Instrument-making as music-making: An ethnographic study of shakuhachi students’ learning experiences

Background

The importance of instrument-making as part of music learning has rarely been voiced by educators. An exception was progressive music educator, Satis Coleman (1928, 1931), who investigated creative music units in which learning began with making folk instruments and developed into such activities as composition, singing, listening, and, later, involved the study of art, folklore, physics, and language. Her educational aim was to encourage students to follow the phylogenetic evolution of music through an ontogenetic approach. Coleman (1927) stated that “if a child lives the art of music from its primitive beginnings, makes his own instruments and plays upon them, and discovers for himself each stage in the development of musical instruments, how can he help being musical?” (p. 19). She emphasized that the creative power of instrument-making lies in helping students to engage in their own music-making and improvisation. Coleman’s students created homemade versions of the Chinese kin (zither), tche (horizontal bamboo flute), the Egyptian ney (an end-blown flute), panpipes, marimbas, and many types of drums. ¹ In doing so, they studied foreign scales and sounds. Although her attempt may be questioned from the viewpoint of authentic sound (Volk, 1996), her intention of introducing instrument making as a way of understanding foreign music can provide a grounding for today’s discussion of world music pedagogy. Her attempt at highlighting the intimate relationship between “hands and mind” through instrument making may also be of great contribution to the field of music education.

Coleman posited, however, that instrument-making is rather a preliminary activity prior to the study of the “real art of music.” According to Coleman, instrument-making is a means for students to explore the dimension of the musical life of “primitive” people. This Euro-centric viewpoint may be criticized by scholars and advocates of indigenous knowledge. A prominent contribution has been made by Dubé (2008), who proposed a Native American flute curriculum that involves making and playing a PVC version of the Native American flute, and studying the histories and cultures of Native American music. He argues that instrument-making was a significant factor for the formation of a culturally-responsive curriculum and pedagogy in his case programme because instrument-making has been an important part of music-making in Native American traditions. The findings of his study suggest that instrument making is a powerful way to engage displaced students in music learning and respond to their spiritual and emotional needs.

Unlike in North America, an increasing interest in instrument-making has occurred in Japan. Furiya, Abiko, Hashimoto, and Yamazaki (2007) reported a series of attempts to introduce instrument-making within music programmes at the elementary, secondary, and teacher education levels. Years of experiments involving school and university students in instrument-making led Furiya and her colleagues to believe that instrument-making can facilitate not only active engagement in music learning but also positive understanding of the culture in which the instrument originated. Instrument-making served their students as a medium to explore unfamiliar cultures and sounds. Examples of instruments they worked on in their projects were the tongatong (a bamboo percussion instrument used by the Kalinga tribe of the Northern Philippines), the cajón (a box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru), and the shinobue bamboo flute. The findings suggested attachment to the instruments, an increased interest in foreign sounds and cultures, and an enhanced understanding of instrument-specific techniques. In their study, the shinobue curriculum in particular enabled place-based, localized music-learning, as it connected learning activities to the community where the music has been practised for generations. ²

Hildebrandt and Zan’s (2002) attempt to include instrument-making in their early childhood curriculum takes a constructivist approach. They argue that children can understand the art and science of sound through engaging in instrument-making. They provide three approaches to instrument-making as a way of understanding the physics of sound. In the first approach, the teacher provides step-by-step instructions on how to make an instrument, and monitors each step along the way. Every student is given the same materials and is expected to follow the same instructions provided by the teacher. In the second approach, students are free to explore their imaginations using a variety of materials. The teacher’s intervention is kept to a minimum. Without a definite model, students are free to explore their creativity. Unlike in the first approach, students’ productions in the second approach are expected to vary. Finally, the third approach combines both the guided and the free approaches. Hildebrandt and Zan (2002) recommend the third approach as students’ learning becomes more constructive. Examples of instrument making activities introduced in their work are balloon maracas and a rubber-band guitar. The discussion provided in their work offers an image that instrument making, with the help of adults, can lead to a series of activities that engage children in the exploration of a variety of sounds.

