According to French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, the space of philosophy and science is a fetish. Space is judged as having no ontological quality or property, usually conceived as Cartesian or Euclidean, that is, quantifiable and uniform.[1] As well, space is conceived as absolute, infinite, homogeneous and empty, being simply a void in which things and all living beings are positioned. Some geographers, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and philosophers have been pondering on the notion of place, which, regarding space, has been and is still viewed today as the apportioning and compartmentalization of space.
Philosopher Edward S. Casey shows that the history of European thinking and view of the world, in the last 2,000 years or so, gradually took the turn of what he calls “deplacialization,” place came simply to be viewed as territory or location on a map, a space with border, and this, particularly in the last 300 or 400 years.[2] As well, in an anthropological book on the “sense of place,” Casey suggests that for the anthropologist, “Space comes first; for the native, Place.” For him, a place is not a thing, it is an event; it is not formal or substantive. If for Henri Lefebvre, space (or should we say place) is produced; for Casey, place is culturally produced. According to him, culture must exist somewhere, that is, in places. By inhabiting a place a culture is made; place is where culture can be grounded in human lives.[3]
In anthropology as well as in ethnomusicology, the “sense of place” usually refers to the social and cultural meaning a space, or more specifically a region through which a culture defines itself, gets by setting in motion social and cultural obligations, agencies, exigencies and identities, among others. For ethnomusicologist Steven Feld and anthropologist Keith H. Basso, places are closely tied to identity and memory.[4] Ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes suggests that music not only evokes but can bring together collective memories and experiences of place with a power that might not be found in other social activities.[5] Or, according to Whiteley, Bennett and Hawkins, both as a creative practice and a product of consumption, music plays a role in the narrativization of a shared place.[6] For anthropology and ethnomusicology, a place can be as much historical, social, cultural, religious, political or ideological. It is where social intercourse and agency take place, where meaning is consensually forged, embedded and emplaced. It can even be suggested that a place comes in some way to “think” for a community of people, “becoming” the meaning attributed to it, meaning that is projected back on those who inhabit it. For a large number of people, it is within the boundaries of a place that one’s experiences and grasp on life are negotiated, constructed, embodied, lived, struggled over, alongside and because of those who shared it within them, both culturally and socially.
In this paper, I tackle the issue of “sense of place” from the point of view of world music,[7] especially those musicians and non-musicians alike who are taking on a music of which they are not native, such as myself, a Canadian musician who took on the Japanese shakuhachi. To start with, I give a succinct overview of the sense of place as defined in philosophy, in particular from probably the four most proponents of that notion: Henri Lefebvre, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward S. Casey and Jeff Malpas. Afterward, I will dig into the phenomenon of world music, taking example on the popularity of Japanese music abroad, to show that the notion of place as these philosophers, among others, define it does not apply in the diverse and convoluted contexts of world music as this phenomenon is known today by music lovers and musicians all around the world. These reflections are not made from the viewpoint of the ethnomusicologist or the scholar, but of myself, as a musician who tries to convey a music from an Asian culture that is far away from my native French Canada.
