Martial arts as music

Posted on Apr 13, 2008 in Martial Arts | 3 comments

Recently, our aikido sensei, Krohn-sensei, grew frustrated with our class for our lack of “togetherness” during a drill. This prompted him to explain a view of martial arts I hadn’t heard before training in the Northwest Martial Arts dojo. He compared two facets of martial arts—training and actual fighting—to two styles of music—classical and jazz.

When we train, we’re striving to attain perfection in the art, just as an orchestra strives for perfection in playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for example. In a dojo with six students practicing a technique (shiho-nage in this case), we should all be taking our queue from our instructor and performing the technique in near unison. If the timing is off among the pairs of students (the nage, “thrower” and the uke, “receiver”) the group looks disorganized. They even sound disorganized as three people fall and slap the mat differently.

In karate, a similar comparison can be drawn between an orchestra and kata, a structured sequence of movement and techniques. A group running through a kata should be keying off one another so that each person is performing the same strike, step, punch, kick, etc. at the same time. Though the purpose of kata is practice rather than synchronicity, a group peforming heian nidan ideally would look something like medal-winning synchronized swimmers.

On the other side of the coin is sparring or actual fighting. If you’re in a bar and a belligerent drunk decides he’s going to fight you, he’s not going to slide forward with a straight punch to your solar plexus. The two guys jump you downtown as you walk to your car after a show won’t approach you one after the other or wait while you tussle with one of them. In short, real life isn’t the dojo. This is when you need to improvise, adjust to the moment, react to what others are doing: that’s jazz. Free-form musical expression can be amazing and beautiful, especially among a group of talented musicians.

Both aspects are equally important. Achieving perfection in a technique or kata that’s existed for hundreds of years has value, the same way professional dancers waltzing across a ballroom has value. There’s discipline and the challenge of training your body to do exactly what you tell it, from the placement of your lead foot in its stance to the angle of your striking hand. But a fight in which your wallet—or your life—is at stake requires a whole other set of priorities: are you aware of your surroundings (is that another attacker coming at you from the shadow, or just a trash can)? Can you shift your weight to avoid a punch while striking back? Are your stance and muscles prepared to take a hit? These are the notes in the improvisation that is a fight. (Or so I’ve been told… the last fight I was in occurred in Reagan’s first administration and it was over who should go into the neighbor’s yard to retrieve the ball that’d been kicked over the fence.)

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