| I examine the nature of the traditional practice that approaches the shakuhachi, a type of bamboo flute that has recently experienced a new wave of attention both inside and outside Japan, in a holistic, organic manner: Practitioners of this tradition personally harvest the bamboo and fashion their instruments directly out of nature, taking great care to preserve and appreciate the nature inherent to each piece of bamboo. Their instruments are much less processed and closely resemble the natural state of each piece of bamboo. This type of organic activities through music—hardly introduced and practiced in the educational realm—are observed both inside and outside of Japan where the integrated role of harvester/maker/player still remains. Among the many forms of indigenous and folk music that are practiced and appreciated in the West, the shakuhachi merits close investigation because of its practitioners‘ degree of involvement in the instrument making process.;I focus on groups of shakuhachi practitioners in Tokyo (Japan) and Vancouver (Canada) as well as individual practitioners whose approach to the shakuhachi is nature-oriented. This is an investigation into how the shakuhachi is used to strengthen ecological and spiritual aspects of musical practice. These practitioners are situated in contemporary contexts and live typically modern lives. In other words, the context of traditional shakuhachi practice, practiced heterogeneously in Zen temples across Japan, is quite foreign to them. What are their learning experiences of shakuhachi music like? What does spirituality mean in their learning of music? How does their practice of music inform us of alternative curriculum and pedagogy in which the connections to nature, spirits, and the past play a critical role? This dissertation discusses the role of spirituality and nature in music learning.;This dissertation offers a set of findings and educational implications: First, music experience includes a series of encounters with nature (Chapter 5). When harvesting bamboo, for example, my participants faced the diversity of nature through widely varying sizes and shapes of bamboo because every piece of bamboo is different in size and shape.;Second, my participants saw an encounter with nature as a sacred experience (Chapter 4 and 5). In the process of flute making, they experienced a moment of realizing the spirit of the bamboo, especially when they first blew into it and heard the sound it made. It was a moment of “revealing the voice of a piece of bamboo” and seeing “if there's any life in there.”;Third, my participants reported that the player evolves as the creation of the instrument continues (Chapter 4). In the process of flute making, they customized their flutes, especially the longer ones, to suit individual bodies. By playing such flutes, their bodies stretch in conjunction with the sizes of their flute and their playing styles develop accordingly. The result was an embodiment of the flute. This process of growth was viewed by my participants as “co-evolving” with the flute (Chapter 4 and 5). They often stated that they were “nurtured” by the bamboo. This was the reason why and how their flutes became irreplaceable to them.;Fourth, instrument making not only facilitated an embodiment of the instrument, but it also formed a sense of attachment and devotion to it (Chapter 5). For the many of my participants, bamboo was more than an object; it was a living character. Their relationships with the bamboo pieces were akin to those they had with human beings, as though they were all individual and particular to one another.;Fifth, my participants saw their instruments as embodiments of varying degrees of nature. They attempted to make flutes in a definitive way, one that preserves the character of each piece of bamboo, to promote a diverse set of individual flute experiences. For them, the diversity of musical experience stems from the array of characters that their flutes bear.;Sixth, my participants engaged in self-cultivation through playing the shakuhachi. Using simple, self-made flutes, they recalled and explored a more primitive, organic part of the self (Chapter 6) and facilitated their relational consciousness to themselves and the environment (Chapter 7). They often played music in offering settings, where the emphasis of the performance is more on the act of playing itself than on musical achievement. This kind of process-oriented value, which constitutes the opposite of today‘s music education climate, are acknowledged, cherished, and practiced among the shakuhachi practitioners (Chapter 8).;The practice of shakuhachi related more directly to Capra‘s vision of environmental ethics. Capra (1996) argues that the basic principles of teaching and learning should be congruent with the characteristics of ecosystems such as interdependence, sustainability, ecological cycles, energy flows, partnerships, flexibility, diversity, and co-evolution. |
