is a Japanese

multi-instrumentalist A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays two or more musical instruments at a professional level of proficiency. Also known as doubling, the practice allows greater ensemble flexibility and more efficient employment of musicians, where ...

and

music historian Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view. In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history o ...

. He is also sometimes known as Toshi Tsuchitori.

Biography

Tsuchitori was born in 1950 in Tadotsu, Kagawa. He was introduced to music through percussion, and began playing festival

taiko are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called and to the form of ensemble drumming m ...

at a young age. As a teen, he played

modern jazz Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

. In the early 1970s, he started his career as an avant-garde jazz percussionist and came to collaborate with Kondō Toshinori, Takagi Mototeru,

Oki Kano , known professionally as OKI, is a Japanese musician of Ainu ancestry. He was born in Hokkaido, and grew up in Kanagawa Prefecture. He studied industrial arts at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. His father, Bikki Sunazawa, ...

, and others. He has also performed with dancers such as Ōno Kazuo and musicians from outside the country including Derek Bailey and

Milford Graves Milford Graves (August 20, 1941 – February 12, 2021) was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, Professor Emeritus of Music, researcher/inventor, visual artist/sculptor, gardener/herbalist, and martial artist. Graves was noteworthy for his e ...

. Beginning in 1976, Tsuchitori composed theatrical scores for the works of

Peter Brook Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shak ...

. In 1981, while studying native

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

from Asia and Africa, he met the

shamisen The , also known as the or (all meaning "three strings"), is a three-stringed traditional Japanese musical instrument derived from the Chinese instrument . It is played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usual ...

player Momoyama Harue, the last disciple of . In 1987, he and Momoyama established the record label in Gujō-Hachiman,

Gifu Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Gifu Prefecture has a population of 1,991,390 () and has a geographic area of . Gifu Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to the north; Ishikawa Prefecture to the northwest, F ...

as a base for their activities. From 1988 to 1998, Tsuchitori produced and performed in the "Ryūkō Gakusha Festival" every summer, an event featuring performances based on local folk tales and legends of

Mino Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today southern Gifu Prefecture. Mino was bordered by Ōmi to the west, Echizen and Hida to the north, and Shinano to the east, and Ise, Mikawa, and Owari to the south. Its abbreviat ...

. Musicians and dancers were invited from across the country. Around this time, Tsuchitori was also involved in a series of projects aiming to recreate prehistoric Japanese music. In the early 2000s, he recorded reconstructed

paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

music in the Cougnac Cave near Payrignac,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. He is currently researching the songs left by musicians of the Meiji and Taishō eras, particularly

Soeda Azenbō Soeda ( ja, 添田) may refer to: People * Go Soeda (born 1984), Japanese tennis player * Takashi Soedaborn 1993), Japanese football player Places * Soeda, Fukuoka is a town located in Tagawa District, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of 2016, t ...

but also including Hisada Kiseki, Iboshi Hokuto, and Nagai Yoshi. Tsuchitori has done live performances of Azenbō's songs as well as uploaded numerous recordings of the songs to his

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

page.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsuchitori, Toshiyuki 1950 births Living people Japanese musicians Musicians from Kagawa Prefecture People from Kagawa Prefecture Enka singers