Media:

19 November 2020 The Kochi Shinbun (Local Newspaper)
12 March 2021 NHK Broadcasting
24 March 2021 NHK WORLD Radio (Bahasa Indonesia)
26 March 2021 The Kochi Shinbun (Local Newspaper)

Overview

Do you know the city of Kochi has received the traditional Indonesian instrument called "Gamelan" as a gift from their sister city of Surabaya, Indonesia?

This special outreach program aims to create a new gamelan music collaboratively between the students and the contemporary music composer, Yasuno Miyauchi, at Kochi Municipal Haruno Higashi Primary School, where the gamelan is incorporated within music class time to time. In October 2020, the 4th grader took part in this program by firstly being introduced of the various instruments from Asia and around the world as well as how to play gamelan. From January 2021, the students began practicing a new gamelan music comissioned to Yasuno Miyauchi, and continued to improve their practice aiming to present at a special showing in March 2021.

Yasuno Miyauchi has met the gamelan instrument in Kochi while particiiating in our 2019 season's artist-in-residence program, which her focous was to research the music and sound aspects of indigenous culture and beliefs uniquely developed in Kochi and striving till today such as kagura performance at shurines (shinto), Shikoku pilgrimage (buddhism) as well as modern one such as Yosakoi and the gamelan instruments from Indonesia. At this occasion, she composed a gamelan music titled "Kame Kame Kura-Kura" (Turtles is translated as "kame" in Japanese and "kura-kura" in Indonesian) inspired by the past research and close observation of the primary school, where the baby turtles swim in a big tunk at its entrance as part of their sea turtle protection activities running for several years. At music classrooms, the students experienced not only practicing the gamelan instruments but also having fun writing lyrics incorporating Tosa dialects (unique to Kochi) and Bahasa Indonesian words. A professional Jawa gamelan player, Kumi Masuda, assisted the whole process of practicing the gamelan instruments for the whole team of project collaborators - students, music teacher and composer.

When the new gamelan music was introduced for students to begin practicing from January 2021, the state of emergency was announced due to high infection rates of COVID-19 in metropolitan cities; therefore, since the day 1 of this program shifted to lead the music class remotely through Zoom, connecting the primary school in Kochi with the instructors' homes in Tokyo till February. The composer and gamelan instructor finally revisited Kochi in March to continue on practices, face-to-face. The special guests from Surabaya city coucil and Consulate-General of Japan in Surabaya attended to watch the final presentation live via Zoom among other grades of students.

■Special Classroom of World Music
October 2020
Lecturers: Shigeki Iida (Bali gamelan musician and researcher, Kumi Masuda (Jawa gameran musician and researcher), Yasuno Miyauchi (Composer)

■Practicing A New Gameral Music　
January - March 2021

"Kame Kame Kura-Kura" (2021)
Composition and lyrics: Yasuno Miyauchi
Gamelan instruction: Kumi Masuda (Java gamelan researcher and musician)
School music teaching: Fumi Nabeshima (Haruno Higashi Primary School)
Performance and lyrics: 4th grade of Haruno Higashi Primary School

Video teaching materials for gamelan
Performance: Gamelan Universe (Azuki Iijima, Kana Imaizumi, Akiko Urahata, Noriko Okuyama, Syungo Kato, Taishi Kuroki, Yuzu Goto, Kotomi Taguchi, Kumi Masuda, Yasuno Miyauchi, Hidekazu Yamaoka)
Recording: Kohei Shinozaki
Venue cooperation: Office KUMI

Video documentary: Sora Hokimoto
Photo documentary: Taisuke Tsurui
Producer: Chizuru Matsumoto (The Museum of Art, Kochi)

Profile

Yasuno Miyauci

Composer/Artistic Director, Tsumugine
In her unique composition style, Yasuno weaves out resonance from fundamental elements such as the human voice, breath, and body. With creation and performance for her musical performance group Tsumugine as her main focus, she also creates new work using Asian based music such as Shomyo (Japanese Buddhist chants), Japanese traditional music, and gamelan. She has extended her activities of her vocal workshop Wa Tsumugi Project from Japan to overseas numerous times, including during her residency in NY in 2016 as an ACC grantee, and during her research in South East Asian countries in the 2018 Japan Foundation Asia Fellowship Program, exploring the role of music as a communication tool.