(headline image: ZSEDP E Key 5 holes shakuhachi)
Sense of place
According to Henri Lefebvre, space is a social product of the interactions of our human relationships. Space is not singular, but plural.[8] It is defined by usages, practices, conventions, habits, obligations, and rules, among other things.[9] For example, the rules of conduct in a classical music concert hall and those of a stadium where one attends a rock concert differ. Although we can go to each of these places in ties and suits, one does not behave the same in each place. It is not the place and its space that determines the behavior of users or visitors, but rather what they represent socially and culturally. According to Lefebvre, our division of space into partitioned fragments derives from a visual logic, so that we can picture for ourselves what we perceive before we can experience it.[10]
Geographer Yu-Fi Tuan suggests that the knowledge we have of any place is not reasoned or reflective but visceral; we engage in a place, inhabit it, and feel it with our whole body, often before being in it. According to him, the actors of a community, a society or a culture see and recognize in any place what corresponds to their conception, their vision and their current knowledge of the world, representations to which they deem it in no way necessary to think, on the one hand, because they are embodied, before being reflected upon and, on the other, because this place transudes what it represents individually, socially and culturally.[11] The routines of our lives, be they habits, customs, behaviours, rules of conduct and others, vary from one place to another, from one society to another, from person to person, depending on whether one knows this place or not, whether one visits it daily or only occasionally, whether it is known or not, whether it is important or not, whether one lives there or not, including if one visits it individually or in groups, to give just these few examples. For Tuan place gives rise to individual experiences, while being at the same time a social or cultural construct.[12]
For philosopher Edward S. Casey, a place is determined by one’s social and/or cultural experiences and identity with it, which does not occur with space, especially if one views it as a void or emptiness. One’s experience of place is never neutral. A space becomes subordinated to our social and cultural perceptions and experiences, thus being metamorphosed into a place. In social and cultural contexts a space becomes emplaced, its meaning being dependent on everyone’s attunement to it. For Casey, there is an inherent interplay between place, human motion and embodiment, an interplay to which could be added intentions, desires, expectations, agency and exigencies, among others, which define and delimit how a group of people mutually share common meanings. Place delimits and determines how we anchor personal experiences with collective or communal histories, thus generating shared experiences, memories, as well as consensual meanings.[13] Place is so much with us, and we with it, that it is taken for granted. As emplaced beings, place is an a priori of our existence.[14] According to Casey, the relationship between self and place is not reciprocal; each is essential to the being of the other. There is no place without self and no self without place. The self does not appear out of nowhere but becomes in place. He even suggests that we do not master a place, we are subject to it. We are in it as it is in us, we inhabit a place.[15]
For philosopher Jeff Malpas, our relation to the land, and the world, is not in one direction. We do not perceive and experience unidirectionally a neutral space in which we are positioned, but numerous clearly defined places all at once that we have all imbued with meanings. In this sense, the structure of our mind is tied to ideas and images we have of places and spaces. Malpas even suggests that it is within place that one’s subjectivity can be grounded.[16] Any experience of the world takes places within a place. Place gathers.[17] Thinking is determined by where we are and by its contingencies, and what thinking is about is given to us through our perception of the places in which we are at any moment. We never perceive the world in its entirety, but always within the context of the place where we are at any moment, and this, in relation to other places.[18]
In this line of thought, for these four thinkers place is essentially relational, as much culturally as socially, it is where subjectivity, identity and memory are inhabited. Though for Malpas place gathers, he and the others do not say much about how people relate between themselves about a place to which they give meaning and embody communally.[19]
Sense of Place in World Music
As a social phenomenon, modern musicology is barely acknowledging the significance and role of the world music phenomenon, leaving it almost entirely to ethnomusicology, although its widespread popularity all around the world. As for philosophy, it has shown so far no interest at all in it. This phenomenon should however be of interest to philosophers of place, such as the four cited above, for the challenges it might bring up in defining a relevant notion of place. What would be the “sense of place” of a musician, like myself, for example, who hopes to master the Japanese shakuhachi, a flute played during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868) by a sect of Zen Buddhist monks?[20] This music is not from my “place” of origin (province of Québec, Canada), both physically and historically, yet I identify with it to the point of wanting to play that flute as a Japanese player if it is at all possible. When performing, I thus have to identify with three different places: my place of origin (the French province of Québec), the place where I perform (which might be a different country, or simply a concert hall distinct from ordinary life) and the original birthplace of that music that Japan is. The social, cultural and even philosophical ramifications of the whole world music phenomenon about the notion of place are so convoluted that I can just present some fragmentary reflections of how the musicians playing a music from another culture end up having a somewhat scattered sense of place.
