Preeminent scholar of Japanese music history visits UNE

February 19, 2008

One of the world's preeminent scholars of Japanese music history has arrived at UNE for a one-month stay.

Prof Gerald Groemer of the University of Yamanashi in Kofu, Japan, has come to UNE under the Distinguished Visitor program, which brings notable academics to UNE to share their knowledge and forge links with UNE staff.

Prof Groemer is an expert in the fields of ethnomusicology and pre-20th century Japanese music. During his stay, he will give a public lecture on the prominent role of blind musicians in pre-Meiji Japan and continue a collaboration with UNE's Assoc Prof Hugh de Ferranti on the musical life of Osaka.

"Prof Groemer is probably the most prolific writer in English on Japanese music and performing arts history," Dr de Ferranti said. "He is a very important colleague, and I'm thrilled that we have been able to bring him over."

Prof Groemer's lecture will draw on material gathered over a period of 20 years for a recently completed history of blind musicians in Japan. The book - which is 2000 pages long, took eight years to write and is written in Japanese – might well represent, in the words of Dr de Ferranti, "the final word on this important topic".

Prof Groemer said that visually impaired musicians made up the core of the Japanese music scene before 1868 and that along with blind acupuncturists they comprised a powerful economic and political force in the Japan of the day.

"You cannot avoid talking about visually impaired performers if you want to talk about the history of Japanese music," Prof Groemer said. "This is not a subset of the study of traditional Japanese music - it's practically all of it."

A classically-trained pianist, Prof Groemer's interest in Japanese music was the indirect result of a hand injury that interrupted his performing career in the US.

"While I was waiting for it to heal, I started looking to other music of the world for inspiration, and Japanese music struck me as particularly interesting."

"It's about as different from Western music as you can get and still be music. I was attracted to the challenge of understanding something so different."

"Another thing that drew me to Japanese music was its similarity to a type of music I had always been interested in: post-war modernist Western music. The first time I heard the shakuhachi [a kind of Japanese flute], it sounded very modern to my ears: no beat, no harmony, not even a catchy tune. I found that very attractive."

Prof Groemer will remain at UNE until February 28. His lecture, which is hosted by the UNE Asia Centre, will be held at 4.30pm on Thursday, February 21 in Lecture Theatre A2 in the Arts Building. All are welcome.

For more information, contact Assoc Prof Hugh de Ferranti on 6773 3518 or at hdeferra@une.edu.au.

Posted by Leon Braun at February 19, 2008 10:21 AM