Okinawan folk music Music of Japan

umui, religious songs, shima uta, dance songs, and, kachāshī, lively celebratory music, popular.

okinawan folk music varies mainland japanese folk music in several ways.

first, okinawan folk music accompanied sanshin whereas in mainland japan, shamisen accompanies instead. other okinawan instruments include sanba (which produce clicking sound similar of castanets), taiko , sharp finger whistling called yubi-bue (指笛).

second, tonality. pentatonic scale, coincides major pentatonic scale of western musical disciplines, heard in min yō main islands of japan, see minyō scale. in pentatonic scale subdominant , leading tone (scale degrees 4 , 7 of western major scale) omitted, resulting in musical scale no half steps between each note. (do, re, mi, so, la in solfeggio, or scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, , 6) okinawan min yō, however, characterized scales include half-steps omitted in aforementioned pentatonic scale, when analyzed in western discipline of music. in fact, common scale used in okinawan min yō includes scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, , 7.