Tsugaru-jamisen

Tsugaru-jamisen (津軽三味線, つがるじゃみせん) or Tsugaru-shamisen (つがるしゃみせん) refers to both the Japanese genre of shamisen music originating from Tsugaru Peninsula in present-day Aomori Prefecture and the instrument it is performed with.

[1] What is known is that tsugaru-jamisen originated from a small peninsula due west of present-day Aomori Prefecture called Tsugaru.

[3] One scholar, Daijō Kazuo, proposed that the genre originated from a bosama named Nitabō on the basis of interviews of musicians and their families.

[6] Tsugaru-jamisen enjoyed another bout of popularity when Gunpachirō performed with enka star Michiya Mihashi at the Nihon Theater in Tokyo in 1959.

[10][11] Tsugaru-jamisen is easy to recognize by its percussive quality (the plectrum striking the body of the instrument on each stroke) and the lilt of the rhythms performed.

Interviews with noted performers such as Takahashi Chikuzan[14] and Yamada Chisato and recordings issued by stars of the past allow one to produce the following table.

Recently, younger performers have been attempting to combine tsugaru-shamisen playing styles or motives with jazz, rock, and other forms of more commercial music.

A technique unique to the tsugaru-jamisen style in recent years is the tremolo played with the back of the bachi without hitting the skin.

Group A presents songs that are only rarely heard today, though they were once the mainstay of the repertoire of itinerant, often blind, musician-beggars known as bosama.

Groemer, Gerald The new edition includes a good deal of newly discovered historical information and brings the volume up to date.

Johnson, Henry Kimura Genzō Kojima Tomiko (Study of the "new folk song" movement) Matsuno Takeo Suda Naoyuki and Anthony Rausch (Abridged translation of Daijō 1995 and includes some more general anthropological material).