Tone Glow 207: Tatsu Aoki

An interview with the Japanese American musician and filmmaker about growing up in a geisha house, the racial divide of Chicago’s jazz scene, and the legendary Asian American musicians of the Bay Area

Tatsu Aoki

Photo courtesy of the artist

Tatsu Aoki (b. 1957) is a Japanese American musician and filmmaker born in Tokyo and based in Chicago. Throughout his decades-long career, Aoki has been on nearly 100 recording projects and has collaborated with a slew of musicians, including those in the AACM (most notably Fred Anderson) and those in the Asian American jazz and improvising scene that was primarily based in the Bay Area. He plays the bass alongside traditional Japanese instruments like the taiko drum and shamisen, and is the founder of MIYUMI Project, one of the first Asian American and African American musical collaborations in the Midwest. The group can be heard accompanying silent-era Japanese films in Chicago.

Aoki is also the founder and artistic director of the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival and the executive director of Asian Improv aRts MidWest (AIRMW), an Asian American cultural arts presenter organization. He also runs the annual Taiko Legacy performance and has devoted his life to the expansion and presentation of Japanese culture throughout Chicago. Having studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under avant-garde filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Aoki also makes experimental films. He currently teaches film and art history at the same school today.

Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Aoki as part of Sound Type, a music festival and writers residency hosted by the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia. The conversation took place on August 3rd, 2024 in front of an audience. Special thanks to Asian Arts Initiative, Anne Ishii, and Joseph Dorsey for making this interview and its transcription possible.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: I know you were born in Japan. Can you paint a picture for me of the space where you were born and raised?

Tatsu Aoki: I was born and raised in downtown Tokyo in a geisha house. My mother was a geisha, and she still sings and plays shamisen music in Japan. So I grew up in an environment with these traditions—of shamisen music, taiko drumming, and classical dance—and I was trained to do this as part of the family business. I’ve come back to these things while here in Chicago, but I didn’t like it back then—I didn’t like this traditional setup, especially in this traditional geisha subculture. It’s seemingly appreciated today, but if you think about the late 1950s and ’60s, none of these things were received well unless you were actually in that particular subculture.

My biological father was a movie producer and he had all these connections to other artists. He sent me to one of these underground theater performances because he knew that I really didn’t like traditional music. It was this dojo where they did these experimental performances, and I met people like Toru Takemitsu, Kobo Abe, and Hiroshi Teshigahara. At that point in my life, I didn’t know it was experimental; I just thought these were contemporary artists. I was also introduced to American avant-garde filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and Peter Kubelka. This was in the midst of the Tokyo underground performing arts movement in the late ’60s and ’70s.

There was the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago who were making Black avant-garde music. I was really blown away by the way they were doing all sorts of stuff, and I wanted to go see that for real. Also, I heard that people like Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka, Ernie Gehr, and Paul Sharits were teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, so I thought I should go there and look at these things. So I left my traditional setup and came to this city. I didn’t think I’d be playing with all these AACM musicians, but I did. I became the bassist for Fred Anderson for over 20 years, and both met and played with many other AACM musicians in that time. I was also taught by Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka, and P. Adams Sitney. I decided to create my own work with both visuals and music, and I suddenly realized that I needed to bring back my own traditional upbringing to make my art. I established a dojo in Chicago to do taiko drumming and shamisen music, and I was also engaged with a Japanese classical dance group, and now we’re under the same organization in Chicago practicing traditional and contemporary arts.

There’s so much you mentioned there that is fascinating. You mentioned how your mother was a geisha and that you didn’t particularly want to be involved with these traditional customs. Can you share any memories you have about your experiences as a child related to this?

It wasn’t a choice to do this; I was born into this family. There was no question of liking it or not because you just started training when young. The strongest memories I have from my childhood, from when I was 3 to 10 years old, are how rigorous the training was. It was very, very strict, and an American today would consider it child abuse (laughter). I was going through that sort of routine for a number of years. It wasn’t a question of whether you would or wouldn’t be a professional—you would play as part of the family, and everything about it had very strict protocols in terms of how to do things and what to say and how to practice. People don’t want to do this anymore, where practice would involve doing the same thing all day long until your teacher told you it was okay and you could quit. I’d just play one note on the shamisen! Those are the sort of routines I remember, and all my peers were crying every day.

You mentioned that you saw all these older experimental Japanese artists. What was it like to be in these spaces compared to this rigorous training you had?

