Fumon's teaching style combined traditional notation methods with ones he'd developed.
Tradition in the air you breathe
The traditional way of teaching Satsumabiwa required that the new student already have a familiarity with the art that most people today couldn't possibly have when starting.
In the past, in Kagoshima, Satsumabiwa was everywhere to be heard. Students already were familiar with the texts and the melodies by the time they started learning how to play the instrument.
Even at the turn of the last century, when Satsumabiwa was entering the Golden Age of its history in Japan, the instrument was still unfamiliar to most Japanese outside of Kagoshima and its vicinities.
Developments
Therefore, a lot of teachers and promoters of the instrument devised various means of trying to "notate" the music or at least communicate it through some visual means.
Fumon's own system used numbers to indicated pitch; 1 being DO, 2 - RE, 3 - MI, 4 - FA, 5 - SO, 6 - LA, with all other pitches expressed as being sharp or flat in relation to those numbers.
In the first page of the song, Horaisan (image above) these two methods can be seen. Highlighted in green to the left of the sung text are roman numerals for pitch, and in blue, to the right, are traditional notation methods in Satsumabiwa.
Simple Patterns
When I started learning the sung part, I soon perceived that the traditional notation method used Chinese characters to describe a melodic form or pattern that was then applied to the text.
My immediate thought was, this made it very simple. Somewhere in my mind, I felt, if I could find out all the patterns, and then manage to learn them, I'd then have "learned" how to do Satsumabiwa.
And so, I began to notate down the patterns as Fumon taught them to me:
chi, chi jo no hari, chi no shita hari, chukan no shita, taikan
There were other patterns, too - kiri to mark sections of the recitation, chukan nagashi, chukan nage, ji no hencho, chukan no hencho, chigin, chukan otoshi.
These later ones were melismatic compared to the former, which tended to be centred around one pitch, with slight idiomatic endings, it seemed,
This melismatic/single tone difference was reflected in the tradition as well. Hiragin, or plain recitation, was used for the phrases sung mainly on a single tone, and utagin, or sung recitation, for the more melodic and intricate melodies.
Never as simple as it seems....
As the lessons progressed, something began to catch my attention.
Each week, I notated these patterns as Fumon sang them. Then, coming back the next week, confident in some progress on my part, the lesson would start. To my surprise, while the utagin remained very stable the hiragin were often sung differently by Fumon on each occasion.
It was a little unsettling, and I tried to ask Fumon about it. He explained that the Chinese characters used in the traditional Satsumabiwa notation just tell you the starting pitch.
I responded with another question, "Are fixed melodic patterns used for hiragin, then, as they seem to be with the utagin?"
"Indeed, they are," he replied. "However, there's no feeling, no musicality, no presence in just applying the melody to the words. You must respond to the text, the story, and the character in an immediate way each time you sing. There needs to be improvisation [or sokkyosei 即興性]. Without this, the music is dead."
"In essence, there's a basic form, but then, many different ways of singing each phrase. Nevertheless, everything sung needs to have spontaneity!"
Standard Pitfalls
In many lessons over the following years, Fumon often gave completely different renditions of the same phrase even in immediately successive repititions.
This was done deliberately, I think, to try and avoid the notion of a standard way of singing that one had to abide to.
At the same time, it's fair to ask the question, was there then a right way and a wrong way of rendering a phrase in light of such a demand for spontaneity and immediacy? Most certainly! Fumon was very specific about what he did, and corrected me constantly. There were clear aesthetic boundaries.
Reaching the heart of the matter
Today, I feel that Fumon also deliberately taught in this way for his own personal development, too. Besides the physical benefits of singing and using his body so fully, he also had the intellectual stimulation of the texts and then, finally, the emotional response to the characters in the song and the story of their experiences.
This is not something unique to Fumon. Looking at the forewords to texts from the Meiji Era, it comes across in the following passage from 音譜薩摩琵琶歌 : 独奏自在which was published in 1911:
Things to bear in mind when playing and reciting
(beginning page 5 of the foreword....)
[With regards your attitude to] the audience, if you focus your attention on them mainly, in other words just sing for the members who have paid for the expensive seats, the performance will not go well. On the other hand, take no issue of whether people listen or not.
If you want to make a song work, first of all, allow your mind and body to settle, note that you are become the temporary manifestation (権化 a Hotoke or Bosatsu who takes on a temporary form in the world to save mankind) of the Goddess of the Biwa, hold close the thought and desire that the sound of the string rings through the wide expanse of all that is. Then, if you start singing in a slow, settled, expansive manner, with a clear, strong and pure voice, the result will be a fine work.
It goes without saying that you should have taken in the meaning and structure of the song. For example, if it is the song Nasu no Yoichi that you are singing, you should hold in your heart the life and death situation the Gempei and Heike find themselves in. This one battle in the Western Sea which will define their fate and the fates of their leaders to whom each have an unbreakable bond of allegiance.
However, this is not enough! You need to capture the warrior spirit of the Genji from Kanto and the sheer martial nature of their mind and heart honed for battle....
In other words, it is important to have knowledge of the background to the song. In short, only with this knowledge can one understand the theme. And then one can feel [their characters....]
Then can passion flame up inside you, and the song comes to life. This passion bursts forth then through the channel known as technique and the people listening will be deeply moved.
Of those who are called famous today, few are the players who do not sing as though singing a street song or singing mechanically almost in a zombie like fashion. For me, [reflecting the character in the song] is part of the development of one's inner mind and heart... always become the person in the song, and what I have mentioned here is just one method to do that.
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