is a Japanese musician, known primarily for his work with

Flower Travellin' Band was a Japanese rock band that was formed in 1967. They were connected to Japan's counterculture movement and noted for their mixture of early heavy metal with psychedelic and progressive rock. They received wide acclaim from critics but fail ...

and for creating the

sitarla is a Japanese musician, known primarily for his work with Flower Travellin' Band and for creating the sitarla instrument. A guitarist and sitar player for nearly forty years, he now exclusively plays the sitarla, an instrument he invented in 2 ...

instrument. A guitarist and

sitar The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...

player for nearly forty years, he now exclusively plays the sitarla, an instrument he invented in 2000 that combines aspects of a sitar with an electric guitar. Guitarists

Akira Takasaki is a Japanese musician. He is best known as the lead guitarist and sole constant member of the heavy metal band Loudness. He is also the guitarist of the band Lazy, with which he first rose to prominence in the 1970s. Career He started his ...

, Rolly, and

Mikael Åkerfeldt Lars Mikael Åkerfeldt (; born 17 April 1974)Mikael Åkerfeldt
, Op ...

have cited him as an influence.

Career

Ishima started playing guitar at 19, at the behest of a friend who wanted to be in a band. His first group was in his native Sapporo shortly after graduating high school. He moved to Tokyo and formed the

group sounds , often abbreviated as GS, is a genre of Japanese rock music which became popular in the mid to late 1960s and initiated the fusion of Japanese '' kayōkyoku'' music and Western rock music. Their music production techniques were regarded as playi ...

band The Beavers in 1966, who had released four albums and one single but had not had major success. Ishima began playing sitar at 24, after researching

Gábor Szabó Gábor István Szabó (March 8, 1936 – February 26, 1982) was a Hungarian American guitarist whose style incorporated jazz, pop, rock, and Hungarian music. Early years Szabó was born in Budapest, Hungary. He began playing guitar at the age ...

at the suggestion of a woman and learning that the jazz guitarist also played this instrument he had never heard of. He taught himself from

Ravi Shankar Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North Ind ...

's 1968 book ''My Music, My Life'', looking up the Japanese translations for the English words. In 1969, while in the

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

band Mystic Morning with

Joe Yamanaka , better known as , was a Japanese singer and actor. He is known for both his work with Flower Travellin' Band and as a solo musician; singing at a vocal range of three octaves. As an actor, he appeared in many television shows and movies, such ...

, the two of them were scouted by Yuya Uchida for

. When they went on hiatus in 1973, Ishima recorded the solo album ''One Day'' and joined a group called Trans Am. After a few years off, he followed this with the Donjuan R&R Band with Kenichi Hagiwara. During the 1980s he was in Co-Colo alongside

Kenji Sawada is a Japanese singer, composer, lyricist and actor, best known for being the vocalist for the Japanese rock band The Tigers. Nicknamed because of his self-professed adoration of Julie Andrews, he was born in Tsunoi, Iwami (now part of Totto ...

and Nobuhiko Shinohara, before being fired. Ishima quit guitar in 1990, citing money problems. After a 40-minute sitar lesson from

Manilal Nag Pandit Manilal Nag (born 16 August 1939) is an Indian classical sitar player and an exponent of the Bishnupur gharana of Bengal. He was given the Padma Shri Award, the fourth highest civilian award in India in 2020. Training and career Nag was ...

during a trip to Japan in 1998, Ishima became a student of Nag's Japanese apprentice. He made a comeback in 2000 exclusively playing the sitarla. That year, he recorded the album ''More-ish'' with the multinational group Pythagoras Party. The improvisational instrumental group View was formed in 2007. At the end of 2007, Flower Travellin' Band officially reunited. Ishima revealed that there were several talks about getting back together prior, but they were all centered around nostalgia, something he has no interest in. It was only when their producer suggested they write new material and play it together with the old songs for a three-year period that a reunion came to fruition. Ishima also said that even though two of the other members had not played in years, they were eager and pushed him into doing it, helped by the fact that his new instrument made the old material interesting.

Sitarla

The is an instrument that combines aspects of the

with the solid body

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

. It was conceptualized by Ishima and created by Masao Nagai in 2000. It is a hollow-bodied instrument, 3 1/2 tones lower than a guitar, with only three existing in the world as of 2008. Ishima said he had the idea for the instrument 15 years prior, but everybody told him he was crazy. He now plays the instrument exclusively, and it replaced his guitar playing in

when they reunited. It is featured on their 2008 album '' We Are Here''. The sitarla was displayed at the 2000

NAMM Show The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

Discography

* ''One Day'' (1973)

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ishima, Hideki 1944 births Living people Sitar players Hindustani instrumentalists Japanese rock guitarists Musicians from Sapporo Japanese multi-instrumentalists 20th-century Japanese guitarists 21st-century Japanese guitarists