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The heike shamisen (平家) is a shamisen particularly fashioned for the performance of the song Heike Ondo, a folk tune originating from Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The neck of the heike shamisen is about half the length of most shamisen , giving the instrument the high range needed to play Heike Ondo .
The first reference to nagauta as shamisen music appears in the second volume of Matsu no ha (1703). [1] By the 18th century, the shamisen had become an established instrument in kabuki, when the basic forms and classifications of nagauta crystallized [1] as a combination of different styles stemming from the music popular during the Edo period.
Instead, they tended to be sung by non-professionals, generally without shamisen accompaniment. But with the Tsugaru-shamisen "boom" after World War II, these songs began to receive renewed attention. Shamisen accompaniments were composed or arranged by such performers as Takahashi Chikuzan (Takahashi 1976:142). Somewhat earlier there had been ...
In early modern Japanese music which involved the use of the shamisen, one feature was for a shamisen player to sing their own accompaniment. Jiuta flourished in the Kyoto and Osaka regions, and thus was called kamigatauta (上方唄, "song of Kamigata") or hōshiuta (法師唄, "song of monks") played by groups of blind men (see tōdōza).
In addition to performing songs that are only on the shamisen, they also use instruments such as drums and synthesizers. The commercials for Nintendo 's Wii video game console that began airing in North America in November 2006 featured the Yoshida Brothers song "Kodo (Inside the Sun Remix)".
As the song calls for a higher range of notes, the heike shamisen is constructed with a shorter neck than conventional shamisen. It is possible to use a normal-sized shamisen in place of a heike shamisen, but it must be prepared with a capo device, known as "kase" in Japanese. In Japanese music, there is a buzzy sound quality that is often ...
This genre is performed by a singer accompanied by a shamisen, rōkyoku became very popular in Japan during the first half of the 20th century. In modern Japanese slang, naniwabushi is sometimes used to mean "a sob story", since the songs were often about sad subjects. The stories were commonly about folktales and myths with themes of loyalty ...
Popular in Edo's pleasure districts, the shamisen is often used in kabuki theater. Made from red sandalwood and ranging from 1.1 to 1.4 metres (3 ft 7 in to 4 ft 7 in) long, the shamisen has ivory pegs, strings made from twisted silk, and a belly covered in cat or dog skin or a synthetic skin.