To start with, here are a few examples of musicians and musics that show such dispersed senses of place. 1) A large number of musicians from non-Western countries, being China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia among others, are filling up the seats of modern symphony orchestras everywhere around the world. 2) I once heard the CD of a group of musicians from India and Nepal doing well-known jazz standards on Indian and Nepalese instruments. 3) I met a Japanese musician playing the Indian bansuri, a transverse flute. 4) We can find recordings of European classical pieces being played on Asian instruments, as well as the other way around, native pieces from diverse ethnic origins re-arranged for Western instruments. 5) A growing number of instrument makers around the world are modifying their native instruments so that they can play in tune (i.e., tuned according to the European tempered scale) with Western instruments, and other ethnic instruments also tuned accordingly. 6) The popularity of gamelan music in the US is such that these ensembles consider that they have developed an “American gamelan” music distinctive from those from Bali and Java. 7) There is a growing number of musicians who become multi-instrumentalists, playing instruments from very heteroclite origins. 8) More and more people are displaced, bringing with them their musics to the countries that receive them.[21]
This is just a small sample of situations in which musicians find themselves dealing with two (or more) senses of place: one they would call their “own,” usually where they were born, and one from afar, historically, politically, culturally and/or socially outside one’s own. The notion of place presented by the four philosophers above does not apply to the situations of world musicians that find themselves between multiple musical worlds from different, oftentimes unrelated, places. I would like to show that, in the case of these musicians at least, one’s sense of place is not as the well-defined notion the previous philosophers suggest. I present here three examples of the situation world musicians face for a group of musics I am the most acquainted with: Japanese traditional and not so traditional musics, hopefully, to show how the philosophical views about place would need to be expanded, at least adapted to these types of situations.
In an article in the journal Asian Music, ethnomusicologist Megan E. Hill presents succinctly the Japanese notion of furusato, which is translated as hometown, birthplace or native place. It denotes the nostalgia one has for her or his birthplace when one is living await from it, usually in a city. Hill presents the case of the owner of a restaurant in Tokyo who is a tsugaru shamisen (three-stringed lute) player, a folk tradition that appeared at the end of the 19th century in the Tsugaru region of the North-Eastern part of the main island of Honshu. The interesting aspect about that musician is that he is not a native of that region, he was born in Tokyo. Hill shows the contradictions in the sense of place of a musician who is not native of the furusato he represents with his music, yet paradoxically presenting it somehow as if he were a native of the Tsugaru region. The nostalgic meanings of a place and its music have been projected and thus emplaced into a restaurant in Tokyo. When that musician performs, the clientele, some being from that region, some from Tokyo or somewhere else, constructs that place alongside him through his playing, emplacing in that restaurant the nostalgic image of being away from one’s furusato.[22]
As ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes suggests, such meanings are generated, manipulated, and even ironed as much historically, culturally as socially, to which I would add, as much individually since this reconstruction is done through the explicit identification of this musician to that particular music and its place of origin, though he was not born there. For this musician, music is the “catalyst” through which he constructs with his clients a sense of furusato. And as mentioned above, according to Stokes, music can bring together collective memories and experiences of place with a power that might not be found in other social activities, though one might not be from that place as Hill’s example shows.[23]
In a book on Japanese taiko (Japanese drums), ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong presents herself both as an ethnomusicologist and as a deep lover of Japanese taiko, having played taiko from 1997 to 2009.[24] These drums, the way to play them, the way players dress when performing, the character of the pieces are traced back to Japan, the birthplace of this particular music. Wong’s book is as much personal as ethnomusicological. Personal because of what playing this particular music means and involves for her and all other taiko aficionados in the US; ethnomusicological and sociological since it is about the memories of how Japanese living in the US were treated during WWII, and how taiko groups are used since the 1960s to maintain these memories and hopefully get some justice, including tackling the racialism Asian Americans face in the US. This book is also about how Japanese taiko became American distinctively from Japan’s taiko groups, and this, sometimes differently from one U.S. state to the others, as well as between groups. The common factor between all these groups is that the birthplace of taiko is Japan, although these types of drumming groups as we know them today are a reinvention of a tradition that took place in the 1950s.[25] Though most of these groups create their performance items of clothing, they are usually made to look, feel or have a Japanese touch. So, these performers deal with two different senses of place, their performances are a representation of Japan, the other as a way to voice the racial situation in the US.[26]
As mentioned earlier, I play the Japanese shakuhachi,[27] an upright traditional bamboo flute. Since the 1960s, but mainly since the 1980s, this flute has gained a popularity and a strong iconicity outside of Japan. A growing number of non-Japanese players[28] from all around the world are receiving their master license.[29] What would be the sense of place of these non-Japanese players, who all identify with a specific aspect of the history of this flute: that it was played by a sect of wandering Zen monks during Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868) that was active from the 16th to the end of the 19th century. The shakuhachi is viewed by many among them as a spiritual instrument and the music these monks composed as some kind of Buddhist music.[30] Can we talk of a sense of place in this regard, knowing that all of these players, including myself, are not born in Japan, and that that sect was banished more than 150 years ago by the then Meiji government (1868-1912)? We certainly cannot talk of Japan as a kind of furusato, that is, birthplace as we saw with the first example presented above, although Japan is historically the native place of the shakuhachi.
