Sound of Mukkuri: Jew's Harp and Vocal Music of the Ainu cdRoots Home Page More music of the tromp or Jew's harp

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Mukkuri Hawehe
Sound of Mukkuri: Jew's Harp and Vocal Music of the Ainu
$19.99

The Ainu (the native Japanese people) now live mostly on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido . This is a recording of the traditional vocal and Jews' harp techniques of the Ainu.

Text in Japanese and English.

Listen:
To the rivers of the world (Jew's harp)
upopo song from Akan (vocal)

"It is good to have a recording with a good sample of Ainu mukkuri playing. Sven women, each of whom we met at either the Yakutsk or Molln Congress, or both, play and sing on a total of 31 tracks. Fifteen of these are vocal examples, two with mukkuri. I was particularly interested to observe that many of these vocal pieces are canons - a form little known outside of Europe and Africa. Most of the mukkuri tracks are solos - the traditional way of playing - but there are three duos and one sextet. There is a common but not universal basic formula: slow plucks begin, and speed up; a regular beat and limited series of sounds comprise the large central part, after which the beats thin out again; there may be another slowing in the middle. The world over, a steady attack is the natural rhythm of the trump, but in areas where the instrument is "plucked" by a string, it is almost the only possible one. All the mukkuri pieces have programmatic titles ("A Bear with a Cub," "Footsteps of the Spring"), though, as Tadagawa Leo's notes explain, the "title" is actually the image the player had in mind while performing the piece. As it seems to me, these little mukkuri pieces put special demands on the listener for attentiveness: the "connoisseur" will follow the structure of each piece by retaining the set of sounds used, thus also appreciating the difference among pieces." - Fred Crane, International Jew's Harp Society

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