A musician who spent his youth in New York City in the hot late 60s, made his debut in Tokyo in the 80s, and since then has been tirelessly active and progressive, and continues to struggle outside the society of Japan. (Outside Society)
Appearing in the book: Yokoo Tadanori, Shuji Terayama, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kishin Shinoyama, Seiji Ozawa, Yukio Mishima, Miles Davis, Andy Warhol, Yuji Takahashi, Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Lacy, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Bruford, Keiji Haino, Mutsuro Takahashi, John Zorn, Peter Hammill, Maddy Prior, Dave Mattacks, Horace Silver, John Cage, Terry Riley, Kazue Sawai, Hiromi Ohta, EPO, John Cale...
This book describes Ayuo Takahashis growing up during the socially turbulent 1960s in New York City. The book will be most appreciated by individuals who are interested in Asian culture and the problems that Western-educated Asians confront when they return to their ancestral homelands.
Recenzijos
During my stay in New York City in the 60s and 70s, I often attended rock concerts with this young friend. He was still in the early grades of elementary school, but his knowledge was that of an expert. I was afraid that Ayuos talent might turn him into a madman, but his reasoning transformed him into a musical genius. The Japanese rock scene has much, much more to learn from him. -Yokoo Tadanori, artist.
I started reading the book as soon as I received it. Wow! Interesting. Nationality. Race. About family. About art. About the times. In many ways, these are topics that should be talked about. Ayuos writing is totally frank, totally unadorned, but driven by a certain rhythm and tension. It is a quiet testimony. It overflows with emotion. The dimension of scale is unique and universal. This is a book that gradually opens ones eyes to what it means to actually live the essence of art. It is a book that seems to predict a certain future. Yes, I believe that people who live in the Outside Society will be the bearers of art and culture in the future. Ayuo is one of them, a kind of pioneer. Therefore, he wears the pain and sorrow of a pioneer. I feel that this, hand in hand with his extremely intellectual sensitivity, is also the core of his art. -Ken Awazu, art producer.
When Ayuo invited me to become involved in his project Songs from a Eurasian Journey, I was delighted to be able to do so. We share a love of early music, both in itself and as an exemplary of common origin. When we hear the old stuff, we are potentially tapped into more than merely musical history and there is a sense of homogeneity in more than simply musical modes. Its a fascinating exercise to take music from the 6th and 7th centuries (among others) in various different cultures, combine them together, compare and contrast them with each other and emerge with something truly new, yet strangely familiar. Today (2025) I can say that working with Ayuo was always a pleasure and fun and also quite serious. All in all, that makes for proper work. -Peter Hammill, musician.
What a triumph it is to see the English publication of Ayuo Takahashis autobiography, which uniquely mirrors the eclecticism of Ayuos life in composition, film-scoring, illustration, and poetry, as well as his remarkable paradoxical life experience growing up between two cultures. One of the through lines in Ayuos work is identity itself, and the journey toward selfhood and radicalism through art. Finally, we have a book that is both life-affirming for the Asian Diaspora and deeply informative in capturing the multicultural music and art scene during the 1960s through the 2000s. -Tristan Teshigahara Pollack, composer, musician, and writer.
The trajectory of Ayuo Takahashis biography is boundlessin wedding the history of his adolescence with interviews, musical theory, and essays on multiple fields of art, his work clinches on a fundamental humanism beyond geographic borders. As an Asian-Canadian reader, I have found this book to encompass realms of music, film, science, and self-reflection; in doing so, Ayuo manifests a tome of incredible testimonyporing over the very way we as human beings interact and engage with one another. -Hsu Jui-Ting, radio show host, musician, and writer.
Part I.
1. My first memory/Age 3, plane trip to Berlin/Kennedy
Assassination/New York.
2. The Beatles/Rhythm and sound.
3. New York in the
late 1960s/My mothers artist friends (Yokoo Tadanori, Shuji Terayama,
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kishin Shinoyama, Mutsuo Takahashi, etc.)/The Filmore
East/Electric Circus/Terry Riley/John Cage and Marcel Duchamp/Living
Theater/Horace Silver/Joan Gilberto/Thelonius Monk/Muddy Waters.
4. Started
learning guitar/1968: The year of changes/My parents divorce/Psychedelic
rock/Started writing poetry/Open-tuning guitar.
5. My mothers marriage to
Mansour Malekpour/Jethro Tull/Ten Years After/Alice Cooper/Emerson, Lake &
Palmer/Pink Floyd/Fairport Convention/Earth, Wind, and Fire/Steely Dan/The
Who and more.