Is the “place” these players envision modern Japan? Or would it be more that particular period in the history of Japan during which these monks were active and with whom a number of them identify? Or more specifically, is that historically distant place “hovers” so to speak over modern Japan, only in these players’ minds? When they set foot on that land Japan is, all these non-Japanese players set foot in modern Japan, while hoping to find in some temple or places a Zen spirituality that these monks, this bamboo flute and its music historically epitomize. That is to say, these players hope to find what their orientalist and exotic presuppositions, assumptions and myths about this flute, its music and its history convey them.
Three aspects come conspicuously into play in viewing Japan as the birthplace of the shakuhachi: identity, embodiment and appropriation. The birthplace that Japan represents can basically be experienced ideationally. The spiritual experience that many of these non-Japanese enthusiasts refer to about that bamboo flute is based on a system of meanings that are shared by a virtual community of players and students through social media and the Internet. The particular sense of place attributed to Japan is grounded in a common, thus a virtual intersubjective identification with what that place, this bamboo flute and its music represent: a music created by a sect of Zen Buddhist monks,[31] though most of these players never meet. Such identification makes it possible to intentionally, thus virtually, “emplace” oneself in that historical Japan when playing the shakuhachi. That shared identification is construed by appropriating representations, assumptions, images, historical anecdotes, and myths based on a Euro-centric orientalist discourse, alongside the learning of its technique, aesthetic and repertoires. The appropriation of that flute, its music and its history is shared through that virtual mythical discourse, a discourse that takes place outside of Japan (and that is not necessarily shared by Japanese shakuhachi players) on the Internet. The orientalist images the non-Japanese players have of Japan, Zen, the shakuhachi, the Zen sect using that flute, the many repertoires of solo pieces,[32] spell out for them not only what to think, but also how to think about the shakuhachi and its music, how to identify with it, how to appropriate its music, how to view it as spiritual music, as well as how to embody it when performing in their native countries (e.g., which can include dressing up with traditional Japanese attires).[33] In a way of speaking, shakuhachi players somehow “emplace” themselves in three distinct “places” at the same time, a first one historical (Japan as the birthplace of that flute and its music), a second virtual (the myths of a Zen spirituality that is so to speak embedded in that flute and its music) and a third one, imagined (when performing in one’s country or elsewhere, outside of Japan). Of course, such an emplacement differs individually from one musician to another, from one culture to another, from one place to another. Yet, the Internet allows for a somewhat common discourse, appropriation and identification, based on some common orientalist views of the history of this bamboo flute, its music its history and these monks.
If, as Henri Lefebvre posits, space is a social product of human interactions; if, as Yu-Fi Tuan suggests, the knowledge we have of any place is not reasoned or reflective but visceral, we embody and inhabit a place; if for Edward S. Casey, a place is determined by one’s social and/or cultural identity with it; and if for Jeff Malpas, place gathers and it is thus within place that one’s subjectivity can be grounded; how can we then define the sense of place in the three examples just presented? In the first example, the social interactions are in the Tokyo restaurant, not in the northern region of Tsugaru itself where that music was born. There is a cultural identity and social interaction with that place, but not within the Tsugaru region itself. As for the cultural identity with place, it is not grounded in Tsugaru; especially since it disappears, gets left behind or gets pushed in the back of one’s mind when patrons are out of this restaurant to resume their everyday life. It could be suggested that while in that Tokyo restaurant, they experience a kind of “temporary” subjectivity with the Tsugaru culture, that could be strong enough to incite them to go back to enjoy it later on. Yet, it remains transient, virtual and temporary.
