| StoreTags: China, Ko Ishikawa, Gagaku, Japan
Author: dylan on December 23 2007 Viewed 1385 times. 11 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: astroid, Roshi, atum, bodo, monty, Mesothelioma, DrexonField, skab, opticecho, Analog, sclr
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I stumbled upon this video on Youtube, which features a friend of mine named Ko Ishikawa playing a traditional Chinese instrument called "sho".
Sho is an instrument that is played in "Gagaku", a style of music that was brought over from China to Japan during the T'ang dynasty. Gagaku is still played today and is often considered standard repetoire for various religious ceremonies in Japan, among those being ceremonies held in the royal Japanese court. The instrumentation varies depending on where it is played, but usually consists of voice, koto, ryuuteki (a bamboo flute), and various percussion. Incidentally, Gagaku is virtually non-existent in modern China, no thanks to a little incident called the Cultural Revolution.
The "sho" is also used extensively in Gagaku. In English it has been loosely translated as "mouth organ". For those who are familiar with Chinese characters, the character for "sho" consists of a bamboo radical on the top with the main body being the character for "life". I can't adequately describe its sound, but it indeed is somewhat reminiscent of an organ that played in a higher frequency range, albeit much more 'woody' because of the bamboo construction. Very resonant and very suitable for electronic experimentation.
Which brings me to the subject of this clip: here is a clip that features Mr. Ko Ishikawa playing the sho, with the Laptop Orchestra processing the raw audio. Pretty nifty stuff.
And for your added enjoyment, I have uploaded a recent track that I put together, which features some of Ishikawa's vocalizing and playing.
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12/24/07
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atum
oh yes, i'm very familiar with the mouth organ
12/24/07
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Mesothelioma
That video was great, thanks for sharing that man.
12/24/07
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Mesothelioma
Well I tried to edit, oh well. I wanted to say I dig your song as well. Very good mood for my current insomnia.
12/24/07
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ricemutt
yeah that stuff is the shit. In china, they have a mouth organ called the "sheng." I had my brother buy me one while I was in beijing, but it was a total turd and you couldn't actually play any music on it.
I guess that instrument type is all over asia, and is the precursor to the pipe organ and some other instruments. I had a CD of burmese music which had soem crazy ass mouth organ music... that reminds me, i've been wanting one of thsoe for a long time, haha...
12/24/07
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atum
maybe you blew into it wrong.
12/26/07
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applaud
Peter Sculthorpe, the Australian composer,
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says that Gagaku is the greatest music ever made.
12/26/07
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cloudburst
dude in chair @ 1:06 is totally saying "bollocks! where's the bar?"
 wonderful venue. wish we had something like that in portland.
01/08/08
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sclr
i really like traditional chinese instruments. i would love to learn the guqin.
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