Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam   

Intra-Asian fusion needed, says American musician

— Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

T.M. Hoffman playing a Japanese instrument koto at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam on Friday.

VISAKHAPATNAM: The American musician who has successfully experimented playing Indian classical music on Japanese instruments, T.M. Hoffman, conducted a UGC-sponsored workshop on Japanese music at the Department of Music of Andhra University here on Friday.

Mr. Hoffman, on the faculty of Keio University (Japan) and Director of the Indo-Japanese Music Exchange programme, played the Japanese flute shakuhachi and the stringed instrument koto and spoke about Indian and Japanese music which have similarities in fixed and free phonetics. On the shakuhachi he played the Bhairavi and Revati ragas much to the delight of participants.

“Koto is the most versatile instrument and the oldest classical stringed instrument in the world. It’s four instruments in one,” Mr. Hoffman said. Later he demonstrated the same.

Indian music travelled to Japan through China and Korea and there is no truth in the belief that the Chinese and Japanese music are similar. The Japanese drums have their origin in India, he said.

Mr. Hoffman, who said he was an American by birth, an Indian because he was trained by an Indian Guru and a Japanese because he married a Japanese musician, felt that instead of an Indian-western fusion or Japanese-western fusion or Chinese-western fusion, the intra-Asian fusion must emerge. Unlike in a commercial venture, every country’s music must gain, he added.

Vice-Chancellor B. Satyanarayana inaugurated the workshop and said there was no language for music or any form of fine arts. He promised that the university would support the Department of Fine Arts.

HoD of Journalism and Mass Communication P. Bobby Vardhan said music was not just art but heart also. To explain the power of music, he recalled how a city orthopaedic N.V. Kiran Kumar used music instead of anaesthesia on an old patient during a surgery, as the patient’s condition was not suitable for administering anaesthesia.

Coordinator of UGC B. Parvathi presided. Coordinator of Department of Music A. Anuradha and others spoke.

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