Blog post 6 - Japanese Noh

Japanese Noh is not just a musical style, it is actually a kind of theater performance. Noh theater is an ancient practice that dates back to the 14th century. In both the acting and the music there is a strong emphasis on tradition. The actors of Noh theater do not wear makeup, but instead where very ornately carved masks. On such mask can be seen in the below video. The elements of the music in a Noh theater play are drums, flute, and chanting. When I searched for Noh on youtube, The first video I found was this:

But after some research I noticed that this resembled a slightly different style, which one source called Heike katari. The difference being that there was no chanting or voice element in this music, and rather than including a flute, this music included a biwa, or lute. So I continued searching and came upon this video:

As you can see, this includes all the above elements. Most importantly, in this video you can see the Noh acting. Noh can be described as a dance, though sometimes, in order to build tension, the dance is extremely slow (like the beginning to this video) with very little movement. But at other times, it is very vigorous and fast. These are all elements of the Noh theater, which cannot be separated from the music itself because they go hand in hand.