In her book, Upitis (1990) reflects on her experience of incorporating instrument-making activities into her elementary music classrooms. She states that students’ classroom-made or homemade instruments facilitated more active engagement in sound creation and experiment than traditional instruments, partly because those instruments were mostly percussive in nature. At the same time, the students often did not think that their self-made instruments were “real.” They felt that because their self-made instruments were not related to conventional instruments, there was no “proper” way to play them. She believes that students need to be taught that many connections exist between their self-made instruments and conventional instruments. She also emphasizes that students need to be exposed to a variety of creative ways in which creative instrument-making is integrated into real music-making contexts.

The underlying theoretical basis for the promotion of instrument-making as part of music education seems to be constructivism, especially that of John Dewey. Dewey underscores the origin of the human experience of art, which he considers as the “germs and roots in matters of experience” (Dewey, 1934/1980, p. 12). Dewey posits that bare, natural materials provide hearty resistance to those human beings who wish to force them to actualize their images of the materials. The tension between the organism (the students) and the environment (clay, in Dewey’s example) generates a desire that thus seeks equilibrium of the tension. “Equilibrium,” Dewey sees, “comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension” (p. 14). Dewey’s view of “an experience” that focuses on the process of negotiation between the desires of the individual and the constraints of the environment is concerned primarily with preparing the environment in which the interaction and tension between the students and objects naturally occur. It is this interactive view of Dewey’s argument that supports instrument-making activities in music education. Instrument-making provides a perfect environment for such an encounter to happen.

In sum, the above reviewed literature indicates that instrument-making activities, despite practical challenges and difficulties, may facilitate (a) an attachment to the instrument, (b) an understanding of the principle of acoustics, (c) an exploration of the relationship between instruments and music, (d) an awareness of sounds as cultural heritages, (e) a sense of connection to places and communities, (f) students’ creative music-making, and (g) the integration of mind and body. At the same time, the ways in which self-made instruments can facilitate students’ prolonged engagement with music have not been clarified; and neither has the way in which instrument-making activities lead to a life-long pursuit of music. These are crucial questions that need to be examined as many teachers have felt that instrument-making often leads to one-shot activities and ends without advancing the students’ musical engagement. Upitis (1990) echoes,

I have observed many teachers spend countless hours crafting lovely instruments with children, only to find that the instruments either stay in a box for the remainder of the year or the children take their treasures home without ever getting a chance to explore their instruments fully at school. (p. 111)

Because instrument-making is not part of the music education culture, we need to identify models and forms of actual practice outside the institutional contexts and draw on what it is like to incorporate instrument-making into the process of music learning. To this end, this study specifically looks at adult music learners whose engagement in music involves instrument-making and the long lasting practice of music. A case in point is practitioners of Japanese bamboo flutes, especially the end-blown shakuhachi. Among the many flutes existent in the world, the shakuhachi makes a unique case for its international popularity as well as practitioners’ involvement in instrument-making. Informants in this study are involved in the organic process of harvesting bamboo, making instruments, and performing music on self-made instruments. This type of organic activities through music are hardly introduced and practised in the educational realm. As revealed later, these activities contributed to the formation of the attachment of the practitioners to the instruments and the development of musical thinking. The result is enriched music learning. The case presented in this article reveals an existing model of sustainable musical engagement that begins with instrument making.

Data sources

The data for this study derived from an ethnographic case study that I conducted in North America and Japan over the course of 2 years in 2007 and 2008. In this study, I investigated groups of adult shakuhachi practitioners in North America and Japan in order to explore how the shakuhachi strengthens the ecological, spiritual aspects of musical experience. During the project, it became evident that shakuhachi making was a significant part of these practitioners’ musical engagement: Music learning for them was not merely concerned with the study of music itself but formed by a variety of organic activities including the harvesting of bamboo.