It was very interesting because the place where I was sent to was, and I didn’t realize this until much later, for those in the Japanese Communist Party. They had this very strong nationalist agenda, and these people were making all this experimental art. It was super refreshing to me as someone who was only familiar with traditional music, like, “Whoa, you can do that?” They’d bring in a saxophone, there’d be a Western dancer, you’d see these performances.

I was also listening to a lot of rock music at the time. Like everyone else, I started with The Beatles, but then I went into a lot of British rock, from Led Zeppelin to Deep Purple to Yes, and then there were American rock bands I liked such as Grand Funk Railroad and The Doobie Brothers, but also James Taylor. In the ’70s, Japanese folk rock was influenced by people like James Taylor and Carole King and I listened to all that stuff too. All these experiences are why I decided to come to America.

I was part of a troupe that had eight or nine members performing all the time. Sometimes we had a script, so we’d do this little play with music. I got into this group when I was 10 or 11 years old, and people would say, “Tatsu, play taiko for this, play shamisen for that, and you’re gonna help the dancers.” I was just kind of used for whatever they needed, and it was because they knew I could play music. I did this until I left Japan when I was 19 or 20.

It’s really wild that you were part of this troupe at such a young age. Did you have any mentors who guided you in any fashion?

Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kobo Abe—aside from their political conversations, which I didn’t understand at the time—had these really interesting, acerbic conversations. In Asian traditional culture, the idea of the artist was a new concept. In the traditional Asian performing arts, these people are craftsmen: you do the service, you do a dance, you make something. Geisha music wasn’t considered an art—it was more of a service to customers. Nobody told you that you were an artist. Even the kabuki performers weren’t really considered artists; they were high-class craftsmen. So this notion of art, which had something to do with individualism, was something new to me. These were politically charged people, so they said we’d play this music or do this dance for a specific idea, for society. And then I realized that people like the Art Ensemble of Chicago were making music as political and social statements, too. It was very new and refreshing to me as a kid, and that’s something I learned from these mentors.

Given that you’re talking about Teshigahara and Abe, I’m assuming you had seen films like Woman in the Dunes (1964) and The Face of Another (1966) around this time, is that correct?

Yes.

You had your foot in the door with these traditional artforms, which were obviously Japanese, but did you sense a Japanese quality in all this new stuff you were exposed to? Did it feel like a new form of Japanese expression? Though of course there was a dialogue between Japanese and European cinema at the time.

No, I didn’t realize that stuff until much later in life, but I did absorb a lot of things. These people were telling me, like, “Look at Godard and Truffaut and don’t look at Hollywood!” They were having us focus on specific stylistic choices.

How did you decide to eventually go to America? Was this a snap decision or had you been thinking about it for a while?

I wanted to go for a long, long time. America looked really great—it looked free. And I had seen these Hollywood movies, and the image of Hollywood’s America was what we got, but then I came over here and realized it wasn’t like those movies at all (laughter). I really loved this one film, Scarecrow (1973), that had a young Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. It’s a screwed-up daddy story (laughter). And it’s a road movie, and it was like, wow… America is great.

Do you remember the first time you felt disenchanted with America?

I first went to LA, and then I went to New York for a while, and now I’m here in Chicago. But before I came to Chicago, I did these English-intensive courses at Ohio University, which is in Athens. When you’re traveling around the Midwest, you go to restaurants and places like that and realize that you’re not really welcome. This sort of thing didn’t happen in the Hollywood movies I saw—people were always welcome, people were free. I saw a lot of racism against me, and I remember both white and Black people cracking these Chinese jokes because they saw this young, Asian foreign student. They thought it was funny. I began to question the level of respect I could get here in America. Things were okay on campus, though, because I was just part of the international group. But once you stepped outside, I realized that I wasn’t welcome.

Did you have a community of Asian people around you that helped you feel welcome?

Not for a while. For the first four or five years in America, I hung out with this group of guys who were cool. I’m still friends with one of them—he represented the sort of white people who were really understanding. His name is Andrew [Ellis] Johnson, he’s a painter who teaches at Carnegie Mellon.

What about this group of friends made them seem cool?

You know how the average American is… not familiar with the world? (laughter). They don’t understand foreign people, but Andrew was intelligent enough to understand that there are other people in the world who speak different languages. In the late ’70s in Ohio, you’d still hear people say things like, “Do Japanese people have light bulbs?” It would partly be a joke, but it was also ignorance.

