Reading · Tanya Shaffer's Off-Leash Chronicles

Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Be your note.
I’ll show you how it’s enough.
- Rumi, “Each Note,” Translated by Coleman Barks

I was raised to be exceptional, a standout, a star. Now all I want is to be a reed.

In February of 2024, I entered Kath Weider’s studio for the first time to attend her Vocal Improv Lab.

I’ve sung all my life. I was three years old when I got up onstage for the first time to duet with an adult on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I was six when I joined a choir, eight when I performed in my first musical. I’ve sung for audiences large and small. Singing has brought me tremendous joy, yet there was always an element of performance to it. Something about listening to the sound of my own voice, and finding it either wanting or good. Even when there was no one around, there was an imaginary audience, an imaginary stage.

When I sing with my friends in Vocal Improv Lab, it isn’t about me. It’s about us, and it’s about something larger than us. Rumi called it God. I might call it the Life Force.

In vocal improvisation, you use your voice to create something out of nothing. It involves melody, harmony, and rhythm. It can also involve words. There are many forms you can use to do this as a group, but my favorite is simply an open jam. One person begins, usually with a short repeating pattern, and the rest of the group joins in, one by one, adding their voices to the mix. Each person finds their place within the music, whether by strengthening an existing line; adding a harmony, counterpoint, or rhythmic element; or layering a free-form solo over the top.

Our group of eight improvisers has been working together for two and a half years now. During that time, we’ve gotten to know each other as friends and as singers. Our voices themselves have become friends. We walk into a room and start jamming before saying hello. Sometimes our jam grows to a roaring crescendo then falls to a gorgeous softness before ending by unspoken mutual agreement. At other times, silliness enters the circle and we break up laughing in the middle of a song. In every case, we are nourished by our collective sound.

To participate in vocal improv, I needed to check my ego at the door. By ego, I don’t just mean the inflated self-esteem we call egotism. I mean the attachment to a fixed idea of myself that must be protected.

If I’m attached to ego, I run the dual risk of pushing my voice too far forward or holding it too far back. I might sing loudly and overbalance my part or sing softly and never step into a solo. In either case, ego is calling the shots, whether by showing off in hopes of garnering praise or staying hidden out of fear of losing others’ regard.

Unlearning a lifetime’s attachment to ego is not an easy task. But when I’m able to manage it, even for a short while, the rewards are profound. I’ve never experienced anything more exhilarating than losing myself in the sound of a group and allowing the music to carry us. When this occurs, I am transported. I am transformed.

In poem after poem, Rumi described humans as hollow reeds through which God blows. In vocal improv, I seek to embody this notion. To allow the music of the Life Force to move through me without my interference, so that when a melody comes, I don’t block it. I step forward and allow my voice to embody the melody until it reaches its natural end. When it’s finished, I step back and allow the voices of others to rise, while I take on a supporting role or drop for a while into silence.

As Rumi tells it, ever since we individual reeds were cut from our reed-bed, our song has been a plaintive one: “Anyone pulled from a source / longs to go back.” The song itself is, “body flowing out of spirit / spirit up from body…hurt and salve combining.”

Rumi was not alone in acknowledging the fundamental pain of existence. C.S. Lewis named it too when he wrote that literary experience “heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.”

When I blend my voice with the voices of others, I feel the world’s yearning moving through me and around me as sound. My longing is not separate from the planet’s longing, just as my voice is not separate from this music, but a part of it. And as Rumi stated, the act of embodying it is both hurt and salve.

Like C.S. Lewis, Rumi acknowledges that being a reed-flute is a privilege as well as a burden.

Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.

Aren’t we lucky, he seems to ask, to be animated by life’s sacred breath?

In thinking about this, I picture a set of Andean panpipes. They are made from between seven and twenty-three hollow tubes, each playing a different note. The more tubes, the wider the range of music the instrument can create. If you take a single tube out of the middle, a crucial note will be lost.

In vocal improv, as a small but essential piece of a whole, you must learn when to solo, when to support, and when to remain silent. This depends on a kind of full-body listening. Occupying your space within the circle of song, you must attune your physical being to the vibrations rippling through the group. Aligned harmonies create a satisfying pulse. Dissonance manifests as a delicious agitation, causing hairs all along your skin to bristle up. Sliding in and out of dissonance is a form of play, a teasing around the edges of what the form can hold.

We live in chaotic times. You may wonder what you, a single reed, can do in the face of the great buffeting winds that are blowing our planet apart. Perhaps you fear that you have nothing to add to the overwhelming, cacophonous roar.

But wait. Stop. Stand very, very still. Set aside ego’s fear and disappointment and engage in the kind of listening that demands all your focus, all your love. Do you hear the essential song? Listen until you sense an opening, a space that only you can fill. Then step forward and fill it.

Claim your solo.

Sing.

On Becoming a Reed

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