Jiuta

Jiuta is the chamber song tradition of Japan's Kamigata region (Kyoto and Osaka), created in the early Edo period by the blind musicians of the Tōdōza guild. A singer accompanies himself on the shamisen, joined in the sankyoku ensemble by koto and shakuhachi (originally kokyū), performing lyrical utamono and the instrumental-interlude pieces called tegotomono. Its texts draw on classical poetry and the pleasure quarters' refined melancholy, delivered in a restrained, ornamented voice within the jo-ha-kyū arc of gradual acceleration that governs Japanese traditional form.