CARLA
Appreciation of Music - Traditional Japanese Music & Healing Music
Lesson 04: What type of root music do you hear?

Submitted by Michiko Kato Dressen

Objectives:

Content:
Students will:

  • develop understanding of the music scale of Japanese traditional music and compare to the scale of the western and modern Japanese music.
  • identify the various culturally different root music embedded in the "癒し系：Iyashi-kei; Healing music".
  • identify the name of musical instruments in the different types of music.

Cultural:
Students will:

  • develop understanding of differences in music scales between Japanese traditional music, western music and other cultural music, and reflect why differences formed.
  • develop understanding of cultural, historical and geographical differences in embedded music of some "癒し系:Iyashi-kei; Healing" music.

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will use the following expressions:

  • Asking and Answering questions - "Who do you think ---? / What do you think ---?"
    As answers:  "I think it's (Name)'s. / I think it's ---."
  • Do to see what it's like: Te-form of Verbs + みる
  • Passive voice of Verbs: 集(あつ)められて いる (be collected)／よく 使われる (be often used)
  • Causative of Verbs:  聴(き)かせ ましょう。(will let/have you listen)／聴かせて 下(くだ)さい。(Please let/have me listen.)
    Note: Vocabulary words, sentences used in this Lesson are in an attachment.

Language: Content Compatible
Students will use the following expressions:

  • Transitive / Intransitive Verbs:  聴(き)く／ 聴こえる
  • Answering for Why questions: Plain statement + からです／からだ。
  • Describing opinion - "I think that is Adjective."
  • Plain - form of Verbs and Adjectives in the present and past tense to state opinions.
  • The country names in カタカナ：KATAKANA to discuss about the root music.
  • Previously learned vocabulary words and sentences to complete conversation.

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:

  • use technology to gain more information, communicate, connect with its resources and community and present their research using the target language.
  • develop their own reading strategies for challenging Japanese materials in publication using their own vocabulary list and a dictionary.
  • use prior knowledge and listening skills to infer meaning of unknown words.
  • use prior knowledge, listening and speaking skills to complete their presentation and each conversation.
  • work cooperatively in pairs/groups to complete assigned tasks.

Time Frame:

Three to four 50 minutes sessions for activities

Materials Needed:

  • Any video tape of "邦楽: Hogaku" (JPN traditional music) & "雅楽: Gagaku" (JPN ancient court music),
  • Internet web site sources students can visit to listen to the Japanese traditional music, 邦楽; Hogaku: "春の海：Haru no Umi", "桜：Sakura; cherry blossoms" and "a variation of Sakura", and JPN ancient music, 雅楽; Gagaku: "越天楽：Etenraku" (in Lesson 03) to trace the music scale
  • CDs of "feel": 癒し系：Iyashi-kei & New Age music
  • Japanese essay, "日本の音楽 2002：Music in Japan 2002/ "Healing; 癒し系: Iyashi-kei" Music & Japanese Traditional Music" in an attachment.
  • Other Internet web sites for students to visit music sources

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

In this lesson, students will listen to some traditional Japanese songs, "越天楽：Etenraku" in Lesson 03, "春の海：Haru no Umi", "桜：Sakura; cherry blossoms" and "a variation of Sakura" and trace the scale of Japanese traditional music that is different from the scale of western music.  They will read latter half of the Japanese essay, "日本の音楽 2002：Music in Japan 2002/ "Healing; 癒し系: Iyashi-kei" Music & Japanese Traditional Music" and summarize it.  After that they will discuss in Japanese about the content.  Students in pairs will also identify the root music of the different regional culture or ethnicity of the world that is embedded in the healing music.  They will discuss in Japanese why they think they are. 

Activities

Pre-Task:
1.  Students will listen carefully to some traditional Japanese songs, Togi Hideki's "越天楽：Etenraku Fantasia" (from Togi's CD) in Lesson 03, "春の海：Haru no Umi", "桜：Sakura Sakura; cherry blossoms" and "Sakura Variation" on the Miyagi Michio website and trace the scale of traditional Japanese music which is different from the scale of western music such as "Do Re Mi song". 
Sample sentences are in an attachment:  Lesson 04 Activity -1

2.  Music Matching Game: Students as a pair will listen to some music pieces of "癒し系: Iyashi-kei (Healing) music" and guess the titles of the song and the musician written in Japanese.  
Activity Title:  この音楽の､演奏者(えんそうしゃ)と曲名(きょくめい)を当(あ)ててみましょう。(Let's try to choose the musician and the title of each music piece?)  
Sample sentences:  Lesson 04 Activity -2

3.  The teacher will debrief about the scale of Japanese music that students traced together and discuss that they may possibly be able to find other scales in other regional music, then explain briefly about the next activity.

