Edo Matsuri Bayashi appears on the following albums

	Альбом	Исполнитель
	Musical Atlas - Japan
The Japanese throughout the country greatly appreciate the Matsuri festival. Every city, town and village has its own festival. These are of various types, some having a religious or ritual character and some being mainly conceived as entertainment. The festivals vary according to circumstance and place. They may be held in the rice fields, on the seashore, in the mountains, in the smaller or bigger towns, etc., and they take different forms in northern, eastern, western and southern Japan. There is a great contrast between the festival at Edo (the present capital, Tokyo) in the East and the one at Kyoto (the former capital), the former being more brilliant and gay and the latter more sober and dignified. Hayashi or Bayashi is a term used to describe an instrumental ensemble consisting of a flute, a drum, and various percussion instruments such as a gong, a scraper and a clapper. An ensemble composed of a flute, a small hour-glass drum, a larger hour-glass drum and a flat drum, such as is used in the Noh play, is a typical Hayashi. In folk music, however, we find Hayashi ensembles comprising different instruments, for instance, a transverse flute, two flat drums, a big barrel drum and a gong such as the one used in the Edo Matsuri Bayashi recorded here. The repertoire of the Edo Matsuri Bayashi consists of four main pieces, Yatai, Shoden, Kamakura and Shichome, which are used in every performance, and several additional pieces, one or two of which are inserted between these four pieces. A standard performance should present five movements: Yatai (slow), Shoden (faster), Kamakura (slower), Shichome (fastest), and Yatay (slow). In this recording, Yatai, Shoden and Shichome form the most brilliant parts of the performance. The Edo Matsuri Bayashi is played by ordinary people during the summer or the autumn on the stage found in shrines or on temporary stages erected at street corners where people gather. This music brings a deep feeling of nostalgia to the mind of the writer of this commentary, who was born in downtown Tokyo.