DESCRIPTION:
James Nyoraku Schlefer, Shakuhachi, Kathleen Supové, Piano

"Four cups of Green Tea" is written for James Nyoraku Schlefer and Kathleen Supové for Kyo-Shin-An Arts. The title derives from a famous "Kyo-ka", a popular-culture version of Haiku, that depicts the 1854 arrival of the American Navy Admiral Matthew Perry to end the 300-year old Japanese isolationism. The text by an unknown author reads: "Waking us up from our peaceful sleep: only four cups of tea and we can't even sleep at night." The "Kyo-ka", which literally means "crazy song", uses the name of a high-quality green tea called "Jo-ki sen", which is phonetically the same with the word "steamship" in Japanese. Admiral Perry appeared with four black steamships in the bay of Tokyo which astonished and frightened the citizens and the Japanese government. Thus it satirizes the panic with the double entendre of "four black steamship" and "four cups of green tea." I took various references including pitches from old steam boat horns, some iconic Western flute motifs (Debussy's Prelude de l'après-midi d'un Faun, Edgar Varèse's Density 21.5), and "Perry's Victory", a 1850's navy song honoring the General Oliver Perry, Matthew Perry's brother, and likely known by those American navy officers who came to Japan. As Japan was opened to the west and the cultures mutually exposed each other, another iconic American tunes such as Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf, gets Shakuhachi-rized and the old East and the new West coexist with one another, affecting each other.