Introduction

Satsuma biwa is a style of katarimono accompanied by a four-stringed plucked lute, the biwa, that is, it is narrative in which the biwa plays melodic interludes and brief phrases to punctuate verses of sung text. Satsuma biwa is thus similar to heikyoku, the recitation of the Heike monogatari (Tale of the Heike) with biwa accompaniment which has been practised since the 13th century. According to the commonly accepted account of their origins, however, both the instrument (shown in figure 1) and the narrative style now termed Satsuma biwa originated in the Sengoku era (1482–1558) in the feudal domain of Satsuma in southern Kyūshū. Shimazu Tadayoshi (1492–1568), a member of the Shimazu family which ruled Satsuma from the 12th to the 19th century, felt that in view of the chaotic social and spiritual conditions of his times, a strict code of ethics and behaviour was needed to guard against the spiritual deterioration of the samurai (warrior) class in Satsuma.

Through the devoted efforts of a handful of scholars, chiefly French, English and Thai, the ancient Southeast-Asian kingdom of Dvāravati has been rescued from oblivion. Using evidence from inscriptions, from scattered documentary sources, and above all from archaeology, they have illuminated many facets of its cultural history, and have established much concerning the sequence of its art-styles and the extent of its territorial influence. Yet much remains obscure: we do not know the names of its kings, its political boundaries, or the exact dates of its rise and fall.

Introduction

In Western musicology there is virtually no connection between musical analysis and the acoustical analysis of instrumental sounds. Musical analysis is concerned with the way music is constructed – how it is put together; it is not concerned with individual tones.

In an editorial note to the previous volume of Musica Asiatica, Richard Widdess foreshadowed that future volumes of Musica Asiatica would explore specific themes. This is the first such volume, dedicated to the music of East Asia. Just as its contents were being finalised, we heard of the death of a member of our Editorial Board, Yōko Mitani. This volume is dedicated to her memory. It will stand, I trust, as a lasting monument to her scholarship and to the generosity and support she showed to all of us who were privileged to call her a friend and colleague.

Laurence Picken, founding editor of this journal, has written the following tribute to Dr Mitani:

Introduction

In August 1970, the Chinese government repaired an ancient Koguryŏ tomb near the mid-Yalu riverside at Ch'ang-ch'uan, Chi-an Prefecture of Chi-lin Province, Manchuria. A general report on this ancient tomb, called Tomb No.1 at Ch'ang-ch'uan, was published in 1982 in a Chinese archeological journal, Tung-pei k'ao-ku yü li-shih(Chi-an-hsien wen-wu pao-kuan-so 1982), by government officials of Chi-an Prefecture. Tomb No.1 is located about 20 kilometers northeast of Chi-an Town, Chi-lin Province. According to the general report, it is believed to have been constructed by Koguryŏ people around the late fifth century.

The murals of Tomb No.1 at Ch'ang-ch'uan contain ten examples of musical instruments, including new instruments previously undiscovered in Koguryŏ tomb excavations. Of the ten instruments, all of which are depicted in the front room of the tomb, seven appear in the ceiling paintings and three in wall paintings. The general report on Tomb No.1 at Ch'ang-ch'uan gives only simple descriptions and commentaries on the musical instruments, but even these contain probable errors. This paper is an attempt to correct those mistakes and to provide a more extensive examination of the evidence in the light of recent archeological evidence from other Koguryŏ tomb excavations.

Songs in this chapter fall broadly into two thematic categories: laments for the living and dirges for the dead. But this categorisation, primarily for purposes of arrangement in publication, does not correspond closely to any Tikopia principle of classification. Nearly all the songs in this chapter are of fuatanga type, that is, sung in slow, what might appear to be doleful style. But as already discussed in Chapter 8, between which and this chapter there is considerable overlap, the fuatanga form is also used for songs of praise. What it represents is an expression of emotional sensitivity in grave manner, in contrast to the gayer manner of a dance song (mako). Even here the classification is not completely exclusive; some mako too may be expressions of gravity. This chapter includes two dance songs. One, composed by Lily, Nau Rangiaco (no. 76) was a lament against her father's apparent neglect of her when she was in hospital; it was couched as a matāvaka probably because it was a kind of mako tauangutu, an accusation which was more suited for expression in dance than in elegy form. The other dance song was also a response to special circumstances. At the obsequies of Noakena, grandson of the Ariki Tafua, in 1929, the old chief and his sons rose to dance a makopo in memory of the boy's recreational activities (no. 82), a grim contrast to the general atmosphere of wailing, yet essentially a traditional funeral performance.

Any record and interpretation of cultural material by an anthropologist is bound to be imperfect. This applies particularly to aesthetics, where concepts are hard to fix, and individual reactions likely to be widely variable. So it is with Tikopia poetry and music.

In western literature statements about the nature and significance of poetry have abounded for the last two thousand years. In modern times George Steiner, for example, has given an illuminating, even exalted interpretation of poetry and music. He stresses the way in which western poetry has led towards music, passing into music when it attains its maximal intensity - which may mean when it seeks to dissociate itself from clarity and the common usages of syntax (Steiner 1969: 43, 49, 64). Steiner's insistence upon ‘the indivisible origins of poetry and music’ rests perhaps upon a conception of music in the widest sense, in which vocalisation of patterned words of itself produces a metrical and melodic arrangement. Tikopia practice conforms broadly to Steiner's principle, but in a even more integrated way. For in Tikopia a poem is composed as a song. Indeed, to treat a Tikopia song simply as a poem, a patterned arrangement of words without recognised tonal intervals, occurs for the Tikopia only as a learning device, and would be ultimately meaningless without the melodic referent. The musical frame of reference for the poem is in general pre-existent, set by traditional pattern, though a composer may exercise some individual creative power.