The Detached (Tatsu Aoki, 2014)

You mentioned that there were these different avant-garde filmmakers teaching at the Art Institute. When did you decide to explore experimental filmmaking yourself?

I always had a regular 8mm camera when I was small. Growing up in a geisha house, especially in the late ’50s and early ’60s, a lot of your clients are American businessmen and military people. I had access to this camera because they would bring it to our house as a souvenir. So I had a regular 8mm camera, a tape recorder, and things like that. I would shoot movies and project them at home—I was doing this when I was small. I didn’t know, though, that small movies like these were art until I met someone like Stan Brakhage. Everybody else that I hung out with taught me about 16mm films, so when we learned that Stan Brakhage was painting on film it was like, “Wow, he’s making a sort of moving painting.” A lot of underground porn movies were also shot on regular and Super 8, so I got to see those as a teenager (laughter). It was like, “Wow, here’s a very different kind of filmmaking.” (laughter).

Were these referred to as “blue movies” back then for you, too?

Yes.

What did you think about them? Did you think about them artistically, or were they just porn movies?

It was both! When you’re a teenager, you’re just excited about all this sexual representation, but the way it was shot was also so fascinating because it was handheld.

Right, there was a DIY basis for all these things. And were you aware of the pink films happening in Japan as well?

For pink films we used to go to the theater, and these were underground, self-produced porn movies that were very experimental. I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie, The Pornographers (1966), but it’s by Shohei Imamura and there are a lot of scenes where these guys are making underground porn movies with a Super 8 camera, and the conversations they have are really true to what it was like.

When you were taught by these filmmakers at the Art Institute, was there anything that stood out about their philosophy with regards to making films?

This whole education was about individualism. I sensed that all around me, with music and my time with Fred Anderson and AACM musicians, and also with Stan Brakhage and these independent experimental filmmakers. They were teaching me that it’s okay to do this or that, that you didn’t have to follow cookie-cutter formulas—just do things in the way you want to express yourself. And while there were technical things we discussed, it was mostly about being yourself. The Art Institute of Chicago is one of those schools where you don’t need to decide on a major; you can do whatever you want. It’s also pass or fail. The great thing about this is that you can be very enthusiastic and successful in what you do, but you can also do nothing and still graduate (laughter). It’s a very extreme and sophisticated education process. I learned a lot from just doing what I wanted to do, and while the Art Institute is a great school, I really learned a lot from the Black musicians I was playing with; they really taught me to just be who I am.

Chicago’s music scene was divided into the North Side with a bunch of white musicians and the South Side with a bunch of Black musicians. Asians weren’t really welcome on the North Side that much. I wouldn’t say all of them were like this, but most of the musicians didn’t like us being part of the experimental and creative music scene. I definitely wasn’t welcome. One day, I met this producer from Southport Records named Bradley Parker-Sparrow. He found my music very interesting. There was also this drummer from the AACM, Afifi Phillard. He came and said, “Come with me tomorrow, we’re playing music together.” So Afifi took me to the South Side and introduced me to all these musicians and I felt very welcomed. But it’s interesting because it was specifically in this context of music. Outside of that, I was still teased by a bunch of Black people for being Asian—it was as much as I got teased by white people on the North Side. But in the context of the arts, I was earning this sort of citizenship, I had this position in the circuit.

Can you speak more to playing in these group contexts? Do you remember what the first shows were like with these people and the things you were feeling?

I got to know this bass teacher from the South Side who was a friend of Afifi. His name was Brownie Johnson and he was blind; he taught me how to play the bass. I would sometimes ask a question like, “Is that G or G#?” And then he would say, “I’m blind! I don’t know where you’re holding it, just make it sound good!” (laughter). He took me to a blues club and put me into a jam session. That was my first gig in the South Side. The band was surprised that I was able to play this blues music with them. And of course, if you look at Japan, the country has mega fans of the blues. Of course, they didn’t know this back then and they were like, “Wow, this Chinese guy knows how to do this? You see that Chinese boy playing the bass?” (laughter). So that’s how I got into the scene.

Afifi Phillard was the first drummer for Earth, Wind & Fire, and he was also Sun Ra’s drummer for a while, and he was Fred Anderson’s friend. The education I got from these people was similar to my grandmother’s education with the shamisen playing—it was very, very identical. They would play something for you and you were followed along. Afifi would be playing the drum and he’d say, let me play and then he’d say, “Nope, it’s not happenin’,” and then when I did something right he’d say, “Now it’s happenin’!” That’s exactly what it was like with the shamisen teachers I had in Tokyo. They wouldn’t tell you why you did things wrong, they’d just tell you it’s wrong. You’d repeat this process a number of times and you’d think, I did the exact same thing yesterday and was told I was wrong, but today I was right…? It was this idea of giving your whole body to it, and that’s what I learned.

