Shamisen Recordings

The shamisen is a three-stringed lute-like instrument with a history that dates back at least 400 years in Japan, derived from an earlier Chinese instrument called the sanxian. The koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen are my favourite Japanese instruments, although the musical scales used in most shamisen songs sounds foreign to my Western ears. In 2022 and 2023, it was my privilege to work with Emiko Miyashita on translations from the Japanese for the Miyako Itchu Institute of Music and Culture. This work contributed to a series of eight educational videos on the history and theory of traditional shamisen music. The following videos include our translations of the written text as well as English subtitles of the spoken Japanese text. These eight videos appear below and on the Miyako Itchu website. I include four additional shamisen performance videos without translations.

Prior to working on these videos, in 2016 we translated liner notes for A Collection of Rare Songs by Itchu, a compact disc recording of Edo-era Itchubushi songs for shamisen and voice. In addition to a small book and compact disc, we also translated iPad performance notes for concert augmentation. When you attend a concert, you can request an iPad to read English translations of text describing the context and history of each song. Shown below are selected pages from the book’s layout.