Oshu Saji

Shakuhachi player Joseph Browning playing Oshu Saji (trad. Japanese) at the National Concert Hall, Dublin as part of Ergodos Festival 2009. In his introduction, he says, ‘This is an old Japanese piece… It’s shaped like three valleys, it starts very low, goes very high and goes low. So it looks like hills and valleys. And, there’s lots of undulating vibrato in the hills and valleys, which is supposed to sound like shomyo, Japanese Buddhist chant… perhaps.’