Although not every practitioner in Japan is actively engaged in shakuhachi-making, it has been practised by a number of practitioners who are not confined within the traditional ryu (school) system (Malm, 1959/2000; Trimillos, 1989) in which students are expected to use instruments that are recommended by their teachers. ³ Instrument-making is also becoming a significant part of shakuhachi learning outside Japan, as witnessed by a number of shakuhachi students participating in shakuhachi-making workshops held in North American and Europe. Shakuhachi-making enthusiasts are also identified in an online discussion forum. The number of topics posted for shakuhachi-making on the shakuhachi forum (www.shakuhachiforum.com) exceeds 450, which is the second most discussed topic after “miscellaneous shakuhachi related” and more popular than other topics such as “technique,” “pieces and notation,” and “recording.” Within the shakuhachi-making category, over 4,980 comments and questions had been posted as of March 2011.

As I observed my participants’ music and instrument-making activities, the following questions emerged from my data analysis: (a) why do they make their own instruments? (b) how would their engagement with music change by using self-made instruments? and (c) what characterizes their music learning that includes instrument-making? In order to obtain useful data, I participated in several shakuhachi-making workshops together with my informants (both Japanese and North American). I also joined them in harvesting bamboo in various places in Japan. My observations of their activities included seeing their harvested pieces of bamboo eventually becoming flutes in the following years. During my fieldwork, I also collected a substantial amount of data from frequent individual interviews and focus-group interviews with my informants. The narrative data introduced below includes not only students’ opinions but also those of professional makers.

Shakuhachi-making

The shakuhachi is an end-blown bamboo flute from Japan. The five tones are tuned to form a pentatonic scale. Traditionally, finger hole positions are determined by the proportion of the bamboo (e.g., one tenth of the entire length). Today, pitches are much more strictly controlled to fit the Western tuning system. Many professional makers follow a gauge to control the bore shape so that the quality of the instruments is standardized.

People approach shakuhachi-making differently. Some aim to maximize the functionality of the instrument by, for instance, inserting an inlay (made of plastic, buffalo horn, or ivory) into the angled blowing edge and applying filling materials to harden and smooth the inside of the bamboo. These are among several steps that the bamboo undergoes to be transformed from the raw to the processed. At one end of the spectrum, there exists the style of leaving the flute as raw as possible; at the other, shakuhachi making allows for a series of procedures that change the nature of the bamboo. Despite a wide range of shakuhachi-making styles, most approaches fall somewhere in the middle of the scale, between these two poles. Typically, the former type is represented by the ji-nashishakuhachi, and the latter type by the ji-arishakuhachi. Here, ji refers to a dough of filling material. Ji-nashi means no ji, and ji-ari means with ji. The ji-nashi is traditionally made from a single piece of bamboo with minimal modification in order to maximize the character that the segment naturally bears. In contrast, the ji-ari typically comes apart into two pieces in the middle. When it comes to shakuhachi-making, my informants exclusively preferred longer ji-nashi flutes because the making process of these flutes is normally simpler and its sound feels more “organic” (some use such expressions as “earthy” and “natural”).

In what follows, the data highlight the ways in which shakuhachi-making helped the practitioners to personalize their instruments and music-learning processes.

Personalizing the instrument

Shakuhachi-making for my informants begins with harvesting the bamboo. In a bamboo grove, they are faced with a myriad of choices. Based on their previous experiences and acquired images of sound associated with the size and shape of bamboo, they decide which pieces of bamboo to harvest. For experienced practitioners, musical thinking may begin while harvesting the bamboo. Looking at a piece of bamboo in a grove, they perceive an image of a sound. When they hold a piece of bamboo, they undergo a bodily feeling depending on how experienced they are in making and playing the shakuhachi. For them, the sound of bamboo is associated with its particular size and shape. They may also think of certain tunes in relation to the sound. With a skinny, narrow bamboo piece, for example, they may think of light tones and tunes. Thick, longer pieces may let them imagine profound tunes that are played slowly. A teacher explained it as follows:

In some cases, I harvest a piece of bamboo and turn it into the shakuhachi with a concrete image of a certain tune. In other cases, the nature of a bamboo piece determines what tunes I can play. For example, I harvested this piece of bamboo with the image of toppiki, a tune from northern part of Japan, and I made it into this 1.4 [size] short shakuhachi instrument.

