American musician finds East meets East

T. M. Hoffman

Photos by Daily Yomiuri Photographer Makoto Miyazaki

By Ayako Hirayama

Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

TAKASAKI, Gunma--Tim Hoffman has explored musical possibilities by applying Indian "software" to Japanese "hardware" for more than two decades, but his appetite for discovering new things in Asian music traditions remains unquenched.

In the computer industry, Japan is known for its expertise in hardware development, while India's prowess lies more in compatible software. Collaborative efforts in the field are widely expected to benefit both countries.

Hoffman believes this also holds true in music.

Having spent more than half his life in Japan and India, the 54-year-old American musician and ethnomusicologist has discovered that the two Asian countries have musical similarities in terms of rhythm, melody and configuration. Since stumbling on this revelation, Hoffman has played Indian classical music featuring melodic modes, known as raga, on traditional Japanese instruments, including the shakuhachi and the koto.

Unlike Western classical music, Hoffman said Indian and Japanese pieces are not guided by harmony, chord progression and absolute pitch, allowing individual players to improvise. Performers of Indian music are trained to incorporate different melodic and rhythmic variations into a performance, so they can give a different presentation each time.

"It's like having a conversation," Hoffman said of giving improvised performances with other musicians. "Even when playing the same piece, the sounds and rhythm vary from one performance to another. This aspect [of music] interests me very much."

In Japan and elsewhere, Hoffman has devoted himself to what he calls "Asian music crossover" by conducting lecture-demonstrations, writing research papers, teaching music at universities and serving as director of the Indo-Japanese Music Exchange Association, which was established in 1989. But he did not envision such a life before coming to Japan.

Born in York, Pa., Hoffman grew up in a musical environment with his father being a gospel singer and his mother a self-taught pianist. At age 4, he started studying the piano under a renowned piano master and often played it at church in his youth.

But as he grew up, his interest strayed to other subjects more popular among young men. "I became more interested in baseball, cars and girls at that time," he said with a chuckle.

His passion for music was revived after he started studying music again at California State University, San Diego, with ethnomusicology particularly piquing his curiosity. While studying, Hoffman said he was immersed in Asian music and instruments, especially the shakuhachi.

"I noted that shakuhachi honkyoku [solo compositions] are performed in free rhythm and were originally improvised, and decided to begin my intensive studies in solo improvised music of Asia here in Japan," he said.

In 1976, he decided to come to Japan. While attending International Christian University in Tokyo, Hoffman learned the Japanese bamboo flute under the tutelage of Living National Treasure Goro Yamaguchi.

As he studied Japanese music traditions, he learned some of them originated in India and began absorbing himself in that country's music.

In 1985, he entered Bhatkhande Music College in the northern Indian city of Lucknow to study Hindustani classical vocal music and flute. Significantly, Hoffman obtained special permission from the state government to use the shakuhachi, instead of the Indian horizontal flute called bansuri, to complete a five-year degree program.

Through his intensive vocal training, he also acquired linguistic skills in Hindi and found phonetic and syntactical similarities between the language and Japanese. This has inspired him to sing classic Japanese poetry accompanied by Indian music.

His intra-Asian music exchanges have been prolific. He has performed in various concerts and music festivals with audiences of up to 7,000 inside and outside Japan.

Last year, Hoffman participated in a two-day music program at Delhi University. His performance attracted an enthusiastic response from the audience.

"They were ecstatic," Hoffman recalled. "People really enjoyed seeing their music being played on something from another place."

The crossover initiative also has gradually found appreciation among Japanese. Hoffman, who lives in Shimonitamachi, Gunma Prefecture--the hometown of his wife, Sakiko--performed with two visiting Indian musicians last week at a community event at a beauty salon in Takasaki. Most listeners there appeared unfamiliar with Indian music, but they were soon drawn into it, with some even humming along to the tunes.

"I never expected I would have so much fun listening to Indian music," said Atsuko Yokouchi, a board member of a local merchants association that organized the event, one of eight programs held in Japan last month that included a concert at United Nations University. "I didn't imagine it would be so well suited to Japanese instruments. Honestly speaking, I thought I would probably fall asleep during the performance."

Probir Mittra, who plays the tabla, an Indian hand drum, reveled in performing in a beauty salon. "I've performed in shops before, but playing in a beauty salon was a new experience. We enjoyed it a lot," he said.

Hoffman has received awards from the governor of Uttar Pradesh--India's most populous state and home to the college he attended--and the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan for his Indo-Japanese music exchanges.

This East-East encounter in music, Hoffman said, provides a prime example of two Asian traditions positively interacting without losing their original features. This exchange is succinctly summed up by an Indian proverb he cited in his program notes of a 1991 concert in the United States that says, "What is not given is lost."

He continued, "Cross-cultural sharing between related artistic traditions can help stave off what author Natsume Soseki described as the 'inevitable disarray of Japanese civilization should the forced cultivation of imported Western culture go unchecked.'"