Is the Earliest Musical Instrument a Shakuhachi?

The pictures in this BBC article suggest that earliest known musical instrument may have had a shakuhachi-like mouthpiece. It appears as if it only has two finger holes, and being that the aspect ratio, that is the ratio of length to circumference, seems to be more like that of a quena, it does not exactly fit the modern definition of shakuhachi. But then, it is estimated to be 42 or 43 thousand years old, so I would not expect it to fit the current definition.

The slightly newer model, shown in this article has a very deeply cut mouthpiece and four or five finger holes. The aspect ratio looks like it is even more severe than the earlier instrument, and it is apparent the use was not for the low, relaxing sounds of any modern flute, but shrill, whistle-like sounds. I would not be at all surprised if the instrument was intended to be used to imitate birds, possibly a tool to hunt with, and not necessarily as a musical instrument. This may seem to be be a less romantic view of our distant ancestors, but it is just as astounding to me that the entire modern world of flute playing may have started with bird calls on a instrument with a shakuhachi-like mouthpiece.

If it is true that the earliest music, 40 to 43 thousand years ago, was inspired by singing birds, things apparently have not changed all that much. One of the best examples is the painting of Pope Gregory, depicting a time only some 1500 years ago, with a dove sitting on his shoulder giving him inspiration for the medieval Gregorian chants:

 A dove representing the Holy Spirit sitting on Pope Gregory I's shoulder symbolizes Divine Inspiration

Perhaps Tsuru no Sugomori, a traditional piece for shakuhachi that is said to express the joy and love inherent in cranes, is not in the significant place of being one of the last pieces learned by coincidence. Interestingly, the piece seems to draw upon the sound of the cranes fluttering and flapping more than the crane’s song, as that is more of a honking sound and not nearly as musically pleasant to listen to as songbirds.

It pleases me to think that so much music, and probably all flute music, is inspired by birds. It gives me a feeling of connectedness with nature, sharing a taste for melody with such an in-the-moment entity such as birds.

Why do I want to play songs?

One of the most perplexing questions I’ve found as a Westerner picking up and learning to play shakuhachi is why I want to play songs. Like many who first pick up the instrument, I found playing notes evenly and in tune extremely difficult, while producing interesting tones without regard to evenness and pitch was not only easy, it was very satisfying. It was almost like there was no need to learn songs of any type, as the shakuhachi had its own song it wanted me to play.

So the way I initially approached the instrument was to take the path of least resistance and simply explore the tones it could produce without respect to pitch or timing. The only control I would impose was the strength and duration of breath. This approach, while unguided, is far from unproductive, and is not a distant stretch from the Ro-buki exercise highly encouraged by most shakuhachi teachers. However, despite shakuhachi being such a unique instrument, it did not seem all that different from other instruments in that, traditionally, songs were passed from one player to another. Sometimes in a student/teacher relationship, and other times during a musician to musician meeting, a composition, or song, is taught and learned. The process usually involves long sequences of notes, complex phrasing, and particularly for shakuhachi, tonal shaping. Needless to say, learning a song is seldom easy.

Since learning a song is such a difficult task, I have to question why I, or anybody, on any instrument, want to learn songs. While for part of the answer I have to say it seems to hold the same fascination as a good puzzle, and of course there is the performance aspect of it whether an audience is present or not, there seems to be what can best be described as a mystical force that draws me to learning songs. For whales and birds learning songs scientists usually point toward evolutionary psychology as being a possible reason for songs to be transferred among individuals of the species. That is, the more songs the whale or bird learns, the more attractive they will be to a mate. This theory seems to fit somewhat for some people as far as popular music is concerned, however there are many musicians who learn and play songs even though there is no apparent simple evolutionary reason.

Could the reason for learning songs still fit evolutionary psychology theories because the songs aid us in some manner to evolve to a higher spiritual plane? Maybe. I have seen at least a few references that Bach and Mozart compositions are associated with a higher intelligence or spiritual entity. Douglas Hofstadter’s book “Godel, Escher, Bach” is one that I enjoyed a great deal. Another is the movie “Black Robe”. In it, when the Indian chief and missionary are abducted by a particularly violent tribe, they are asked to sing their song. I can not think of a finer example of emphasis placed on how much a song can expose oneself spiritually, as here the song was necessary to determine whether the adversary should live or die.

