A note from our friend and shakuhachiist Jeff Cairns:
Trio CaBiKi will be doing three shows around the beginning of August in Kumamoto: July 31st: TEDxKumamoto-shi; August 1st: Kamitori Pavilion Avant Garden; and August 3rd: Cafe Salon Maia. We will be offering up what we do best: Improvisation. Have you ever heard Korean shamanic drumming with theremin and shakuhachi? Now is your chance! Dong-Won Kim, Jeff Bird and Jeff Cairns are Trio CaBiKi.
A note from the editor, William: For the etymologically bent, the name shakuhachi means “1.8 shaku,” referring to its length. It is a compound of two words: shaku (尺), an almost-archaic unit (many traditional Japanese carpenters still use the system; a tatami size is just under 20 square shaku to accommodate floor molding) equal to 30.3 centimeters (about a foot) and subdivided into ten subunits called “sun” （寸). Hachi (八) means “eight” - here, eight sun, or eight-tenths of a shaku. Thus, “shaku-hachi” means “one shaku eight sun” (almost 55 centimeters), the standard length of a shakuhachi. Though shakuhachi vary in length from about 1.3 shaku up to 3.3 shaku, all are referred to as “shakuhachi”.