During-Task:
4.  Students will work in pairs to read, summarize and discuss about the latter half of Japanese essay, "日本の音楽 2002: Japanese Music 2002" in which some embedded root music of different cultures are described. L3 & L4 Essay: Music in JPN 2002

5.  Students will listen to some of the "Healing; 癒し系: Iyashi-kei" Music pieces on a CD of "feel", and work in pairs to discuss and try to identify what type of root music of different cultures, groups, ethnicities, ages and religions are embedded in some music pieces and why they thought so while listening to the characteristic sound, the timbre and the rhythm. 

Activity Title:  この曲(きょく)の中に､どんなルーツ音楽が聴(き)こえますか。(What type of root music can be heard in this music piece?)

Sample sentences:  Lesson 04 Activity -5

6.  The teacher will debrief about some of the embedded root music from the different culture or ethnicity of the world that students found and develop understanding the creation of beautiful music is integrated with many different cultures, groups, ethnicities, ages and sometimes religions.

Post-Task:
7.  Students experienced to listen to Japanese music in different genre and compare and discuss some uniqueness of sound, rhythm and cultural characteristics they identify.  They also listen to some healing "癒し系: Iyashi-kei" music, new genre in Japan, which are composed with integration of Japanese traditional music or instruments and new characteristics, then compare the original Japanese ancient court music, "雅楽：Gagaku, 越天楽：Etenraku" with newly arranged "Gagaku, Etenraku Fantasia" as some "Iyash-keii" music.  They listen to other music pieces of Japanese "Iyashi-kei" music to identify musical characteristics and the cultural timbre presented in them. 

Assessment:

Formative assessment of this lesson will be done by students themselves and the teacher with a checklist when students present the post-task activity.

The Checklist for Lesson 4 is in the Handouts section below.

References and Resources:

Miyagi Michio website:
http://www.miyagikai.gr.jp/music.htm
Go to 作品目録 to go to his music chart, then click (1924) to listen to "Haru no Umi: 春の海", click (1923) to listen to "Sakura Variation: さくら変奏曲", click (1928) to listen to "Etenrak Variation: 越天楽変奏曲"

Kamisango, Y (2002). The Color of Traditional Japanese Music. NIPPONIA, No. 22.
http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia22/en/topic/index.html

Tsuchiya, K. (2002). The Yoshida kyodai. Nipponia, No. 22.
http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia22/en/interview/index.html

Tokunaga, K., Tsuchiya, K., Komatsu, M., Sakata, S., & Torikai, S. (2002). Young performers carry on ancient traditions. Nipponia, No. 22.
http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia22/en/feature/index.html

Columbia: Japanese traditional music; Shamisen: You can listen to 津軽じょんがら節http://jtrad.columbia.jp/jpn/k_shamisen.html

Columbia Music Entertainment, Inc. (2002). Japanese traditional musical instruments in Japanese & English
http://jtrad.columbia.jp/jpn/inst.html & http://jtrad.columbia.jp/eng/inst.html

Japanese Culture general
http://web-japan.org/today/culture.html

Modern Music:

Toshiba-Emi. Ltd.,  CD: "feel" (2000). /  Another CD: "feel" (2001).
http://www.toshiba-emi.co.jp

Kitaro 喜多郎: New Age Music: Silk Road / Sacred Journey of Kukai, etc
http://www.showtime.jp/kitaro_guest/mizuniinorite/index.html  &
http://www.kitaro.net/

Silk Road Project: Yo-Yo Ma
http://www.silkroadproject.org/music/

Himekami 姫神：New Age Music
http://www.himekami.jp

Kazumasa Oda 小田和正: Japanese Pop Music
http://www.bmgjapan.com/oda/pr/index.html
http://music.yahoo.co.jp/special/bmg/oda_kazumasa/oda_kazumasa_20020424.html

Hikaru Utada website
http://www.toshiba-emi.co.jp/hikki

Entry Port for various Kids related Sites
http://kids.yahoo.co.jp/

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

L4 Vocabulary  (pdf)

L4 Sample Sentences  (pdf)

L3&4 Essay:  Music in JPN,  2002 (pdf) - from Lesson 3
 

Checklist for Lesson 4


A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota