisen rock star”. Either way, she’s pretty talented, and fans seem to agree.
Another example of a modern approach to the shamisen is on my daughter’s TV show, Nihongo de Asobo (“Let’s play with Japanese”), which features celebrities from various fields of traditional art. One celebrity named Unariya Beben (うなりやべべん) is an entertainer/folk-shamisen player:
The songs are always cute and entertaining; the kind of you thing you would want little kids to watch, of course. They also have a nice folksy, down-home kind of sound that constrasts with the usual view I have of a shamisen from stereotypical Japanese shows, sushi restaurants and “zen-like” tea houses.1 Chances are if you ever watched a show about Japan, you’ve heard a Shamisen, but didn’t know what it was. 
Anyways, as with Enka music, it’s nice to see it reaching a wider audience, getting a modern look, and still celebrating good ol’ traditional music that has been a part of Japan for centuries.
1 All of them most certainly do exist in Japan, but have a different feel than you’d expect. Like anything else, ya’ just have to go there and see for yourself. Thankfully, I learned a lot through my wife and her family.
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
Hi Doug,
Seen this?
http://www.zen.ie/carrick.html
With palms together,
Marcus
You should do a search for Yoshida Brothers on YouTube. Very modern interpretation of shamisen. Not very plinky plinky! I’d love to see them live.
(I like Okinawan shamisen of Takashi Hirayasu with Bob Grossman too.)
ps. “Overland Blues” sounds like it should have been theme music in Firefly!
The songs played by Unariya Beben sound more ‘down home’ because they don’t use the Miyako five-tone scale used in traditional music–that scale always sounds a bit like the minor scale in western music, because the scale involves a minor third. Okinawan music also uses a pentatonic scale, but it has a major third, so it sounds brighter. Mr. Unariya’s music seems to be using mostly a conventional western scale.
Umekichi plays a variety of traditional music that many geisha also study. I think she could work as a geisha, or maybe has some experience. The pieces played in the video are ‘dodoitsu’ a somewhat more lighthearted genre compared to my specialty, ‘nagauta,’ a kind of music developed in the context of kabuki.
At one time, I considered myself the best non-Japanese shamisen player in the world, but that was mostly because there was not much competition (10 or 20 years ago). Now, the Tsugaru genre has attracted a lot of younger Japanese and western players. I’ve seen some pretty hot players on youTube. However, the current Tsugaru music is a transformation of traditional country music of the Tsugaru region, now Aomori prefecture, in northern Japan. In the transformation, the singing was lost. But as Umekichi demonstrates, much of the charm of shamisen music is in the song.
Regards,
JL
Oh, I forgot one point: when Umekichi was trying to teach the shamisen piece, she said ‘don tsu ten,’ which is a kind of solfege, called kuchi jamisen 口三味線 or more generally, kuchi shouga 口唱歌. Don tsu ten is an imitation of the sound of a shamisen.
However, when the sound of the shamisen is rather rough, say an unskilful player, the sound is described as ‘ben ben’ or ‘beben.’ I think that is the derivation of Unariya’s name.
Regards,
JL
Marcus: Yup, seen it, but sadly can’t go. On-call and have no car to drive out that far to the retreat. Ah well. Thanks for passing it along.
ロバート: “Plinky! Plinky!” I love it. I’ll definitely check out the suggestion.
Johnl: +1 for you and your excellent, expert opinion! Music is definitely not my forte, so greatly appreciated.
Come on Doug I am waiting for you blog on some up to date cosplaying anime-influenced JPOP
@Jishin: That will be the day before my wife kicks me out of the house. Especially if I decide to do the cosplay.
Here is the English site of “Yoshida Brothers” http://www.domo.com/yoshidabrothers/
You can listen to some demo. They are so cool!!