As far as shakuhachi is concerned, there is a vast repertoire of traditional songs written specifically for the instrument to be used as a tool to help reach Zen enlightenment. This fact, along with evolutionary psychology theory, and a smidgen of gut feel lead me to believe that, at least for shakuhachi, the reason many individuals are drawn to it and its songs are an inner compulsion to evolve.

Five Minutes

There is one lesson I had over a year ago with Geni Skendo that I still think about often during every practice session. Near the beginning of the lesson, during the warmup exercises, Geni instructed me to play a particular exercise for five minutes. After a minute or so I started losing the tone and abandoned the exercise in an attempt to find the tone again. Geni immediately asked what I was doing. When I explained, he pointed out that it is very important for effective practice to complete the exercises I set out to do, that five minutes isn't a long time, and to continue the exercise to completion.

In subsequent practice sessions I noticed that unless I consciously timed myself  I very seldom would continue any exercise for a full five minutes. Experimenting, I started practicing Ro-buki making it a point to check the clock and make note of the start time, when I felt like I must have been playing for five minutes I'd check the clock again. After many runs of this experimentation, the results were almost invariable that I'd find considerably less than five minutes had passed.

What in the world was going on? Did time slow down while I was practicing Ro-buki? Ignoring the obvious connection of the relaxing shakuhachi tones to perceptual changes that I believe may also be a contributing factor, it became apparent to me how much energy it took to play shakuhachi. A good part of my reasoning that five minutes must have passed was based on how fatigued I had become during the less than five minute interval.

The observation of how much energy goes into five minutes of playing shakuhachi combined with the fact that many traditional honkyoku are five minutes of duration or longer, Western classical pieces often exceed five minutes, and even a few repetitions of Japanese folk-songs or Western popular songs will take up a good portion of a five minute interval, serves to point to how important it is to build the stamina to comfortably play shakuhachi for five minutes. I can't say that I've developed the discipline to always work on an exercise or Ro-buki for a full five minutes, and I'm often amused how I almost always, I believe subconsciously, find something to interrupt me during the practice of the common "beginner" piece Kyorie, that is usually about 10 minutes in duration. However, those words from Geni about the importance of continuing an exercise for a full five minutes were very profound and enlightening, and aside from improving my own playing, have given me a great appreciation and insight to how much energy the shakuhachi masters are putting into their brilliant performances.            

How I got started with learning shakuhachi (Part 2)

My last post left off with me having acquired an authentic, but cracked, Japanese shakuhachi off of Ebay. Although I was able to repair the crack and I got a good amount enjoyment repairing and exploring the sound of the instrument, the shakuhachi was way out of tune with itself as many vintage shakuhachi are. So I did some online research and read that Perry Yung made good, relatively inexpensive, shakuhachi. I purchased a good functional 2.1 jinashi shakuhachi from Perry Yung through Ebay, and although getting used to reaching the holes was a bit of a challenge, it was a wonderful experience taking it to the park to play it.

Being hooked on the instrument now brought me back to Ebay a number of times to try to find other shakuhachi to explore. Keep in mind that at this point just getting the basic notes to sound was an accomplishment and since each shakuhachi was so unique my playing consisted of improvisations that took direction on their own based on the characteristics of each particular shakuhachi . This was all good, but I was becoming unsatisfied with the fact that I was allowing the shakuhachi, and not myself, to control what music I created. So I arranged a lesson with Brian Ritchie when his travels brought him within driving distance of my home. The lesson went along for the most part without many surprises, and served mostly to affirm my belief that my previous experience with flute playing had me going in the right direction with learning shakuhachi. That was up until near the end of the lesson when Brian tried to teach me the "Tsu meri" note. I couldn't get the note to sound.

