Haiku Music Challenge 17

Welcome to the seventeenth iteration of the Haiku Music Challenge, hosted by Naviar Records.

Initially a prose writer, Masaoka Shiki dedicated most of his life to haiku and is usually credited with reviving this Japanese poetic form. He advocated realistic observation by “sketching” (shasei) poems and going out into nature with notebooks, thus abandoning the traditional subjects of haiku of the time. His advice for an aspiring poet was “Use both imaginary pictures and real ones, but prefer the real ones.”

coolness —
a mountain stream splashes out
between houses

Fifteen compositions were made in response to Shiki’s haiku. Here are the three I selected for you:

Track: mountain stream
Artist: earthborn visions
Genre: piano

I’ve known earthborn visions’ music for a long time: generally, his compositions are a combination of ambient textures and tape loops resulting in evocative and absorbing soundscapes. This week, he surprised me with this minimalist piano piece.

Track: coolness
Artist: Cryxuss
Genre: ambient

This is a piece I made for the haiku music challenge. I tried to capture the permanence of the river as it flows between the houses: a metaphor of the passing time.

Track: Coolness
Artist: OneAmbient4
Genre: ambient

A cinematic electronic experience by OneAmbient4 is the final track of this week’s selection.

Thank you for listening. Next week we’ll be posting music inspired by Jason Richardson’s haiku:

Ripples on water
reflecting the light of dawn
the breaking of day

The deadline to submit your track is 15 May. To find out more and participate, please visit the Naviar Records site.