The major difference between the first and the second examples is that the first one takes place in Japan, while the second is outside Japan. With the first one, there is still a “sense of place” or belonging, since Tokyo and the Tsugaru region are in Japan; the patrons are Japanese (though at times some foreign visitors might join in). With the second example, there are of course social interactions, cultural identities, embodiment and subjectivity, since taiko ensembles can be viewed as community groups. But the members show a double and possibly ambiguous sense of identities and subjectivities, on the one hand, playing a music that originated in Japan, and on the other, taking place outside of it, to the point, sometimes, to talk about “American taiko.”[34] Their “primary” identity is with the place where they live and play taiko, while Japan is a “secondary” and temporary identity that is experienced when practising and performing. The place that Japan is is thus not one that is inhabited and embodied by these groups but is more like an image, an emblem, a stance, or even an alibi, for many of these people, as suggested by Deborah Wong, to face racism, among other things, since a large number of them are of different Asian origins, including of course some Japanese, white and black people, women and men.[35] When presenting Japan as the birthplace of taiko, it is usually Japan as an overall entity, not about a particular region within it, or a particular historical period, as is the case with the third example.
As for the third example, which concerns me most here since I am a shakuhachi player, for shakuhachi aficionados the social interactions are mostly through the Internet and social media, though groups of players in a town or region can gather on occasion, through teaching, concerts or when inviting Japanese masters to teach in their countries, for example.[36] Similarly to the second example, Japan as the birthplace of the shakuhachi can not be embodied and inhabited, though it can, of course, be visited, a visit which might include taking lessons with Japanese masters and visiting historical places linked to these wandering monks and that history (such as temples, shrines, shakuhachi makers). The question of identity is quite interesting here. It is not with a place per se, but with a period in history that ended more than 150 years ago. When Japan’s Meiji government banished that sect, it also wanted to get rid of the shakuhachi itself. Two monks were able to convince the politicians of the time that it was unnecessary, these ex-monks could teach and give concerts to survive. These monks originally used this bamboo flute as a “spiritual” tool, not a musical instrument. This aspect was recently “re-invented” into a modern myth that that music and its flute are spiritual as its popularity grew outside of Japan from the 1960s on, especially since the 1980s. As mentioned above, the spiritual quality attributed to this flute and its music is what is the most enticing for many shakuhachi players to learn it.[37] In this sense, this identification is not with a place, but with the myth of a moment in history of a distant and exotic place called Japan.
With diasporas, the displaced people are longing for a place they lost and they call their own, while in the case of the modern shakuhachi players, it is pretty much the opposite. On the one hand, that distant spiritual Japan as is being represented by what this flute and its music epitomize in the mind of these players does not exist as such; it can not be embodied or inhabited, only appropriated and identified with it through an orientalist discourse, even when visiting today’s Japan. Although few monks in Japan still play the shakuhachi today, alongside professional players, the wandering monks that used to play it in the street while begging do not exist anymore.[38] The identification of non-Japanese players is with that myth, not with the place called Japan as we know it today. On the other hand, as with the second example, it is an identification of a place that is far beyond all these players’ places of origin, as much physical, social, cultural as historical. This identification for these players (including myself) occurs by crossing over one’s social, cultural and platial boundaries. As a Canadian, I have to cross over my French Canadian identity and sense of place, becoming some kind of cultural “renegade,” since I forsake so to speak part of my original identity, to incorporate a different one, although I live in Canada, as most other players in their own countries of origin. This identification is obviously from the viewpoint of the orientalist discourse one’s native place has of Japan, with its assumptions, presuppositions, myths and even prejudices.[39] One example of this is the following. The solo pieces for the shakuhachi are considered by many players, as suggested before, as Buddhist or spiritual music, because of its “meditative” character, while a Japanese shakuhachi player with whom I still take lessons told me that for Japanese shakuhachi players, this music is simply a music, though its particular history. When that sect was banished at the end of the 19th century, this bamboo flute somehow “became” a musical instrument, and these pieces “became” music.
But this identification is not the same for everyone. Not all shakuhachi players learn it the same way, to the same extent, for the same reasons, with the same fervor, and the same interest in Japanese culture. Some become musicians, some do not. Some play only solo pieces, either the ones composed by these monks and/or modern ones; some use the shakuhachi in jazz, pop, and world music, some time in classical music, and some do not play any original Japanese music. Some visit Japan to study, some do not. Some study with Japanese masters, and some with Western players who teach in their countries of origin. Some want to use it as a “spiritual” instrument, that is, as a form of self-discipline and meditation, and most players use it as a regular musical instrument. And this, of course, with numerous shades of “grey” in between. Yet, paradoxically, all of these players use the modern version of that flute. Since the end of the 19th century, shakuhachi makers have been developing ways to make it more in tune with Western instruments.