Since the lesson with Brian Ritchie could not be the first of many, I needed to think about how I'd like to continue learning. I was aware of some teachers giving instruction via Skype, but my computer wasn't set up with a web cam and I felt that I wanted to explore tone production more than repertoire. So I decided to purchase a book, Tokuyama Takashi's "Take-no-Michi The Path of Bamboo - A Beginner's Guide to Learning Shakuhachi Honkyoku". In order to match pitches with the CD that came with the book I also needed a 1.8 length shakuhachi, I used Perry Yung's trade-in program for that.

Tokuyama Takashi's book was perfect. It first taught the 5 notes of the pentatonic scale, then the notes of a Western C scale, and then progressed on to the "in between" notes to make the full chromatic scale accessible to a beginner. Tokuyama Takashi's book also covered how to read traditional shakuhachi music notation enabling me to purchase other books with traditional folk songs to learn.
The Tokuyama Takashi book took about 6 months to get through. I now knew how to get almost all the notes of a chromatic scale on the shakuhachi, even if I couldn't get them to sound as immediately or as fully as I wanted all the time.

After that I took Skype jazz shakuhachi lessons for several months from Geni Skendo. Those were very good lessons but fast paced and I was feeling more of a desire to learn some traditional honkyoku. To slow down the learning process a little and to redirect my efforts towards Japanese traditional music I took video lessons from Perry Yung for about a year. While I learned Kyorie and Chosi from Perry Yung, I used some of the skills I learned from Geni Skendo to adapt some tango and cabaret songs so I could play them on shakuhachi. That brings me to where I am now, Tsu meri is still a tough note and likely to not sound often, but I can get most notes to sing clearly and I look forward to learning more traditional shakuhachi repertoire so that I can explore some of the techniques that are specific to shakuhachi.   
 





                         

How I got started with learning shakuhachi

As I mentioned in the description of this blog, I was introduced to shakuhachi sometime around 1980. At that time, although I found it interesting, I had my hands full being a student of the more common Western silver concert flute. That short introduction and the talk among other flute students attending SUNY at Buffalo about the work Robert Dick was doing with shakuhachi was something that I wouldn't think about often until about 1990 when I found some shakuhachi for sale at a bamboo flute maker's booth at the Albany NY Tulip Festival.

The shakuhachi for sale at the booth were made and being sold by Zacciah Blackburn, a Vermont-based flute maker and sound healer. The shakuhachi were very affordable and the one I selected for purchase was tuned with the lowest note being the equivalent of a Western "C". This instrument produced some very nice soothing tones and kept me occupied in my spare time for a few months, but it did not play in tune very well in tune past about 1 and 1/2  octaves. After finding and listening to a shakuhachi recording by Ralph Samuelson I realized that the shakuhachi I purchased, save for the tone it produced, wasn't the same kind of instrument as on the recording. It wasn't long after that I met a student of Ralph Samuelson's who mentioned how much a shakuhachi suitable for lessons would cost. Due to the high cost, I decided that I would pursue other avenues for my interest in exotic instruments, namely Turkish ney, Irish flute, didgeridoo and baroque flute.

In 2006, I found myself in a situation where I wanted an instrument that I could walk some distance with and then play. The shakuhachi I had purchased in  1990 was a perfect choice, so I took it out of storage and brought it with me. Upon playing it, I was astounded. The tone was so full, beautiful and satisfying! The limitations of the octave and 1/2 range were still obvious, but unlike in the early '90's, the search for an authentic Japanese shakuhachi was just a few computer keystrokes away on Ebay. A few clicks and a couple hundred dollars later I had a broken, but authentic, Japanese made jiari shakuhachi to restore and begin learning with. 

I'm hesitant to suggest that Ebay is the place to turn for shakuhachi. I made a number of less than worthwhile purchases on Ebay, however there are a few very reputable sellers there that have got many individuals who are interested in shakuhachi started off on the right foot. The most prominent that I'm familiar with is Perry Yung (www.yungflutes.com). Another source of shakuhachi I've found that I highly recommend is Jeff Cairns (www.windwheel.com).     

For future posts to this blog I plan to cover topics as they come to mind. In the meantime, if you haven't already visited it, a website I put together a few months ago, http://shakuhachi.atspace.cc, is a great place to start to learning about the instrument.