Because the process of harvesting bamboo is a prolonged and profound experience, the acquired bamboo pieces tend to become special to those who harvested them. It is a process of developing an attachment to the materials. The North American informants gathered and discussed their experiences of harvesting bamboo. At one point, they agreed:

For these participants, bamboo was more than simply an object – it was a living character. Their relationships with a variety of bamboo pieces were similar to those they had with human beings – as if they were all individual and particular to one another. One Japanese informant mentioned:

Your hand-made instruments are like your children. You love them not because they are beautiful, cute, smart or anything [functional, playable, etc.] but because they are your children. They were born out of your hands. You must love them regardless of their appearances [and sounds].

This person continued to say that each bamboo flute has its own charm and character. Because of its natural material, some flutes turn out to be better-sounding than others. But for him, the inconvenience of a flute is not a “deficiency” but an integral part of its “character.” He believes that trying and getting used to diverse shapes and sizes of flutes is the essential part of the shakuhachi-making and playing experience.

A series of engagements with music through harvesting the bamboo, fashioning flutes, and playing on them enabled these practitioners to personalize their experience with the flutes. As they began to embody the flutes, their flutes became a depository of emotionally important memories; ones firmly rooted in particular places and times. The prolonged engagement with the material also made the resulting instrument “irreplaceable.” One American practitioner stated:

Those flutes [made out of the bamboo] that we [harvested in Japan] are my favorites, part of it is because you gave it to me, and to my ears, they sound the best and I feel the best and the most comfortable because I put the holes where my fingers need to be. Those instruments are just completely irreplaceable. . . . It’s just so rewarding to take a piece of plant and make an instrument that you can carry around for the rest of your life. It’s got to be a life-long friend.

These practitioners indicated that instrument-making is a process of developing a sense of attachment, love, care, and responsibility towards the instrument. Instrument-making served as the basis for subsequent music-learning. It helped them enrich their musical engagement.

Personalized music-learning

Self-made instruments allowed the practitioners to make their music-making processes more personal and engaging. This personalization occurred in two ways. First, they fashioned their instruments in ways to reflect their musical tastes and preferences. Some maximized the playability of the instrument by opening up the bottom hole and finger holes. Others preferred keeping finger holes smaller and retaining much of the internal nodes of bamboo to gain richer tone colours. Second, they adjusted themselves to the character of their instruments. They learned how to accommodate their playing styles in order to play the flutes that have strong characters. Indeed, for many practitioners, among the essential aspects of ji-nashishakuhachi training was learning how to adjust themselves to the character of each flute (expressed by such phrases as take niawasetefuku in Japanese, which means “to play by adjusting to the character of each flute”). Mastering this skill often requires a substantial amount of time and practice. One teacher said:

Because of the individual chambers inside a ji-nashishakuhachi created by the nodes still left inside, the ji-nashi very often requires change of breathing at almost every note. This results in you having to adjust to the bamboo rather than the bamboo adjusting to you.

This process of adjustment and self-transformation in relation to the flute was a constituent of their learning experiences of the shakuhachi.

Another distinctive aspect of musical engagement through self-made instruments was that the practitioner evolved with the instrument. This was typically observed when a novice began playing on a longer flute beyond the standard size of the shakuhachi (about 55 cm). Although he fashioned it in such a way that accommodated his body balance, he still found it difficult to hold this longer flute, cover the distanced finger holes, and blow straight into it. Within 3 months, however, he was able to perform on this flute. This was a result of his embodiment of the flute. His playing style developed in the way that allowed him to execute expressions suited to this flute. In other words, he grew with the flute. This process was characterized as co-evolution with the flute.

