Hi John. You probably don’t remember me, but I met you in 1993 when I had just started playing. It seemed to me that you’d already been playing for a very long time, and that was 20 years ago now! You were an inspiration to me at the time: here was a non-Japanese who could really play this impossible instrument - maybe I stood a chance at it after all!
About the recordings, they were done by Kawakami Otojiro’s troupe, who had to play all sorts of music, so I’m not sure how faithful their versions are to the standard playing of the time. There’s another collection that was recorded just three years later, actually in Japan, with artists from each genre. It’s Japanese title was [日本吹込み事始 １９０３年ガイズバーグ・レコーディングス], translated as “1903 FIRST JAPANESE RECORDINGS BY FREDERICK GAISBERG”, and it came out in 2001 both as a giant 11-CD set that cost a fortune, and as a one-CD sampler. You can hear snippets from the sampler here:
About your Nagauta 78s, the record player has experienced a bit of a renaissance in the last few years, so it’s not that hard to find a cheap player (under 20,000 yen) that will play them. But even with a regular record player, you can record them to your computer at 33 or 45 rpm and digitally speed them up to 78 rpm. There are a lot of free programs that do this. Send me a message if you need more information about it.
Kevin: Thanks for the kind words! I always enjoy your posts here. I think a lot of what I am working on might be interesting to you and a few others, but boring for most of the bachido audience, so I just chime in when I think I can add something useful to the conversation. I’m looking forward to your Andy Rooney Corner - I can hear him now: (in a high-pitched, whiny voice) "What’s with those little twisted pieces of paper they tie around new strings ? I can never seem to unwind them, and end up just tearing them off in frustration! "
