Japanese Postwar Underground Music

 

 

1. Advances in Avant-garde art and music:

 

Gutai

 

• Kazuo Shiraga's "Challenging Mud" (1955)

 

Jikken Kobo (experimental workshop)

 

Hi Red Center

• The Roof Event (11/1964)

 

Group Ongaku

•  

 

Others

• Yayoi Kusama
• Tatsumi Hijikata 

 

 

Musique Concrete

 

• any and all sounds belong in the musical vocabulary
• using recorded sounds along with live ones (sampling)
• importance of play

 

Stockhausen

• Stockhausen composition
• Toshi Ichiyanagi: The Source and Still Time II 
• Also, today he is involved in The Ensemble Origin

   

   

  Toshiro Mayuzumi
• Takehisa Kosugi

 

* This also began the use of traditional Japanese instruments in avant-garde music

• Koto
• Shamisen
• Biwa

 

Rock and Roll Enters:

 

The Beatles

 

The Ventures

 

James Bond Style Music

 

• Akiko Wada
• Emi Jackson

 

Group Sounds

 

• The Golden Cups
• The Carnabeats
• The Dynamites
• The Mops

 

Activism and Music Together

 

Folk Guerilla

 

• A subset of the folk music scene ensconced in the coffeehouses and bars of Shinjuku

 

The Tipping Point

 

The musical "Hair"

• put on in 1970
• preparations took 6 months
• The night before the show was to open, the cast was busted for drugs.
• Free jazzers, rockers, Group Sounds, and performance artists all got to collaborate.

 

 

New Rock

 

• Flower Travellin' Band
• Les Rallizes Denudes
• Speed, Glue & Shinki
• Taj Mahal Travellers
• Far East Family Band

 

 

Keeping the Flame Burning in the 80's and 90's

 

 

Punk/Noise/Other

 

• Ghost
• Fushitsusha
• Magical Power Mako
• Maher Shalal Hash Baz
• Ruins
• Acid Mothers Temple
• Melt-Banana
• Boredoms (any of their permutations)

 

 

---

 

Article on Gutai and Hi Red

 

General Art Happenings Article

 

Musique Concrete on Wikipedia

 

Julian Cope's Japrocksampler page

 

Class CD Listings:

 

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

Spring 2008

Fall 2007