Kouta
Kouta (short song) is a type of Japanese vocal music, the most widely known form of which is a song accompanied by a shamisen (three-stringed lute) and performed by female musicians, usually geisha, at traditional, small-scale, Japanese social events. The term, however, has not always been so applied but has been used to denote a variety of other song forms throughout the history of Japanese music.
From the tenth to the twelfth centuries, kouta was generally used to indicate all manner of short or colloquial songs, in contrast to the longer, more formal pieces that were a common part of court rituals. By the sixteenth century, however, the term had become exclusively associated with a type of short song that used verses of four lines based around groups of five and seven syllables (7+5+7+5 / 7+7+7+7 / 7+7+7+5 / or 7+5+7+7); this is noted in several important kouta compilations of the period, including Kangin shu (1518) and Soan Kouta shu (late sixteenth century). By the Edo period (1603–1868), the term had evolved to include both certain types of unaccompanied folk songs and some of the shamisen songs common in the Kabuki theater of the time. In the Meiji period (1868–1912), the term became associated with the short shamisen-accompanied song that is common today. This type of kouta, generally one to three minutes in duration, is sung by a female vocalist in a small chamber known as an ozashiki; usually the singer accompanies herself on the shamisen. The instrument is plucked with the nails— unusual, in that most shamisen music calls for a special plectrum—and maintains the rhythm, above which the vocal melody provides subtle musical ornamentation to augment the seven-and-five-syllable verses. Although this type of kouta was primarily the cultural property of the geisha, it filtered into the public domain in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, although kouta does not attract the level of interest it once did, it represents a musical tradition that embodies a broad spectrum of Japanese emotions and images.
Further Reading
Crihfield, Liza. (1979) Kouta: "Little Songs" of the Geisha World. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle.
Fujie, Linda. (1996) "Kouta." In Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's People, edited by Jeff T. Titon. New York: Schirmer Books, 384–391.
Hirano, Kenji. (1989) "Kouta." In Nihon Ongaku Daijiten (Encyclopedia of Japanese Music), edited by Kenji Hirano et al. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 89, 453–455.
Kurata, Yoshihiro. (1989) "Kouta." In Nihon Ongaku Daijiten (Encyclopedia of Japanese Music), edited by Kenji Hirano et al. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 553–555.
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