This article is a part translation of the Master's thesis (Okinawan Classical Music: Analysis of Vocal Performance) deposited in the Graduate School of the University of Hawaii in August 22, 1976. The study is focused on contemporary vocal performance in Okinawan classical music, of which repertory is believed to have been derived from regional folksongs and developed into the court tradition of the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429-1879). The study is based primarily on materials collected through field research conducted in the summer of 1974. Tsikuten Bushi and Hai-tsikuten Bushi were selected as representative of the repertory of Okinawan classical music. Performances of eight musicians were chosen for their musical reliability and as the best representation of the three existing schools (Nomura-, Ahuso-, and Tansui-ryu) of modern Okinawa. The eight vocal performances are, transcribed with a rather high level of specificity in Western staff notation and parsed against each other and against a sanshin (an Okinawan threestringed plucked lute) transnotation.<BR> Tsikuten Bushi and Hai-tsikuten Bushi are examined by a detailed ana- lysis, based on a comparative method, in each musical aspect of 1) general form, 2) tempo both in metric and chronometric density, 3) rhythm, 4) meter, 5) tonality and modality, 6) melodic contour, 7) melodic range and tessitura, 8) vocal ornaments, and 9) heterophony. Some of the significant musical characteristics exemplified in the two corpus compositions are: 1) irregularity in both compositional length and text setting; 2) melisrnatic text treatment, especially in a long and slow composition; 3) stepwise (within the pentatonic mode of Ryukyu Senp (5) melodic contour; 4) heterophony, caused by a variable rhythmic lag between voice and sanshin resulting in a variety of dissonances. In performance practice, considerable freedom in tempo and personalized vocal style are characteristic. As in conclusion, the writer considers that at least four points of interest are contributed by this study. First, Okinawan singers are very much concerned with articulation of melodic tones. This highly articulated singing has its own aesthetic.<BR> Secondly, frequent pitch slides characterize the style of Okinawan vocal performance. The continuous movement across one pitch to another is definitely intentional and should not be misunderstood as inaccurateness in pitch.<BR> Thirdly, flexibility in pitch of melodic tones is observed in addition to the continuous pitch slide. The considerable pitch varionce of the tone f (as transcribed) is especially significant. The variance ranges from lower than f-natural to higher than f-sharp, and it centers around f-neutral. Fourthly, the musical tradition of Okinawa has produced a variety of vocal techniques prescribed in relation to the body movement of sanshin playing. In this study the vocal part is notated with a limited number of ornament types. It may be due to the writers limited perception, but to a certain extent, the writer suspects that the prescribed vocal techniques are process oriented so the effect of each is not necessarily always different from all the others in sound product.