The Onkyo music movement or (translation: "reverberation of sound"
[Cox, Christoph and Warner, Daniel, eds. (2004). ''Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music'', p.413. .]) is a form of
free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...
, emerging from Japan in the late 1990s. Onkyō can be translated as "sound, noise, echo". Some artists commonly associated with Onkyō include
Toshimaru Nakamura
Toshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician, active in free improvisation and Japanese Onkyokei, onkyo.
He began his career playing rock and roll guitar, but gradually explored other types of music, even abandoning guitar, and started working on ...
,
Tetuzi Akiyama
Tetuzi Akiyama (Akiyama Tetsuji) (born 13 April 1964) is a Japanese guitarist, violinist, and instrument-maker.
Akiyama formed the improvisation group Madhar in 1987, and the classical ensemble Hikyo String Quintet in 1994 (which also included T ...
,
Sachiko M
Sachiko Matsubara (Japanese: 松原 幸子; born 1973), better known by her stage name Sachiko M, is a Japanese musician. Her first solo album, ''Sine Wave Solo'', was released in 1999. Working in collaboration with Ami Yoshida under the name Cosmo ...
, and
Taku Sugimoto
Taku Sugimoto, born December 20, 1965, in Tokyo, is a Japanese guitarist.
He initially gained attention in the late 1990s for his restrained, melodic playing, unusual in the world of free improvisation. Critic Bruce Russell describes this era o ...
, among others.
The Off Site, a venue in Tokyo, is home to the Onkyo music movement, which is characterized by improvisation,
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
, and "quiet
noise
Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...
". Onkyo improvisation, "explores the fine-grained
textural details of
acoustic and
electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
sound".
It influenced the development of
electroacoustic improvisation
Live electronic music (also known as live electronics) is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the pr ...
, or EAI, a genre with which it is strongly intertwined. The transnational circulation of onkyo also influenced its representation as a form of "Japanese new music," despite claims by its authors that onkyo had little to do with Japanese cultural identity.
[Novak, David (2010). "Playing Off Site: The Untranslation of Onkyo." 'Asian Music''41(1):36-60.]
See also
*
Japanoise
, a portmanteau of "Japanese" and "noise", is the noise music scene of Japan.
Nick Cain of ''The Wire'' identifies the "primacy of Japanese Noise artists like Merzbow, Hijokaidan and Incapacitants as one of the major developments in noise music s ...
*
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
References
External links
*
{{Music of Japan
Free improvisation
Japanese styles of music
Minimal music