The Great Monkey(TTBB)

Composer: Shin-ichiro Ikebe
Words from composer

I composed “THE FOLKSONGS OF ORIENT I” in 1984. It was written for The Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, commissioned by its director, Nobuaki Tanaka. He apparently knew of my great interest in non-European music and that I also collected musical instruments. This series continued through “V.”
Naturally, folk songs and children’s songs from various regions of Japan are included in this interest. I own a complete collection of children’s songs from all prefectures of Japan — 39 volumes in total (published by Yanagihara Shoten). Each volume is a substantial work of approximately 200 pages. I selected a song from “Children’s Songs of Ibaraki” among these. It is a temari (hand ball) song from the Koga region of Ibaraki Prefecture, but it seems to have been sung in various places in the Tohoku region, with the Sanno Shrine in Tokyo as its starting point. The original song served merely as source material, and I composed freely based upon it.