Gagaku is Waking Up in Los Angeles
Cultural News, November 2004
Mr. Suenobu Togi (center), a former musician of the Imperial Household Agency in Tokyo, brought gagaku music to Los Angeles more than four decades ago. Rev. Masao Kodani (left), head minister of Senshin Buddhist Temple, started Kinnara Gagaku Group at his temple to serve the ceremony. Rev. Ikuko Yuge (right), retired UCLA lecturer and head minister of Tenrikyo Heritage Church, leads her church’s gagaku group. (Cultural News Photo)
Los Angeles Gagaku Group: Leron Harrison (left in front row), graduated student at UC Irvine, plays Shoko; Dr. Paul Humphreys (right in front row), Assistant Professor of Music at Loyora Marymount University, plays Taiko. (Cultural News Photo)
By Miri Park
For over twelve centuries, Japanese gagaku was hidden behind the chrysanthemum curtain and played exclusively for emperors and nobles. Now all that has changed. On October 12, 2004, Japanese court music ensemble Reigakusha presented a successful concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall here in Los Angeles. The nearly sell-out audience gave a standing ovation at the end.
Local gagaku performers active in the L.A. gagaku scene were seated together at the west wing of the orchestra section, entertained by the enthusiastic response of the audience. At the center of the group was Mr. Suenobu Togi, a former musician of the Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency, who brought this rare art of gagaku music to Los Angeles more than four decades ago.
Gagaku in Los Angeles started in 1956, when UCLA graduate student Robert Garfias founded a gagaku study group with his peers. In 1959, the Music Department of the Imperial Household of Japan toured in the United States for the first time. Garfias, who was accompanying the musicians as an interpreter, asked Togi, one of the hichiriki players, to teach his group at UCLA.
In 1961, Togi was officially sent by the Imperial Household to honor a request by legendary musicologist Mantle Hood, who had just founded the Institute of Ethnomusicology at UCLA. Togi became one of the first faculty members with a two-year assignment.
In the past, learning the gagaku tradition was restricted to a guild-like society that was created when the imperial court appointed hereditary positions to selected musicians’ families. Each family specialized one of the gagaku instruments and/or in dance. The imperial court often assigned individual pieces to particular family to be kept secret, so that only one son of the family was authorized to learn them orally from the father.
The tradition of gagaku was passed down in this way for twelve hundred years, until the Meiji restoration in 1868, when the imperial court reorganized the repertoire and started teaching in a school system.
Togi came from one of these musicians’ families and trained at the imperial court to preserve the tradition for the next generation. Togi taught his students at UCLA in Japanese by using the traditional method of solmization, called shoga, on a one-on-one basis, exactly the way he learned from the former teachers in Japan.
When his appointment of two years was over, he felt that was not enough to establish anything about gagaku in this environment. “The position I held in Japan was an honorable one, being awarded only to members of small, selected group of families who trace back their lineage to the original gagaku musicians from the continent. Leaving the family business of over 1000 years permanently to teach foreigners gagaku was unthinkable,” said Togi. “But I made a bold decision to leave the imperial musicianship behind. For me, practicing gagaku in the new land seemed to have more potential than preserving it in a closed selected musicians’ community. Of course…” he continued chuckling, “life in Los Angeles was liberating and attractive. I was young.”
By the time Togi retired from UCLA in 1993, over one thousand students had been immersed in gagaku music. Though Togi intended to continue applying the traditional manner of gagaku transmission to maintain authenticity even outside of the court, some adjustments were required to teach young American students. “Because the instruction was offered as a college course for 1 or 2 units per quarter, many students just left after 10 weeks after trying to impatiently ‘master’ gagaku music and earn a decent grade for the course. Occasionally I had to tell them it takes time to learn gagaku. They were not too happy,” said Togi. And to his disappointment, “many of them were not naturally musicians, and could not cope with the slow tempo of gagaku music at all.”
But among these students, a few remained in the group, fascinated by the unique and mystical quality of the sound of gagaku. The UCLA Gagaku Ensemble was formed and became active to give cultural demonstrations on and off campus.
In December 1981, the UCLA Gagaku Ensemble was invited to perform at a joint concert with the Nihon Gagaku Society at the National Theatre of Tokyo, and later toured Japan. The Japanese media sensationally reported the debut of this group as “Blue-eyed musicians play Japanese gagaku!”
During his time at UCLA, Togi made several successful outreach efforts, organizing gagaku study groups off campus. Two religious organizations, Tenrikyo Church and Senshin Buddhist Temple, adapted gagaku music as a part of their ritual and took advantage of Togi’s teaching.
In the Tenrikyo, gagaku is used for the opening of the service and for the offering of tamagushi, a sprig of the sacred trees, Though the performance of gagaku has no religious meaning, the repertoire or its fragments were used of the background to enhance the solemnity of the ritual. Many Tenrikyo missionaries have learned gagaku in Japan to serve, but they grew to love performing as Togi started to inspire them to further develop a repertoire to use outside of the Church.
Senshin Buddhist Temple uses gagaku instruments to accompany sutra chanting during services. As Togi offered them opportunity to expand their repertoire, the Kinnara Gagaku Group, directed by Rev. Masao Kodani, was started to serve the ceremony as well as to perform at both formal and informal occasions.
These three gagaku groups in Los Angeles are all under Togi’s guidance, and share repertoire that they perform. The musicians all call Togi “Sensei”, meaning ‘master’ or ‘teacher,’ with maximum respect and affection.
Unlike the ever-popular koto and taiko, there has been little effort to teach the public about gagaku music because of its limited function. However, the recent successful visit of Reigakusha may inspire people to learn more about this cultural treasure of Japan.
The gagaku musicians in Los Angeles now try to take further steps to promote gagaku music for the next generation. For example, Tenrikyo Church attempts to teach young members to play the instruments to pass on their religious tradition. Senshin Buddhist Temple organizes a once-a-week gagaku class. The musicians form a performance group “the Los Angeles Gagaku Group” and occasionally give lecture-demonstrations for young audience at schools.
In Japan, from the academic year of 2002, all Japanese school children from the 7th to 9th grades, take mandatory lessons of at least one traditional Japanese instrument. This new movement brought people’s attention to gagaku music in Japan.
Reigakusha which restores extinct repertoire as well as playing contemporary compositions, and solo performers such as Hideki Togi (another former imperial court musician) who presents pop hichiriki, have become very popular in Japan.
Here in Los Angeles, this tradition will be transmitted by generations of non-Japanese performers. For the musicians in L.A., gagaku means music that is passed on by oral tradition from countless generations of musicians, and remains today as the oldest extant Japanese music.
The gagaku seeds Togi planted now spread not only in Los Angeles, but many institutions out of state where his former students take charge of other Japanese music programs. Gagaku is alive, and now waking up among the new generation in a foreign land in the new millennium.
Miri Park is an ethnomusicologist with a Master’s degree in music from UCLA. She has studied gagaku with Mr. Togi, and an active member of the Los Angeles Gagaku Group playing the sho. Currently, she is running a Japanese language and culture program for children at Venice Gakuen.