The songs in this chapter are a diverse set, but broadly refer to the Tikopia past, or putative past, by contrast with those of earlier chapters, where the accent is mainly on contemporary themes. In referring to songs on ‘historical’ and on ‘mythic’ themes I do not mean to imply any subtle fusions or distinctions such have been fashionable in anthropology in recent years. All the events referred to in these songs have been a construct of oral tradition, and in that sense may be regarded as belonging to a common category of verbal statement relating to an imagined ‘mythic’ past. But some elements of this imagined past are more plausible as ‘real’ events than others. The voyages of fathers, grandfathers and other kin overseas mentioned in the songs in this and other chapters conform quite closely to actual Tikopia experiences known to men who sang these texts for my recording. Moreover, independent corroboration is fairly clear in a few cases. In the early nineteenth century the explorer Peter Dillon cited voyages of the Ariki Taumako to Vanikoro in terms very similar to those used by the Tikopia to me a century later in 1929 (Dillon 1829: i, 28, 34; n, 115-39. Firth 1959: 32). Recently, Richard Feinberg has confirmed from Anuta sources, voyages between Tikopia and Anuta which I was told of by Tikopia sources (Feinberg 1988:155). In terms of plausibility then, Tikopia songs referring to these and similar events may be classed as ‘historical’, in that they deal with what has very likely been part of Tikopia experience.

Tikopia poetic art is almost entirely without love songs. This is not for want of strong attraction between man and woman or of articulate pleading for the sexual favour and the affection of someone of the other sex. Small gifts, such as portions of tobacco or areca nut, reinforce the expression of desire. But the Tikopia cultural idiom did not take a form of songs praising the qualities of the beloved, and very rarely expressed affection and longing for the person of the other.

Tikopia songs in the field of sex relations tend to assume what may be called an adversarial rather than a conjunctive form. To understand how this may have come to be so needs some knowledge of the Tikopia attitude to marriage and the categories involved.

Of prime importance to the life of Tikopia young people is the division between the married and the unmarried. Marriage has traditionally marked a clearcut break in the social life. The unmarried consist of two sets of socially identified people - bachelor men and youths (nga tamāroa) and spinster women and girls (nga fāfine taka). Together they make up the most active social component of the Tikopia population in the recreational sphere. In small bands or in large groups they play games together, they go around from one village to another in search of amusement, and above all, they are the backbone of the dance.

The first parts of this book have given a general analysis of the social and musical nature of Tikopia song, its poetics, its typology, its structure and the occasions and manner of its use. In the following chapters I adopt a more thematic approach, considering the content of each song in its concrete and symbolic connotations, and giving where possible some detail about its composition and performance. For this purpose, though some chapters such as chapter 10 cite only mako and others such as chapter 11 cite almost entirely fuatanga, the classification is primarily not by type of song but rather by the subject to which it is addressed.

Many dance songs celebrate matters of interest to Tikopia in everyday life - natural phenomena such as rain beneficial to crops, the performance of craft work, the behaviour of birds and offish, the attraction of aromatic leaves and flowers admired for bodily decoration, the pleasures of institutionalised recreation such as the dart match and especially dancing itself. Even within the celebration of such mundane affairs human interest and human commitment have had play. So some of these songs do not merely take everyday objects or actions as theme, but use the theme to convey some personal attitude, expressing strong passions of joy or grief, praise or blame, wonder or fear.

However, the general thrust of many Tikopia songs is descriptive and action oriented rather than analytical of personality.

Since so much Tikopia singing is associated with dancing, it is necessary to give an outline of the dance as an institution in Tikopia, and of the types of songs produced for dancing.

All Tikopia are extremely enthusiastic about dancing. A favourite expression meaning ‘I want to dance’ implies not so much voluntary action as that the person has been taken over by his involuntary drives - literally, the ‘dancing impulse’ has entered into him. When a dance has been ‘set up’ and the beat of the sounding board begins, even old people are often stimulated to join in. A dance may take place at any time of the year, but traditionally the most formal festival dances tended to occur in the monsoon season, which had many fine weather periods and when food supplies tended to be readily available. When dancing was at its height, on a large scale, no work was done apart from the collection of food for the occasion. People went to their orchards, brought back provisions, cooked them and carried them off to the dance. In reference to this almost obsessional behaviour the Ariki Taumako said to me: ‘The one work of Tikopia is the dance’. The Melanesian Mission teacher, a man from Motlav in the Banks Islands, said to me: ‘Their great valued possession in Tikopia is dancing, is enjoyment.’ When the community was caught up in dancing many people did not sleep at night.

A eulogy, in classical expression, was a speech of praise, especially praise of a dead person, and taking the form of a set oration. In a Tikopia context, the term may be extended to cover statements of praise or commendation made in the set form of poetry, and treated musically, as song. Moreover, in Tikopia, sensibly enough, a song eulogy has often been addressed to a living person, who can recognise the honour and suitably reward the composer. Many of these eulogies have been composed in dance form, varying as ngore, matāvaka, mori, tūngaunu, tusoko, mako po according to the composer's whim. But many others - about half of those I have cited here - have been composed as fuatanga, in lament form. This I interpret as a token, not of sadness or grief, but of emotional sensitivity. The composer has felt moved by thought of the qualities of generosity, hospitality etc. celebrated in the song, and so has couched the tribute in grave rather than in gay mode. As such the context of performance demanded is different; a dance song is chanted to accompany the physical acts of recreation, while a lament is chanted on more solemn occasions, as a feast given by a chief, or a ritual event expressing sympathy with a boy about to be initiated.

A particular kind of eulogy, in lament style, is the soa. As its name implies, this is a type of song which is based upon a relation of amity, of which prime examples are the relation between spouses, and between bond friends (for whom the reciprical term is also soa).