Amba-bayashi music of Oosugi feast in Sakuragawa (Oct. 27, 1996)

The god of oosugi shrine located in Sakuragawa villidge (Ibaraki pref. Japan) was once famous for its miracle power of curing smallpox in old Edo era. "Amba-bayashi" was a music for religious dance for prayer of curing the decease and it was also famous in Kanto area. "Amba-bayashi" is now spread widly and we can find many kind of variations in traditional "hayashi" musics of sourthern Ibaraki area. It is said as a origin of "Sawara-bayashi" and "Itako-bayashi" (major hayashi musics in and around Ibaraki pref.) and simillarity can be easily heard out.

Images and sounds presented here are recorded on the second day of the Oosugi feast, on October 27th of 1996. Images contain about 30 kilobytes and sound files contain 20 kilobytes in RealAudio format.

Anniversaly Oosugi feast

• Oosugi shrine. There were about 20 stands.
• A train for a portable shrine comes back to the shrine at 14:00. Tengus and a horse are there in the train.
• Maindens of the shrine are dancing till 16:00.
• A floats of Hayashi music starts at 18:00.
• Amba-bayashi seems to be taught at primary schools. Students also play Amba-bayashi.

Hayashi music of the festival

The whole structure of Hayashi music is simillar to Sawara-bayashi (See the festival of Sawara). One group is pieces for specified situations, others for a running float, and pieces for dancing while stopping the float. The original Amba-bayashis are played at dancing time.

• Clapping of Ibaraki style to encourage the members of the float themselves just before the starting.
• Sangiri, a music to announce the very starting and the ending of the float parade.
• Bakabayashi announcing importnt points of the parade such as startting, ending of parade, and running up a slope. We can see fragments of Sawara-bayashi in Sangiri and Bakabayashi.
• The Amba-bayashi. The following three motives are played in this order.
  • First motive
  • Second motive
  • Third motive

Pices for running the float and dancing are almost the same as Sawara-bayashi.

Pieces I couldn't find in Sawara.

• Rumba
• Song of Labaul

Variations of Amba-bayashi found around Sakuragawa

Here are some hayashi musics which are influenced by Amba-bayashi

• Amba-bayashi found in Sawara. Motive 1 and Motive 3. These are just the same to Amba-bayashi in Sakuragawa.
• Kise-bayashi (200kbytes u-law file) in Tsukuba city. We can see that the original motive 1 is quite simplified.

References

1. (Casette audio tape) Amba-bayashi (CNT-2328), King record co., Japan, 1990.

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