The Taj Mahal Travellers (also given variously as Taj Mahal Travelers, Taj-Mahal Travellers, etc.) were a

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

ensemble founded in 1969 by former Group Ongaku leader and

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

member

Takehisa Kosugi was a Japanese composer, violinist and artist associated with the Fluxus movement. Biography Kosugi studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated in 1962. He first became drawn to music listening to his father play har ...

. The rest of the group were several years younger than Kosugi, and were all inspired by the spirit of the day. They chose mainly to perform their music outdoors, often on beaches and hilltops, creating spontaneously

improvised Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

drones (compare with

Dronology Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmon ...

), often using standard musical instruments, albeit in unconventional ways (e.g., a bowed

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

placed flat on its back). The group's sound was heavily reliant on electronic processing, particularly delay effects.

Personnel

electric violin An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fi ...

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...

etc. * Ryo Koike: electric double bass,

santur The santur (also ''santūr'', ''santour'', ''santoor'') ( fa, سنتور), is a hammered dulcimer of Iranian origins.--- Rashid, Subhi Anwar (1989). ''Al-ʼĀlāt al-musīqīyya al-muṣāhiba lil-Maqām al-ʻIrāqī''. Baghdad: Matbaʻat al-ʻU ...

, voice, etc. * Yukio Tsuchiya:

tuba The tuba (; ) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th century, making it one of the ne ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, etc. * Seiji Nagai:

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

, Mini-Korg

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

tympani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...

, etc. * Michihiro Kimura: voice, percussion,

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, etc. * Tokio Hasegawa: voice, percussion, etc. * Kinji Hayashi: electronic technique

Discography

* ''Live Stockholm July 1971'' ** First issue (unauthorized): Double CD, Drone Syndicate DS-01/02, 2001 ** Second issue (authorized): Double CD, Super Fuji Discs FJSP-51/52, 2008 * '' July 15, 1972'' **

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

, CBS Japan SOCM-95, 1972 ** Re-issue: CD,

Showboat A showboat, or show boat, was a floating theater that traveled along the waterways of the United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to bring culture and entertainment to the inhabitants of river frontiers. Showboats were a ...

SWAX-501, 2002 * ''Oz Days Live'' Compilation also featuring Les Rallizes Denudes and Acid Seven Group (Taj Mahal Travellers has one track only) ** Double LP, with

Les Rallizes Dénudés were a Japanese rock band formed in 1967 at Kyoto's Doshisha University. History ''Les Rallizes Dénudés ''was formed in 1967 by a group of students at Kyoto's Doshisha University. Initially, the band planned to record in a studio, but after ...

, 1973 * ''August 1974'' ** Double LP, CBS Japan OP-7147-8-N, 1975 ** Re-issue: Double CD,

P-Vine P-Vine Records is an independent record label based in Tokyo, Japan. History It was started in 1976 by Blues Interactions, a firm founded in 1975 by Yasufumi Higurashi and Akira Kochi, as a record label focused on black music. The label name c ...

PCD-1463/4, 1998

External links

*
Discography/Biography
at SoundOhm

at Ubu.com Japanese rock music groups Japanese experimental musical groups Musical groups established in 1969 {{Japan-band-stub