Tatsu Aoki & The Toyoaki Ensemble at Chicago Jazz Festival

Tatsu Aoki (C) and The Toyoaki Ensemble at the Chicago Jazz Festival. (From L to R) Lori Ashikawa, Mai Sugimoto, Aoki, Tadamichi Hosokawa and Kioto Aoki

    Shamisen-jazz group The Toyoaki Ensemble, led by Chicago-based Japanese musician Tatsu Aoki, presented its unique amalgam of Chicago jazz and traditional Japanese chamber music during the Chicago Jazz Festival in September. (Shamisen is a traditional Japanese three-string lute.)

    Aoki and his ensemble performed at the Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center on Sept. 1, the opening day of the four-day event.

    Joined by a wide breadth of musicians each year, the Chicago Jazz Festival is held on the Labor Day weekend to celebrate “all forms of jazz.” It’s an opportunity for local, national and international artists to showcase their talent through free performances at multiple Chicago venues. 

    Aoki is originally from a family of geisha house and grew up with “Ozashiki” chamber music, which is typically played by geishas to entertain their clients. The Toyoaki Ensemble is the derivative of The MIYUMI Project, one of Aoki’s many musical involvements, and focuses on drawing upon the aesthetics of Japanese traditional music and Chicago’s creative jazz. The one-hour presentation featured Aoki (electric shamisen), Lori Ashikawa (violin), Mai Sugimoto (alto sax), Tadamichi Hosokawa (bass), and Kioto Aoki (Japanese taiko drums).

    The newly-formed ensemble debuted with five “structured improvisational pieces” including: Jugoya; Edoya; Short Duet by Kioto & Mai; Kakinabe; and Episode 4.

    While pieces like Edoya and Jugoya, taken from the Japanese tradition of full-moon viewing set in September, conjured up an image of a serene autumn night, the ear-piercing, Jimi Hendrix-esque electric shamisen sound complemented the sentiment along with the unsettling yet compelling alto sax, the delicate violin, the elegant taiko and the consistent bass that weaved all the rest together.

    It was certainly a very unusual and interesting jazz experience.

What is Shamisen Jazz? A Conversation with Tatsu Aoki

Q: Your presentation today was so unconventional, speaking in terms of popular jazz. Was it your main theme today – Japanese-flavored jazz?

Aoki: Well, yes. We [the Toyoaki Ensemble] got together for the purpose of performing at today’s festival. A Japanese-only or Japanese-American-only band has never participated in the festival, so this is something new.

Q: You are known as a creator of avant-garde music that combines Japanese and Western sounds, and possibilities are endless for you to create something new and different. What did you aim to achieve with this ensemble of yours?

Tatsu Aoki plays shamisen at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Aoki: I’ve tried a variety of possibilities for shamisen in my career so far, from the traditional to shamisen in avant-garde jazz to shamisen in alternative rock. Now, I wanted to create a jazz band that plays traditional shamisen pieces.

    I come from a family of a geisha house, and am very familiar with traditional shamisen genres like “Nagauta” and “Kouta.” [With the Toyoaki Ensemble,] I took those genres and tried to play them in a jazz setting. It’s a “shamisen jazz band” in short.

Q: But jazz is usually played in eight beats or 16 beats, isn’t it? Can Ozashiki music fit in a jazz rhythm?

Aoki: That’s what everybody usually thinks about mainstream jazz. Rock and jazz have their alternative versions. We can be an alternative, too, outside of mainstream jazz. People who come to see us perform don’t expect to hear mainstream jazz.

Q: Jazz is said to have originated from the African American experiences. Does shamisen jazz reflect a voice of minority, too?

Aoki: Ozashiki shamisen – the genre of shamisen as a chamber music – have always been regarded a rank lower than the Japanese classical dance and Kabuki music such as Nagauta, Kiyomoto and Tokiwazu. It’s never been part of the mainstream shamisen music.

    It’s the same thing with jazz. Jazz and rock’n’ roll were once outsiders in the world of music, where the Western classical music was the indisputable mainstream. Today, there are genres like mainstream jazz and mainstream rock, along with unconventional jazz and rock.

    The Chicago Jazz Festival invited avant-garde bands like the MIYUMI Project to perform 15 years ago. And then it began featuring more mainstream performers as new generations of musicians took over the jazz scene.

    This year, the festival welcomed our shamisen jazz band. It’s an indication to me that there are people who understand something different [like us]. It’s a quite advancement from 30 years ago, I think.

Lori Ashikawa (L) and Mai Sugimoto

Tadamichi Hosokawa

Kioto Aoki

    Recently, we see a growing trend to accept more inclusion, more cultural diversity. But still, you see almost no Asian jazz bands [in the program].

Q: Maybe it’s because Japanese and other Asian music is difficult to fit in the rhythm of jazz.

Aoki: But you don’t have to make it fit, you see? Our approach is called avant-garde jazz. In fact, what we bring [into jazz] is a rhythm drawn from a different genre of music.

    We don’t have the [Western type of] drums in our shamisen jazz band, just a Japanese taiko drum. So, conventional jazz listeners might feel that they can’t swing without the beat from the drum set. But if we add a drum set to our ensemble, that will kill “ma” [an interval] that’s unique to Japanese and other Asian music.

This [shamisen jazz] might not be easily understood by a broad range of jazz fans. It’s something quite different from popular jazz, after all.

Q: As an artist, you have created such a wide variety of music featuring Japanese musical instruments over the past 20-30 years, and your recognition and achievements have vouched for your experimental creations to be accepted to mainstream stages. That is a significant asset for the Japanese community here. We wish you a continuing success in your further endeavors. 

  Thank you very much for your time today.