The Sanshin flowers: remembering in the musical learning of an okinawan instrument

Abstract

This project intends to analyze the practice of remembering in the learning of sanshin, a three-stringed Okinawan musical instrument, which mobilizes the convergence of different temporalities and memories to the production of locality. Through the experiences in the environments linked to the musical groups of the Brazilian Okinawan associations, as well as through conversations with practitioners of the instrument, we seek to apprehend the engagements, agencies, and interactions through which the structure of feelings of this musical learning is woven. For that, the concepts of musicking, locality, and education of attention are operated, respectively, by Small (1998), Appadurai (1996), and Ingold (2010; 2016). The synthesis of these perspectives allows us to understand the musical practices of sanshin as dynamics that transcend the spatiality of the associations and the materiality of the instrument. With my inclusion in sanshin classes and through conversations and interviews with players and artisans of the instrument, the development of the tuning of body movements and remembering with other people would allow different experiences to narrate both family and ancestral memories, or between teachers and students, as well as about the history of the Okinawan diaspora, the immigration in Brazil and the Okinawa/Ryukyu context. (AU)