From Turfan (NHK Part 6), the team headed due west. Traveling in two large mini-buses, they traveled straight across the Lop Desert and before long were traveling the mountain road the clings to the southern rim of the Tianshan mountains. 天山 The Heavenly Mountains. Passing through the rough terrain of the Iron Gate, the team was following at this point very closely in the footsteps of the great monk, Xuanzang.
Like the Tang dynasty monk, the NHK team was also heading west toward Kucha.
I have already written about the legendary dances of Kucha. Indeed, their praises have hardly been sung enough:
Of all the glorious Buddhist Kingdoms located around the Taklamakan Desert--from Khotan to Dunhuang-- Kucha was the largest. And Kucha was famous-- very famous-- for its dances, music and instruments.
Located on the Northern Route, not far from present-day Aksu, it was a place where Theravada Buddhism reigned. The King was particularly devout and it was said the city was full of temples, monks and music. The palace was made of gold, as the kingdom was wealthy from its rich mineral deposits of gold, copper and iron. Another highly cosmopolitan Silk Road garrison city-state, a dozen languages could be heard in the marketplaces, including Chinese, Tibetan, Persian and Kuchean (which was itself an Indo-Euopean language).
Susan Whitfield in her wondrous, Life Along the Silkroad, desribes Kuchean dance as being "not unlike Indian dance, with its emphasis on hip movements, changes of gesture and expressive eyes, but it also adapted dance forms taken from other places, such as the famous Sogdian 'whirling dance,' performed by both men and women."
"Music, song and dance," says Whitfield, "were Silk Road commodities, bought and sold like silver and jade. Itinerent dance troops from India, Burma, Cambodia and Sogdiana performed at both the royal court and the public marketplace in every silk road town." We have Tang period pottery of "Western" dancers and musicians on camelback. These statutes still fascinate and are proudly preserved in museum collectons in many places from Shanghai and Tokyo to Paris.
The dances of the Silk Road were taken up by the Tang Court and there they were performed with native and other foreign elements to be transformed into the music and dance that today is known as ancient Tang music. And, what is perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire story, this music and these dances were then "borrowed"-- in what is often referred to as the "great borrowing of continental culture"-- by the ancient Japanese of the Nara period.
The NHK Team planned to travel to Kucha and see if the city still lived up to its musical reputation. At first, I thought, "that doesn't even make sense!" For the same race of people doesn't even inhabit the city anymore. The Kucha we know from Tang histories were Indo-European in both language and race. Perhaps they were Persians? Perhaps they were people from even further West as their art seems to hint. In any event the Turkish Uighurs of today didn't move into the region until well into the 9th century.
And yet, we are shown dance after glorious dance! There are harvest dances and lullabies; a harvest festival is filmed with various traditional instruments such as the dop, dotar, asatar-- we are talking about drums, hammered dulcimers and stringed instruments of various types. Music dominates every scene. There are so many to describe, but I personally was transfixed by a traditional love song sung by an elderly, toothless woman who accompanied herself on the long-necked dutar lute.
A woman as beautiful as the moon
Your waist, like a willow
A woman as beautiful as the moon
You await your lover
Your heart burning
You are like the brilliant shimmering moon
Shining in the great wide night sky
She crooned beautifully the passionate lyrics. Apparently the song was popular 200 years ago!
A modern troupe of Uighur dancers was working to reconstruct the ancient Buddhist dances and music of the Tang dynasty. They were extremely popular in Kucha during the NHK visit. While the music is-- to my ears-- Central Asian, the dances clearly derive from Southern India-- with the expressive eyes, moving hips, and symbolic hand gestures you see in India; in the tradition of that country's great dance dramas, the dances recounted Buddhist or Chinese legends which their audiences knew well.
India, of course, had peaceful relations with Central Asia for a 1000 years. And, while not on "The Silk Road"-- there were, of course, various "silk road" routes that traveled straight south over the Karakoram into India and Pakistan. Great Kingdoms dominated a great stretech of land in roughly the area we call India from the time of Ashoka onward, and religion (Buddhism), philosophy and art flowed straight north-- northwest to Bamiyan and northeast to the Oases "Pearls of the Taklamakan."