Even the traditionally made instruments produced today are now tuned, so they could be played alongside Western instruments, instead of maintaining the tuning used during the Edo period.[40] In all these situations, the place of birth of that bamboo flute remains Japan, while the identification with its history differs in degree. The player who wants to play only the repertoires of solo pieces, either the traditional or the more modern ones, will more intensely identify with these mendicant monks than with one who wants to use it in jazz, might show less interest in the traditional repertoires. The place that Japan is is not the same for everyone, even for Japanese shakuhachi players. Even for Japanese musicians, the sense of place in the shakuhachi differs if one is a “modern” or “traditional” player, or something in-between.
To Conclude
Of course, what I am presenting here is only my take on the matter, and can not be applied to all situations concerning all world musics from whatever culture, all world musicians from whatever origins, and whatever interest each of these musicians has about the music of another culture. A critical aspect of the world music phenomenon is that a large number of native musicians who wants to perform and get known in the West must somehow bow to the West, by tuning their instruments to the European tempered scale, by adapting their music to please Western audiences, often by faking traditionality, and much more. That type of situation does alter, I would suggest, their sense of place, sometimes to the point of viewing their traditions as the West sees or defines them.[41] More and more musicians from different ethnic backgrounds are merging their music, without much thought about a sense of place, both about their native place and the place of origin of the music they perform. In other words, the question of place is sidelined, for the joy of creating new musics, new sounds, and new music experiences. I once heard Japanese taiko drums alongside a Scottish bagpipe and an Australian didgeridoo. Many Japanese people are fans of Hawaiian hula dance and Irish music. We also find multi-instrumentalists, musicians who can play more than 20 or 30 different instruments from the most heteroclite cultural backgrounds. Some pop singers will mix in a song rhythms from Africa, South America and jazz, just for the particular sound of an unusual instrument or a different rhythm.
Can the sense or the understanding all of these people have of place, especially their place of origin be defined as the philosophers presented above suggest it? Does not seem like! One conclusion that could be made is that these philosophers, and not only them, do not seem to consider the impact of globalization on one’s sense or a culture’s sense of place, as world music shows. It is somewhat ironic that philosophy started to pay attention to the notion and the sense of place, when globalization was being imposed in full force in the last few decades of the previous century.
References
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— 2013. “Thinking Topographically: Place, Space, and Geography.” Available on his personal web site: http://jeffmalpas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Thinking-Topographically-Place-Space-and-Geography.pdf. Accessed 15 February 2023.
— 2015. “Introduction,” in The Intelligence of Place – Topographies and Poetics. London, Bloomsbury. Accessed 15 February 2023, from his personal web site. https://jeffmalpas.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Intelligence-of-Place-Introduction-to-sa.pdf
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[1] Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace, 4e édition, Paris, Anthropos, 2000, p. 12-13, 21. I refer here to the original French edition. See also the English edition: Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.
[2] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place, A Philosophical History, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1997.
[3] Edward S. Casey, “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena,” in Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (eds.) Senses of Place, Santa Fe, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1996, pp. 15-34.
[4] Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place, Santa Fe, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1996, p. 11.
[5] Stokes, Martin (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music, The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford/New York, Berg, 1997, p. 3.
[6] Whiteley, Sheila, Andy Bennett and Stan Hawkins (eds.). 2004. “Introduction,” Music, Space and Place, Popular Music and Culturel Identity, Aldershot, England, Ashgate, p. 2
[7] My use of “world music” here is the general one usually heard outside scholarly discourses, that is, a hodgepodge of any music that is not of Western origin, in which Chinese opera, for example, can be listed beside tango and didgeridoo.
[8] The French language does not distinguish as clearly as English the terms space and place. A lot of the times when Lefebvre used the term space (espace in French), it means place (though, I must admit, I read only the original French book; I do not know if “espace” has been translated by “place” on some occasions in the English version).
[9] Henri Lefebvre, op.cit., French original, p. xx-xxiii, 35-36.
[10] Henri Lefebvre, ibid., p. 117.
[11] Yi-Fu Tuan. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press, 1977, pp.162, 170, 178.
[12] Jeff Malpas, Place and Experience, A Philosophical Topography. London and New York, Routledge, p. 44, note 35.
