Name: Sape

Region: Borneo, Malaysia, South East Asia

Tuning: D-B-D"-B"

Source: Randy Raine Reusch

Acquisition: Year 2004/2005.

Description: The sape is a boat shaped lute, having usually or 3 or 4 strings, some rare cases may have eight strings. My teacher Randy Raine Reusch has a sape (example) in his collection having 5 strings (his sample is from Kalimantan) but this is very rare and he found it in an antique shop in Sarawak somewhere. My example is a common or almost now standard tyepe of sape having 4 strings. The sape is also sometimes made electric with custom made pickups since the strings are of metal, packaging wire often. The Sape is a boat lute, having a short neck. Its called boat lute because shaped like one and carved like one.

The Sape is played by the Kenya Kayan nation in Borneo, particularly or mostly in the Malaysian side of Borneo. When playing the instrument the sape's friets are movable the method of performing this is they are attached to the sape or stuck on with a susbstance called "Ksut" (this word though is Thai) but the material or substance though is the same.

I believe its something of a type of resin, along with ashes and such. Also to add, the frets are movable because the musicians utilize this for when peforming certain melodies that may require a particular scale arranged for the melody played. The playing of the sape is quite simple despite the sound of the frets, the sape is a single stringed instrument and the other strings are sympathetic strings. there are currently 35 traditional pieces but the repertoire is slowly increasing (citation from http://www.asza.com/isape.html, R3)