MUSIC AND MARTIAL ARTS

 by Phillip Starr

Many moons ago, the founder of Kyokushin karate, Masutatsu Oyama, remarked on the types of people who are able to achieve skill in karate rather quickly. He included musicians (and secondarily, those who love to listen to music) in his rather short list. It was some time before I figured out why.

To become a skilled musician, you must acquire an understanding of rhythms; you must understand half-beats and even quarter-beats... and the same is true of those wishing to become skilled in the martial arts. For someone who is unfamiliar with the (musical) concept of rhythms, the idea of striking an enemy in a half-beat seems quite foreign. It is no coincidence that many of the finest and best-known warriors of times past had a genuine appreciation of music and more than a few were accomplished musicians themselves! Inscrutable.

Consider that everything in life has rhythm(s). We have the four seasons, which rise and fall with a certain rhythm (except in southern China where I lived); it's not unusual to skip Fall and go directly from Summer to Winter. I guess it's a “skipped beat!”. Your gait has a certain rhythm. Relationships, health, the life cycle, dancing, and even painting all have rhythms. And there are rhythms within rhythms. If you can become finely attuned to your opponent's rhythm, how can he ever hope to successfully attack you? Were he to make such an attempt, he would be instantly defeated.

In the West, we've pretty much adopted the four-beat rhythm in our music. One noted author believes that this may be largely due to the rhythmical beat of horse's hooves. On the other hand, he says, most people in feudal Japan, Okinawa, Korea, and China didn't ride horses. For one thing, acquiring and keeping a horse was quite expensive. Another consideration is that of the local roads, which were really dirt paths of varying sizes. Special passes were often required of those wishing to ride horses or pull heavy wagons over these trails; the wheels of too many wagons would result in deep ruts, which would inhibit foot traffic considerably. And horse's hooves would simply tear up the smoothed dirt. In the West, travel by wagon or horse was much more common and I guess they didn't care about ruts (heck, they didn't even care about cleaning themselves after defecating; it was the Chinese who introduced the use of “toilet paper” to Europeans).

The aforementioned author goes on to say that in the East, musical “rhythms” were taken from nature; the dripping of water after a rain, for instance. Thus, the reason for the differences in tempos between Eastern and Western music. For purposes of gaining a deep understanding of rhythm, I think it's a good idea to appreciate both types of music. In my classes, I always played Eastern music, figuring that my students got their fill of Western music on their own...

Not all kata utilize the same rhythm. Each one has its own special rhythms. Different sections of a given kata employ different rhythms and unless you know and practice them, you're doing little more than a sophisticated forms of jumping jacks. You have to study them in detail because they can change the entire meaning (breakdown) of a form. The vast majority of martial arts practitioners (and that includes instructors) are missing this vital element in their kata. I've even seen a number of world-renowned teachers plopping through their kata without so much as a whisper of rhythm! So, please make it a point to learn the various rhythm of your kata and always include them in your practice.

If you ask most karate or taekwondo teachers about the purpose of 3-step fight, most of them will tell you that this familiar exercise, which confuses beginners and bores advanced students half to death, is intended primarily to teach the applications of various blocking techniques. They secondarily teach the application of basic striking, thrusting, and kicking techniques. This has become the “traditional” explanation because most people have been doing it this for generations. When beginners first learn to practice this form of kumite, it is very useful in teaching them basic applications of techniques as well as how to properly advance and retreat. Advanced students, however, rarely practice 3-step fight because they have acquired a good level of skill in these things.

But.

3-step fight is also an exercise through which students learn about rhythm; they learn how to “break” the opponent's rhythm. This is a crucial aspect of kumite that is often overlooked. A detailed, illustrated explanation of this is provided in my book, “MARTIAL MANEUVERS.” If you don't already have a copy, get one!

The next step is 1-step fight, which not only teaches evasive maneuvers and the applications of technique, but also a slightly more subtle (and hence, more difficult) method of learning to feel and respond to an opponent's rhythm. This is virtually impossible to do unless one has mastered the methods that are to be learned in 3-step fight. Only after achieving some appreciable skill in understanding rhythm via 1-step kumite, should one engage in vigorous jyu-kumite (freestyle sparring).

The discerning practitioner will soon discover that “speed”, per se, isn't nearly as important as being able to detect and respond to the opponent's rhythm. If you can feel his rhythm, there's no need to “hurry.” This is how and why aging masters seem to be extraordinarily fast and able to defeat much younger adversaries with ease; their ability to feel and react to an opponent's rhythm (their “timing”) is razor-sharp. Let's face it, no 80 year old, regardless of how physically fit he may be, is ever going to be faster than a 25 year old. As the years pass, our speed declines and there's simply nothing we can do about it. But timing can always be improved, regardless of age. So when a younger opponent attacks an older master with great speed and power, the latter responds at the right instant and this gives the illusion that he is moving at extremely high speed.

It takes study, introspection, and LOTS of practice... not just in martial arts, but in other aspects of daily life, too. And an understanding of rhythms can lead to a deeper understanding of other things as well. Now, go back to your first kata and find the rhythm. It is how your kata speaks to you. Listen to it.