Hypnotically beautiful music for the biwa. I am totally freakin’ out over here. I ended up in 12th century Japan after doing some reading about Egyptian oud-shredder and ethnomusicolgist Hamza El Din only to find out that towards the latter slice of his life, he ended up in Japan playing biwa, a cousin of the oud, having both descended from the ancient Persian barbat. El Din’s classic album Escalay: The Water Wheel (which I’ve found for download here @ 320kbps) has been such a landmark record in my life and my collecting that his interest in the biwa alone was enough to get me seeking out some more information. After much digging and listening, I’ve decided to share this album with you. Released by Japanese label King Records as part of their “Japanese Traditional Music” series, this is an overview of different solo biwa players. It notably features Uehara Mari, one of Japan’s leading contemporary biwa players (this compilation was released in 1990), and Tanaka Yukio, star pupil of biwa master Tsuruta Kinshi. The music here is sparse, all solo biwa and voice. It runs the gamut from meditative slow-stepped plucking to something like real shredding to atonal scrapes and thwacks, many of which serve a narrative purpose in telling The Tale of the Heike, from which a few of these pieces derive their lyrical content. Could not recommend this comp more highly and as per usual, compressed at 320 and sounding lovely.
Additionally, if you’re interested, I’ve uploaded scans of the CD booklet which is mostly in Japanese but contains some informative English text too. Get that here.
