By Anabel Costa
Last week UC Santa Barbara got a taste of Japan through the Gagaku Workshops. The series included a dance workshop, a dance performance, a musical performance, a history lecture, and a Kimono display.
On Thursday afternoon, dance students gathered to learn Sa No Mai Bugaku dance from Takao Matsuhisa, a dancer in the Gagaku ensemble. Although Matsuhisa doesn’t speak much English, he led the class in a calming lesson in Japanese court dance.
Takao Matsuhisa teaches a Gagaku dance class to UC Santa Barbara dance majors. Photo by Anabel Costa.
Gagaku is a type of traditional music and dance that was performed in the Japanese Imperial Court in Kyoto. “UNESCO considers it one of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity,” said Fabio Rambelli, the organizer of the events and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at UCSB. “And the Gagaku musicians at the Imperial Court in Tokyo are considered the equivalent of living national treasures.”
On Friday the Art Design and Architecture Museum hosted a Kimono display where Gagaku dancers shared their intricate costumes alongside a slideshow to explain the meaning behind various colors and patterns. The music, costumes, and dances in the performances are completely purposeful. For example, the color a performer wears depends on whether they are on the left or right side of the dance.
Rambelli has been passionate about Gagaku for some time now, and is even learning to play the shō mouth organ himself under the instruction of Maestro Hideaki Bunno, who is the 44th generation of a family that has played the shō in the Imperial Court for all emperors of Japan for 13 centuries.
Bunno is the director of the Gagaku ensemble and is one of the leading Gagaku performers in Japan. He has his own Gagaku orchestra, called Junionkai. However, the group that performed at UCSB is one that he created by gathering different musicians from Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya, and they are called the Hideaki Bunno Gagaku Ensemble.
The Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA loaned Rambelli a full set of Gagaku instruments and with the help of Bunno, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and the Association for Asian Studies’ Northeastern Asia Council, the UCSB community was able to experience the hauntingly beautiful rhythms of Gagaku. “I think it is an amazing music,” said Rambelli. “And unfortunately it is so rare to be able to experience it live, not to mention being able to receive actual instruction on the instruments and dance.”
Gagaku ensemble performers displaying their costumes in the AD&A Museum at the Kimono Display event. Photo by Anabel Costa.
Rambelli says events like this on campus are very valuable to introduce student body to an important part of Japanese culture, and open doors for students who may want to study Gagaku in Japan. “Gagaku musicians are directly related to art organizations, temples, universities and cultural institutions,” he said. “This could generate an important ripple effect on our campus, in terms of research opportunities and even job creation.”
Something that stands out about Gagaku is how it has made an impact on contemporary music. Several artists have been interested in Gagaku, from American composer Henry Cowell — who studied at UC Berkeley — to Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker with his album Konoyo in 2018. “No other non-Western genre of music has attracted so much sustained attention by composers,” said Rambelli.
Anabel Costa is a third year Theater major. She is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.