The NHK team sought to interview the dancers and musicians about the ancient instruments. They showed photographs of the ancient instruments-- priceless treasures-- stored in the Shosoin. While none of them could identify any of the instruments by the pictures, when the NHK team played a recording of the famous Shosoin 5 string biwa (or lute), they all burst into smiles.
Decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay, the instrument is adorned with Central Asian themes (like a man on a camel). Deriving from an ancient Persian instrument, the five-string biwa was extremely popular at the Tang Court. And, to call it rare would be an under-statement as it is the sole remaining 5-string biwa in existence!
I was amazed that they would even dare play it-- but, I remembered what violinists say about their strads that if the violins are not played, they cease to be able to make beautiful sounds. The Uighur musicians looked delighted and proclaimed that their own music is based on a stringed instrument with a very similar sound.
Considering that the music and dance of the ancient people of Kucha, after becoming "all the rage" at the Tang Court of the 8th century, then went on to cross the ocean where they have been preseved forever after in the court music of Japan boggles the mind. In that sense, I suppose it is not surprising that vestiges of that great musical tradition continue to live on in Kucha today.
There exists a great arch of exquisite Buddhist cave art across the stretch of Asia. The tradition has its origins and Ajanta and reaches all the way across the Taklamakan Desert-- deep into the heart of China. And like the music of Kucha, the mural painting techniques crossed the ocean as well, and we can see temple murals in Nara (Horyuji etc.) which are derived from this very tradition. For this reason-- among others-- the Japanese have long been fascinated with the Silk Road, in particular the sites in Western China that I have been writing so much about.
Not far from Kucha is what is considered to be the most beautiful cave art of Western China, the Caves at Kizil. I have already written about the discovery and "removal" to Germany of many of the treasures of the cave here. The NHK team, however, went on to visit the Music Cave-- which is perhaps Kizil's greatest claim to fame! Unfortunately, I cannot find any images online, but one of the most interesting aspects of the caves, above and beyond the beauty of the painting and the early date of their creation (3rd-4th century!), is the Music Cave.
Officially known as Cave 38, the walls and ceiling of the cave are devoted to scenes of music. The NHK team is incredulous for every single instrument they find has its exact counterpart in the gagaku "elegant music" tradition preserved at the Japanese Court. The narrator names all the instruments:
The transverse flute 横笛; sometimes known as the dragon flute 竜笛 is said to signify the sound of dragons rising into the heavens
The hichiriki 篳篥-- sometimes called a Japanese oboe; it is the most important instrument in the orchestra
The sho mouth organ 笙
Several of the drums; both the 4 and 5 string biwa (!) and a genkan, which is like a banjo (pictured left).
The NHK team is-- of course-- delighted to spot the 5 string biwa-- as Japan preserves the world's sole remaining instrument. Seeing that the caves date from the 3rd-4th century, the instrument was already ancient by the time it was adopted for Japanese Court Music in the late 8th century. The narrator exclaims, "No matter where one's eyes rest, we find a musical instrument that is so familiar to us. Each and every instrument we see on these walls has their counterpart in the Japanese gagaku orchestra."
Finally, one more note about the Music Cave. According to this article, Amazingly, "it was found out that looking closely into the gestures and position of the musicians' hands on the instrument, all stopped at the same meter!"
Finally, an article by an Indian scholar of Central Asian art here and a video of a gagaku performance held last year at the famous Kasuga Grand Shrine in Nara. My Gagaku handbook says that Kasuga Shrine, which itself dates from the 8th century, has Japan's most numerous theater venues-- including a beautiful "floating stage" perched above the shrine garden pond. Shown in the video is the Apple Garden stage located just in front of the main shrine building. The event is the yearly Opening Ceremony of Dance and Music 舞楽始式-- which is basicaly the first classical performance of the year.
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