The nature of co-evolving is well expressed in the following statement of an American maker who likened his experience of flute-making and playing to parenting, as both involved the joy of learning and co-evolving.

Playing this flute was a wonderful awakening. . . . Usually, when I play music on a shakuhachi, I feel a collaboration with the flute. It’s a give and take relationship. . . . I found this shakuhachi a little selfish at first. It made me play in the way it wanted to be played. I realized that I couldn’t, or it wouldn’t let me do things I would normally do with this piece. Afterwards, it felt kind of good to succumb to the flute. I realized while playing that the flute was saying, “Listen to me, don’t try to force me to do what you want. In the end, we’ll both be happy.” The realization was quite elucidating and timely. It’s a lesson I’m presently learning from my children, who are now at the ages of two and four years.

Like this maker, some practitioners indicated that their relationships with the instruments were “parent-like.” To highlight and contrast with the nature of this type of engagement with the instruments, another maker used an expression “God-like,” by which he meant to refer to a relationship in which humans force every piece of bamboo to hold homogeneous characteristics regardless of its original quality. He explained,

I find that once opened up initially, the bamboo reveals its individual voice. That’s when I realize, “Ah, ok, it’s going to be like this.” From there, it’s a matter of working in the most efficient manner to help that voice along. I’m not interested in changing the voice, but rather adjusting enough to help it reveal its full potential in terms of what I tune into individually as a maker. To me, it’s similar to a parent-like relationship with the instrument. [In contrast] When making a [modern] shakuhachi, I usually have a clearer idea of what type of voice I’m looking to create, so I go at it with that in mind. . . . There is more control over the voice. . . . Maybe this is more of a God-like relationship with the instrument?

Here, he referred to “God to highlight the nature of design-based creation, whereas he meant by parent an attitude to attend to the characteristics of individual piece of bamboo and make best of it.

The difference between parent-like and God-like engagements in instrument-making can be explained by understanding the notion of “mastery” inherent to craft-making. Rohlen and LeTendre (1996/1998) observe,

Mastery is a process of adapting oneself to the material rather than of controlling or subordinating the material to oneself. Conversely, it may be argued that the learner must first accept his or her subordination to the material, task, or form. The advanced potter [in Japan] says he has learned from the clay. (p. 371)

For the same reason, many in this study, including North American students, expressed that they have learned from the bamboo. Some used such expressions as take nisodatetemoratta, which means “the bamboo fostered me.” The organic process of instrument making and music playing involved these individuals in a prolonged engagement with their instruments. They conversed with the bamboo, found its character and charm, and adjusted themselves to perform on individual pieces of bamboo. In so doing, they cultivated distinctive relationships with individual flutes. The result was self-transformation and enriched music learning.

Discussion: Significance of instrument-making as part of music education

As revealed above, instrument-making activities incorporated into the process of music learning can be educative and deeply engaging. They allow for the embodiment of the instrument, co-evolution with the instrument, and self-transformation that induces a nurturing experience. One’s musical performance expressed through such an instrument inevitably represents his or her prolonged engagement with the instrument. This type of music making requires far more than one-shot activities because it involves encountering the materials in nature, fashioning the instruments, tailoring the character of each material to the player’s musical needs, and elaborating their musical expressions. Throughout the process, a piece of bamboo becomes an instrument and eventually a life-long partner that leads to enriched musical engagement.

From Dewey’s perspective, the benefits of instrument making activities draw on experiencing the “germs and roots” of musical experience and activating the integration of “hand and mind”, as discussed earlier. In educational settings, music educators often try to eliminate hindrances of musical encounters, a condition necessary to experience the germs and roots of musical experience, in favour of convenience brought by, for example, factory-made instruments. These instruments require less negotiation between the student and the instrument. My informants, in contrast, reported that the “tension” between their musical desires and the constraints caused by the nature of their self-made instruments is the source of creative joy and attachment to the instruments. This organic view of musical engagement, the one that includes instrument-making as part of its process, highlights the integrative process of instrument-making and subsequent music-making.

