Happening at AIRMW: Umeya Takane

AIRMW collaborator Umeya Takane visits from Tokyo to give an artist talk at our space, discussing her life as a tsuzumi and shamisen practitioner and her background from the Umeya clan.

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Umeya Takane is a  certified performer from the traditional Umeya clans (Tsuzumi & Narimono) respectively. She has been active in Nagauta, a form of Japanese Classical music used in Kabuki, the theater genre with origins in the dramatic dance of the early seventeenth-century  Tokugawa shogunate. Performed first by all-female ensembles, Kabuki gained popularity for its eroticism among the lower-class population before being banned and changed to all-male ensembles. Kabuki re-emerged in the early Meiji period and today is per-formed frequently in theaters and on television. Nagauta was incorporated into Kabuki theater in the eighteenth century and is still performed by an ensemble utilizing traditional Japanese instrumentation, with shamisen as the main instrument accompanied by taiko drum, tsuzumi hip drum, kotsuzumi shoulder drum, and n kan flute. Takane Umeya is among only a handful of certified classical players in Japan today and in high demand as house musicians for Kabuki and Nagauta Music. She performs frequently in classical and festival music concerts, and collaborations with contemporary music and media arts. 

Presented by Japanese Arts Foundation, Japanese Culture Center and sponsored by AIRMW.