Foreign notes
ARUNA CHANDARAJU
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T.M. Hoffman, an American musician performs Hindustani music on a Japanese stringed instrument Shakuhachi
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Photo: K. Murali Kumar
DISSEMINATE Hoffman wants to teach the instruments to as many students as possible
Watching the American musician T.M. Hoffman execute an Indian raga –– Hamsadhwani –– on a Japanese flute called Shakuhachi, was fascinating. And then I heard a whisper behind me: “Does this mean he is a fusion artiste?&
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The reply wasn’t audible but I can guess what Hoffman himself, who frequently encounters such reactions, would have retorted, and emphatically at that –– “It is not fusion, it is crossover”.
As someone schooled in several music traditions, Hoffman knows the difference. Born in USA, he trained in piano under the distinguished Grace Myers. While continuing to study western music at a Californian college, he became interested in Asian music and languages, joined Tokyo University and learnt Shakuhachi under Japan’s then-top artiste. He also mastered Koto, a Japanese-stringed instrument. He was then drawn to Indian music and learnt Hindustani vocal under Ganesh Prasad Mishra, also acquired a Visharad in Shakuhachi (a first in India), and learnt to play the sitar!
All this combined with painstaking research and experimentation led him to believe and then prove that there is great compatibility between Japanese and Indian music. He has given many concerts rendering Hindustani and Carnatic ragas on the Koto and Shakuhachi–– “Indian software on Japanese hardware”, as he laughingly describes it. He has even authored a book “Raga for Shakuhachi and Koto”.
In fact, he regularly demonstrates how the stringed koto can be played as five Indian classical music instruments –– santoor, sarangi, violin, veena, and swaramandal. Equally amazingly, he sings Japanese poems in Indian ragas employing khayal and thumri styles.
These two Asian traditions are able to meet or crossover as it were into each other’s domains without any compromise on technique, principle and instrument configuration, he says. “That’s why this is crossover. Fusion, however, is khichdi in which each ingredient namely the various musical traditions lose their individuality. ”
The rhythm accentuation and syntax of Japanese and Indian musical systems are very similar, he says. Their selection and organisation of sounds in a musical context are very alike. Also, Japanese instruments are latent purveyors of raga-like melody. Moreover, in India and Japan, music has been inspired by and developed largely in relation to vocal traditions and their instruments and vocalists are capable of a great range of gamakas (oscillations). In Hindustani, performances follow a vilambit-madhya-dhrut laya progression and in Japanese it’s a similar joh-ha-kyu, he points out.
Taking this further, he says that intra-Asian or East to East music collaborations are hence bound to be more fruitful than Indo-western ones. To illustrate this, he describes how he used Shakuhachi to complete his Visharad (for a Bansuri course) something which would be impossible with the Western flute, he says. Likewise, it is difficult to partner the tabla with the piano or to render ragas in Western harmony. Western and Chinese music instruments are built along the lines of pitch and harmony, while Indian and Japanese instruments focus on rhythm and melody within a relative pitch, he explains.
Finally, what are the future plans of this Tokyo-based musician and professor of ethnomusicology? “I want to go deeper into Koto and Shakuhachi’s expression of Indian music and teach it to as many students as possible. I would also love to see more Indian classical musicians explore the potentialities of the musical instruments of Asia whether of Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, etc.” he replies.
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