6. Influences from Peter Gabriels performances.
7. David, the
actor/Experimental films/The Strawbs.
8. The junior high school I
attended/Studying medieval European history/Teaching methods that make the
students think for themselves/The Italian school in my neighborhood.
9. The
disintegration of my family life/Suddenly leaving
New York City in
1975. 10. Arrival in Tokyo/Father, Yuji
Takahashi/Stepmother,
Karen/Enrollment in Yokohama International School.
11. My fathers
recordings/Left-wing political activists began to visit our
residence/Takehisa Kosugi/Steve Lacy/Aquirax Aida/Meeting Ryuichi Sakamoto.
12. Going to Yokohama International High School/Friends/Cannabis/LSD/The
Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis.
13. Father forces me to drop out from
high school for
political reasons/Separated from father/The music activities in Tokyo in the
late 1970s/Keiji Haino/Kichijoji Minor/Live performances at Seibu Auditorium,
Kyoto University/Aunt Sally.
14. Performances with Junichi Kawahara, Chie
Mukai,
Takeo Suzuki, Takuya Nishimura and others in the early 1980s/Kansai tour.
15.
1983, Record debut is decided/First solo album, Carmina/Interviews where
communication is not established/Morgan Fisher/Moonriders.
16. 1984, signing
with MIDI records.
17. Silent Film album/The misunderstood promotion/Memory
Theatre album.
18. Departure to record in the UK in the summer of
1986/Stopover in New York City/John Zorn/Arrival in London/AMM/David
Lord/Fairport Convention/Photographer Richard Haughton/Steeleye Span and
Renaissance in concert/Recordings at Crescent Studios/Dave Mattacks/Maddy
Prior/Peter Knight.
19. Meeting Peter Hammill/Visit to Peter Hammills
house/Interview with Peter Hammill.
20. Completion of the album, Nova
Carmina/Seeing Steve Marriott live.
21. Prolific creation in neurotic states.
22. 1987, Producing Kazue Sawais album, Eye to Eye/David Lord/Hiromi
Ota/Peter Hammill/Guy Evans/Sara Jane Morris/James Warren.
23. The Hungerford
massacre/J. G. Ballard.
24. From 1990 to now. Part II. Rock concerts I saw
before and after
1970. The Kinks. About Yes. Bill Bruford interview. I met
Andy Warhol when I was in the fifth grade. The school I went to in New York
City. Winter
1983. End of Earth. Part III. I dont understand the Japanese.
Why I dont understand the Japanese.
Part IV. Tokyo and my mother in the 1950s and early 1960s. Questions of
identity in Hiroshi Teshigaharas films and Kobo Abes novels. Toru
Takemitsus ear for sound. What is psychedelic? Yokoo Tadanori, Toshi
Ichiyanagi, and the psychedelic music scene. Taj Mahal Travellers and
Takehisa Kosugi. John Cale Interview (from 2001): A musical journey from
Xenakis, La Monte Young, Velvet Underground, and back to his roots in Wales.
Yukio Mishima. The experience of death. Persian classical music and my
stepfather, Mansour. Part V. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and John Cage. Music
and mythology. Folk society. About rhythm. The rhythm of the words we speak
affects the rhythmic sense of the person who speaks them. The difference
between English and Japanese lyrics. Classical musics influence in Rock
music. Influences from Joni Mitchell and my mono opera Izutsu. Yokoo
Tadanori: The hometown is the source of creation. Part VI. Outside Society:
People Without a CountryThe poem. Discography. About the Author.
Ayuo Takahashi is a musician (songwriter, lyricist, composer, vocalist, and guitarist) with over 20 albums released in Japan and the United States. Ayuo grew up in New York during the 1960s, interacting with many cultural figures while still a child including Seiji Ozawa, Toru Takemitsu, Yokoo Tadanori, Hiroshi Teshigahara, John Cage, and others. He has recordings with Ryuichi Sakamoto, John Zorn, and Peter Hammill, among others, released on JVC, Tzadik, MIDI, Epic-Sony, and other labels. He continues to create works based on medieval mythology and contemporary literature. In recent years, Ayuo's work has increasingly included music theater and chamber music mixed with dance and theatrical elements. He is also a journalist writing about music, films, and culture for magazines in Japan. In 2020, the compilation album "Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient Music," which includes Ayuos composition "Nagareru," was nominated for a U.S. Grammy Award. His recent works are available at ayuo.bandcamp.com.
