Sarah Peebles, acoustic shoh

Listen to Solo shoh improvisation no. 7 (6:08)

Solo shoh improvisations no.1-8 (and beyond) explore the harmonies of gagaku (Japanese court orchestra music), collections of pitches which have intrigued me for the past 25 years. The improvisations flow as paths between something like listening zones; not exactly choshi, which are gagaku tuning pieces for one or multiple shoh without orchestra, the pieces resemble choshi in how they flow in time, a departure from the continuously sounding chords (known as aitake) which underpin the melodies in the main body of gagaku music, which is more widely known. The pieces here, though improvisations in the moment, have a vague intent. Each was recorded at close range and from different angles, in a relatively dry, small room.

This up-close, dry sound is how I have mostly experienced playing the shoh in traditional cultural contexts in Japan - for weddings, funerals, Shinto ceremonies, etc. - and I feel this is how the instrument sounds the most intriguing. What would be simple tones transforms to rich, complex timbres as air (breath) flows through metal reeds, travels up and out various openings in smoked bamboo pipes, and collides as it emerges from multiple points; sum and difference tones and interference patterns of sound emerge and create a striking, immediate music which envelopes the surrounding space in a sort of opaque cloud, at once mesmerizing yet somehow unsettling. The experience becomes a convoluted path between instrument, player, space, microphone, recording engineer, recorded medium, playback media, loudspeaker, space, and listener. It is at once contemplative, intense, spacious, edgy, calculated, mesmerizing.

Solo Shoh Improvisations were recorded April 2007 by Ted Phillips at Studio Excelo, Toronto. ©2007 Sarah Peebles. All rights reserved. SOCAN for Canada / ASCAP for the World except Canada.

 

Some thoughts on natural history,
human culture and the shoh

The shoh has had an extraordinary path. It developed from a core set of materials first assembled into some kind of mouth-organ about 2,000 years ago, travelled and transformed throughout Asia with cultural and economic trade, and continues to make its way around the world. Mouth organs as well as other free reed instruments and their musics have transformed over and over again everywhere, as have the materials with which they are made. They are a remarkable meme. Asian mouth-organs in particular reflect a close synergistic relationship between human beings and the habitats surrounding them: mouth-organs likely originated in tropical areas in what is now Laos, and since ancient times have utilized the nest materials of stingless honey bees - the predominant honey-making bees in tropical regions (genus Trigona).

The stingless bees that forest peoples of the tropics have used throughout the world provide wax and plant resins together, which the bees mix in their nest and use as their basic construction material. This resinous wax (known as maeng kisoot in Laos) is boiled down in specific proportions and applied to the instrument in many ways.

This intersection of ecology and human culture continued as mouth-organs refined their materials and forms, and the shoh, initially brought to Japan from the mainland, today utilizes wax from the Japanese managed honey bee (Apis cerana japonica, a subspecies of the Asiatic honey bee) in combination with human-gathered resin, as well as a variety of other materials, including ground mineral preparations (malachite), bronze, lacquered wood (formerly water buffalo horn), silver etched with images of bamboo, and smoke-cured bamboo.

From its hunting-gathering roots to farming and metal forging, the shoh reflects our age-old interactions with plants, animals and the environments (both literal and cultural) into which it has 'naturalized' and through which it continues in its travels.