伝承と音楽変化

奄美のシマウタ世界をめぐって

抄録

This article is concerned with the nature of musical change in the folk songs (shima-uta) of Amami Oshima, and in particular with qualitative change in methods of transmission of these songs. The research was conducted during a period of residence on the island.
The island of Amami Oshima is located in the subtropical belt at an almost equidistant position between Kagoshima and the main island of Okinawa. The island is about 100 kilometres in length and has a population of approximately 85, 000. Administratively, it belongs to Oshima-gun in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Shima-uta have been handed down in the manner of an exchange of song between men and women. They are performed to the accompaniment of the shamisen on occasions considered as appropriate by the village (shima) community for such performances. Shima-uta are distinguished by melodies which differ from one shima to another, the shima being the group within which transmission occurs. The rapid changes which have occurred in village society over recent years have resulted in the collapse of the shima communities and the encroachment of urban ways of living. A byproduct of this development is that shima-uta are now generally learnt and passed on through the mediums of records, folk song competitions, and formal tuition.
The districts in which folk song transmission occurs throughout the island may be classified roughly into the three following types:
1) Districts where there still exist transmission groups with the same structure as the traditional communities, and where transmission continues to centre on traditional methods of learning.
2) Districts where there is more scope for song performance than those described in the preceding paragraph and where modern methods of tuition are also practised. (In such districts both traditional and modern methods of learning are practised, centring on groups of music-loving friends rather than on traditional groups.)
3) Naze, the main city on the island, where modern methods of study are practised on the foundations provided by the musical culture of the adjacent parts of the island.
I made a comparison of districts 1) and 3), that is the city of Naze and the traditional shima-uta community of Sani, since these districts are representative of the centre and the periphery of shima-uta culture on Amami Oshima.
People in the shima-uta community of Sani believe that the shima-uta genre is music symbolic of their community. The musical diversity within Sani is unified under a communal awareness that shima-uta (“community songs”) are the songs of this particular community. The music is constantly undergoing change as part of the intimate relation-ships between the individual and the group.
In the main city of Naze, songs are learnt by individuals who freely select and learn the melody of a song as performed by their favourite singer (utasha); individuals may also introduce their own refinements into a melody. Here, there are no transmission groups directly to fetter the singing style of an individual. The musical diversity present in Naze leads to an attitude presupposing that shima-uta are the songs of Amami Oshima as a whole rather than of any particular community on the island.
The term shima-uta thus assumes a subtly different meaning for individ uals in Naze and Sani, despite the fact that both districts belong to the same shima-uta culture of Amami Oshima.
Comparison of these two diametrically opposed districts in connection with transmission makes it possible to surmise the diachronic changes which have occurred from the era when the traditional shima community was still alive down to the present. The world of the shima-uta in Amami was previously one which centred on one's own shima and in which the existence of shima-uta outside the comm