[13] Edward S. Casey, “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time”, in Steven Feld, and Keith H. Basso (eds.), Senses of Place, Santa Fe, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1996, pp. 14, 19, 24, 32.
[14] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place, A Philosophical History, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1997 [Kindle Edition], “Preface: Disappearing Places.”
[15] Edward S. Casey, “Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2001, vol. 91, no. 4, pp. 684-689.
[16] Jeff Malpas, Place and Experience A Philosophical Topography. London and New York, Routledge, Taylor and Francis (1999) 2018, p. 14.
[17] Jeff Malpas, ibid., pp. 1, 9, 14, 33, 202.
[18] Jeff Malpas. “Introduction,” in The Intelligence of Place – Topographies and Poetics. London, Bloomsbury, 2015. Accessed 15 February 2023 from his personal website. https://jeffmalpas.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Intelligence-of-Place-Introduction-to-sa.pdf. pp. 1-2, 5. These page numbers are those from the file on his website.
[19] Much would need to be said about this last point. This would take us of course from the aim of this article.
[20] For the history of this instrument and music, see Henry Johnson, The Shakuhachi, Roots and Route (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2014).
[21] About the Roma, for example, see this excellent text by Philip V. Bohlman, “Erasure: displacing and misplacing race in twentieth-century music historiography,” in Julie Brown, (ed.), Western Music and Race, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 3-23.
[22] Megan E. Hill. “Asakusa-Tsugaru-jamisen: Musical Place Making and Conceptual Blending in Twenty-First Century Tokyo”, Asian Music, 2019, vol. 50, n° 2, p. 62.
[23] Martin Stokes (ed.). “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music”, in Ethnicity, Identity and Music, The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford/New York : Berg, 1997, pp. 3-4.
[24] Deborah Wong, Louder and Fater, Pain, Joy and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko, Oakland: California, University of California Press, 2019. She also published numerous articles on taiko.
[25] See also Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 2012.
[26] Though the situation is of course much more complex historically than that. It is interesting to mention that members of these groups come from the most diverse origins, including white and black Americans. As well, the majority of these players in American groups are women, while in Japan the majority are men.
[27] I received my shi-han, master licence, in 2016.
[28] My use of “player” instead of musician regarding the shakuhachi is that the popularity of that flute is such that a large number of them do not want to perform; they learn it for personal reasons, and some as self-discipline. Interestingly, many among them learn directly the shakuhachi without any prior training in Western music.
[29] See Deeg (2007); Keister (2004 & 2005); Day (2011 & 2014).
[30] See in particular Keister (2004).
[31] Though the history of that sect has twists and turns that put doubts into the view that they composed a spiritual music. See Sanford (1977), Deeg (2007), Johnson (2014).
[32] After the dismantling of that sect, called the Fuke sect, a few of these monks created their schools, creating new styles, repertoires and pieces. In the 20th century, more modern repertoires have been created, as well as a modernization of the old repertoires.
[33] See my book Le shakuhachi japonais, Une tradition réinventée (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2016), chapter 1, in which I take a critical look at how the West consider that the Japanese way of thinking is viewed by many as Zen.
[34] Taiko is very popular in the US; there are a few hundred groups. There are also groups in other countries. I did not find any survey or statistics that can give us a clear idea of how many groups there are in how many countries.
[35] See Deborah Wong (2019); Angela K. Ahlgren (2018).
[36] Shakuhachi players can be inclined to be solitary, except musicians who use this flute in Jazz, rock or other genres of music.
[37] See Jay Keister (2004 & 2005); Kiku Day (2014). For its history, see Johnson (2014).
[38] Although few players do dress like them and play on the street in some cities (like Nara, for example; one of them being an American).
[39] I discuss this point at length in the fifth chapter of my book Transmusicality, Mastering the Music of Another Culture (Zagreb, Croatian Musicological Society, 2022).
[40] For the making of the shakuhachi see Henry Johnson (2014).
[41] One example is Japanese geisha, which are still considered today by many as high-class prostitutes, which is not the case. Few Japanese people do agree with that assessment from the West. See Kelly M. Foreman, The Gei of Geisha: Music, Identity and Meaning, Aldershot, England, 2008.
Author: Bruno Deschênes
