I found an excellent page of the festival and you can find many pictures and sounds. Texts are written in japanese.

Festival of Sawara city

Festival of Sawara in Chiba pref. is held twice in a year, on the second Friday-Sunday of October and the first Friday-Sunday after 10th of September. Decorated floats with big dolls on the top go in and around the downtown of Sawara. Traditional "Sawara Bayashi" music played on the floats is famous of its repertory and variation. The style of floats and music spread widly in the eastern part of Ibaraki prefecture and south area of Kasumigaura lake and form what can be called Sawara cultural area independent from Edo (Tokyo) culture.

The data, especialy sound data, are big. Each image data is about 30 kbytes and sound data about 20 kbytes which contains 20 seconds of RealAudio sound.

Schedule of the festival (1996)

Oct. 11th (Fri)
  10:00-  Parade of Floats around the downtown.
  18:00-  Parade of Floats along Onogawa river
        Demonstraion of traditional dance at Nigiwai-Hiroba stage
Oct. 12th (Sat)
  10:00-  Parade of Floats around the downtown, Market.
  13:00-  Demonstraion of various regional music and dance at Nigiwai-Hiroba stage
  16:00-  Main event at Omatsuri-Hiroba field
        16:00  Ordering all (14) floats.
        16:30  Demonstraion of various regional music and dance
        17:45  Demonstraion of floats and greeting music playing
  21:00-  Demonstraion of traditional dance at Nigiwai-Hiroba stage
Oct. 13th (Sun)
  09:20-  Parade of "Mikoshi" portable shrine
  10:00-  Parade of Floats around the downtown.
  13:00-  Demonstraion of various regional music and dance at Nigiwai-Hiroba stage
  18:00-  Parade of Floats along Onogawa river.
  19:00-  Demonstraion of traditional dance at Nigiwai-Hiroba stage

Floats

• A float
• A float seen from high position
• A big doll of a hero on a float
• A doll of a noble
• Music players on a float
• Demonstraion of dance performed by persons pulling a float
• Demonstraion of dance on Nigiwai-Hiroba stage
• Parade of float along Onogawa river
• A float going through a narrow pathway
• Crossing a JR railroad near Sawara sta.

"Sawara Bayashi" music

Ceremonial music

Musics which are used for specified situations such as staring of a float, ending of parade and so on.

• Baka Bayashi

  Most famous piece of Sawara Bayashi. This performance was for ending of a parade on the last day of the festival.

• Baka Bayashi in MIDI

  If you can't find any exciting mood in this music, I, who wrote this MIDI file, am responsible for it.

• Sangiri

  A fanfare which announces starting and ending of the feastival.

Floats going on

Music is played continuously during a parade.

• Azuma
• Ken Bayashi
• Sawara Kouta

Music for dancing

Frequently a float stops and people pulling the float start dancing. Some pieces are arranged ones of rather modern musics, thus repertory of Sawara-bayashi seems to be increasing. You can see some pieces have the same origin of pieces for parade and can compare difference of mood of them.

• Amba
• Ken Bayashi
• Sawara Kouta
• Rappa-bushi, the origin of this music is quite modern.
• Yagi-bushi and the same piece by other players
• Matsukazari
• Oosugi Amba

You can enjoy more pieces

Back to "Traditional Events around Tsukuba"