Japanese Singers of Tales: Ten Centuries of Performed Narrative
Regular price
€192.20
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Alison McQueen Tokita
Author_Alison McQueen Tokita
brothers
Buddhist chant traditions
Cadential Phrase
Category=AVL
Cd Track
dance
edo
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
evolution of Japanese oral performance
Formulaic Melodies
heike
Heike Monogatari
Heike Narrative
Influential Structural Model
Japanese performing arts
kabuki
Kabuki Dance
musical
Musical Narrative
musical narrative analysis
Nagauta Piece
Naniwa Bushi
narrative identity formation
Oral Formulaic Theory
Oral Narrative
oral tradition studies
Parry Lord Theory
Performed Narratives
period
Pitch Area
Puppet Theatre
puppet theatre research
Quotation Song
Reiterative Patterns
Sanja Matsuri
Shamisen Music
Soft Narrative
soga
Soga Brothers
sung
Sung Narrative
track
Urgent Narrative
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9780754653790
- Weight: 746g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Feb 2015
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Alison McQueen Tokita presents a series of case studies that demonstrate the persistence of Japanese sung narratives in a multiplicity of genres over ten centuries, including the way they flourished and declined, together with factors contributing to development and change in narrative performance. Performed narratives are examples of a shared cultural heritage, which in the past have given people a sense of belonging to a community. Narratives that were continually re-told and recycled in different versions and formats over a long period of time served to build people's sense of a common identity over space (the geographical extent of 'Japan') and time (the enduring power of many specific narratives such as The Tale of the Heike). Much scholarly attention has focused on Japanese pre-modern literature and drama, but the tradition of oral narrative has barely been touched. Tokita argues that it is possible to identify a continuous tradition of performed narrative in Japan from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. The elements of variation and change relate to the move away from oral narrative to text-based performance, and from a simple narrative situation with one performer to complex theatrical narratives with dancers, singers and other musicians. The resulting complexity led to the pre-eminence of the musical aspects in some cases, and of dramatic or dance aspects in others. Tokita includes substantial musical analysis and exploration of theoretical issues, as well as documentation of important performance traditions, all of which are extant.
Alison McQueen Tokita is Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Japanese Traditional Music at the Kyoto City University of Arts, and adjunct Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at Monash University. She has published widely on Japanese narrative music, and is currently working on naniwa-bushi. In recent years she has researched the role of the piano in East Asian musical modernity. She is co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music (2008), Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia, and Outside Asia: Japanese and Australian Identities and Encounters in Flux.
