Blog post 6 Japanese Noh

Japanese Noh is a classical theater production that has a long cultural history in japanese culture. The prouction is a highly refined and stylized performance that can seem to be quite reserved and distant from the lay audience. The props within the performance the ma principle. The movements of the actors are slow and weightless. The nohkan is a flute that helps to create a dreamlike-meditative mood. The noh's roots derive themselves from acrobatics, pantomime, and comic interludes. Noh's history reflected the culture of the upper ruling-class and they uphold buddhist and traditional values. Almost everything is stylized in noh, and the actors wear very elegant masks.
The stories of which noh plays are based on mythological stories, and they are based on a zen mood. The noh play has two to three principle actors, they are accompanied by a small male chorus, and a small instrumental ensemble. Most noh plays are not rehearsed because they are so uniform, there causing a great give-and-take between the actors and musicians.
Most of the noh music is nonpusatile, contributing to the meditative mood. The ensemble in noh generally is made of four instruments. They include the nohkan = bamboo flute,
and three small drums. The ko-tsuzumi is the smallest and most imortant drum in the ensemble. The drummers also make shouts and exclamations during the play which are called kakgoe. The noh singing style is most closely related to shomyo, or Buddhist chant, which is composed of kotoba, free recitative heightened speech song, or fushi, which are song melodies.