Implications drawn from the findings of this study are manifold. First, as identified in previous studies (Furiya et al., 2007; Hildebrandt & Zan, 2002), instrument-making is often geared toward testing a variety of materials and exploring a variety of sounds. This was also the case with Coleman (1927) introduced earlier. Her use of natural elements for musical instruments was geared primarily toward experimentation in order to stimulate students’ own interests and creativity. Its goal was more concerned with transforming materials than with developing a caring attitude toward the instruments. Although instrument-making may contribute to the development of an attachment to self-made instruments, it is not clear if it would bring a “parent-like” attitude toward the instruments, as my informants felt. Without a caring attitude, an increased sense of ownership of the instrument can easily lead to its destruction. From this perspective, making instruments using recycled materials or vegetables can be questioned because, if the instruments do not last long, the attachment to the instruments may not promote students’ lasting musical pursuit but result in consumption and disposition of the instruments. Such a form of instrument-making activity typically ends with one-shot events, the point highlighted by Upitis (1990). The use of recycled materials may be appropriate so long as it facilitates prolonged music-making.

The findings of this study also provide an alternative view to the use of plastic substitutes for genuine folk instruments in teaching and learning contexts. The use of plastic shakuhachi – including hand-made plastic shakuhachi – is becoming popular due to its accessibility and identical sound to the bamboo shakuhachi. Many Japanese school teachers have attempted to prepare PVC substitutes for classroom shakuhachi or shinobue instruction (Takeshi, 2008). Substitute instruments are often favoured for standardized qualities. My informants strongly believed that the experience gained through plastic flutes is qualitatively different from that of playing bamboo flutes. For them, the joy of playing the shakuhachi comes from the bodily feeling of blowing into a piece of bamboo. They tended to dislike working on industrial materials because such standardized materials do not provide the same kind of bodily feeling. Also, the diversity of experience brought by such materials is limited. One informant perceived that “every encounter with a piece of bamboo is a surprise.” It comes with a sense of exhilaration, delight, and for some practitioners, awe and mystery. It is the experience of dealing with natural materials, such as bamboo, that promotes the development of attachment, love, and care for the instruments.

Based on the findings, one can suggest that working with natural elements may bring a more authentic experience of music. The current discussion of authenticity in world music pedagogy tends to deal more with pitch proximity than the physical experience of the materials. This assumption often seems problematic in promoting instrument-making in music education contexts because the use of natural elements does not easily allow us to control the pitches of the resulting instruments. Whether we think this is problematic or not reflects our value system. Where the dominant format of music-teaching is group instruction, self-made instruments out of natural materials may not be promoted because the pitches of these instruments may vary from one to another. Conducting ensemble activities using such instruments is often impossible due to the pitch differences. However, instead of belittling the value of self-made instruments, we should face more fundamental questions. Why do we assume that every student needs to be given the same quality of – often factory-made – instrument? Why don’t we allow individual students to make their own music using self-made instruments?

Coda

Observing the world of the shakuhachi, Denyer (1994) noted that the creativity and the musical decisions of musicians, especially composers, hardly go beyond the constraints of available instruments that define an identical set of shared assumptions about music. These constraints, Denyer believes, are released when musicians are engaged in instrument-making. Denyer observes that because of the separated roles of makers and players, “modern industrialised societies are far from being inherently pluralist: On the contrary, they exert powerful pressures that neutralise most serious pluralist tendencies” (p. 47). If Denyer is correct, our natural inclination toward more individually unique experiences of music is constrained by our tendency to use homogenized and standardized media, including plastic instruments and uniformly produced curriculum materials. As revealed in this study, the diversity of expression and experience can be achieved by using instruments made from natural materials that bear a variety of characters. The diversity of experience can be gained through engaging in the process of making such instruments. This study proposes a “slow-food” approach to music education, the one that begins with making instruments as a way of localizing, historicizing, and personalizing each individual’s music-making process (Matsunobu, 2012). Future research should provide evidence to promote such a vision to further consolidate.