You shared that these experiences were similar to your experiences when learning how to play the shamisen. Is that something you recognized at the time or only in retrospect?

I knew there was a reminiscence of childhood at the time. I carried that memory with me, and I still teach that way to my students.

Did you have other Asian musicians you played with at the time?

I played with a bunch of Black musicians and a few white musicians on the North Side. Then I met a Japanese blues singer, Yoko Noge. I think she’s a very well known blues artists today, but Yoko and I played together for almost 20 years. I was hired as a bass player for her band at the time.

Did you feel any particular way about collaborating with another Asian musician?

I was really glad that I got to know her. We both played different kinds of music, but we played together. It was really encouraging for me that she became accepted into the blues music world; we both earned our position in the Chicago music scene. This is about when I started to communicate with a bunch of Bay Area musicians. Just like the AACM, I knew about a lot of the Asian Bay Area musicians. They were the pioneers of the Asian American jazz movement of the ’80s. These are people like Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Anthony Brown, Miya Masaoka, Glenn Horiuchi, Mark Izu. I approached them because I really wanted to know them. Francis Wong and I created an album together [Chicago Time Code (1995)] and we’ve been playing music for 30 years now. [Editor’s Note: A lot of music from this scene can be heard on the record label Asian Improv Records].

Do you think there was anything distinct about this Asian American jazz movement? Or was it a name that came about just because the people playing it were Asian American?

I think it was both. The Asian American diaspora could do work related to their Asian heritage, and there were people like me who really came from this tradition. But the thing is that I didn’t actually have to do this. In the ’80s, they just didn’t know what to call a bunch of these Bay Area musicians who were Asian and making all this improvised and jazz music. And in Chicago there was this electronic and blues music, too. Like, what do we call them? It was just convenient to call it “Asian American jazz.” If you look at works by Jon Jang and Anthony Brown, they bring in Chinese motifs into contemporary jazz. Francis Wong is making improvised, experimental music but he’s still bringing in this culture of the Asian American diaspora. My jazz music is improvised, but it’s still bringing in the taiko and shamisen. My rock band doesn’t have any of that stuff, but it does have my love for all the rock music I loved as a teenager in Japan.

How did you approach folding in the taiko and shamisen into your contemporary practice?

With my old group in the dojo, we were already doing taiko and saxophone and electronics together. The funny thing is that combing taiko and saxophone and electric bass… this was happening in Tokyo when I was a kid! But Japanese Americans in the Bay Area were doing the bon dance while playing electric bass or saxophone, so I started to realize that other Asians knew it was okay to do this. For the first five years [in Chicago], I worked with the local Buddhist temple as a taiko drummer. My musical project became really demanding so I had to create my own group.

Are there specific things you feel like are different with the audience reaction, the atmosphere, or anything else when performing in Chicago versus Japan? Is anything different across different countries?

When I was in Japan, I was young and I didn’t know about the social impact of anything. I just wanted to do something weird. Have you seen Led Zeppelin live? Jimmy Page would whip out the violin bow and use this echo chamber to create a soundscape. There was also Leslie West from the band Mountain, and for their famous song “Mississippi West” he’d create all this feedback. I’d see this as a teenager and I would eventually do the same thing with a shamisen. And then there’s Jimi Hendrix who did the national anthem at Woodstock—it was strange things like this that I was attracted to as a kid, but I didn’t think they were personal, social, or political expressions until I came to America. I was too young.

I wanted to ask about your daughter, Kioto Aoki. I know she studied under you, and I’m curious about your experiences as a child and how they shaped the way you taught your own daughter. I’m also wondering what it’s like to work with your daughter in this Asian American context.

Kioto is just like me. I only taught Kioto at the very, very beginning of her career. The rest was just her seeing and learning. I’d teach her new songs on the shamisen, but like me, she just grew up in this environment. I also have my son, Eigen Aoki, and then there’s my youngest daughter, Miyumi. They all perform taiko drum today. Kioto and Miyumi were certified as Toyoaki Shamisen members by my mother [Toyoaki Toyoko]. Eigen is a drummer and performs with us. So Kioto learned everything from doing it, and I never had to teach any of my kids how to drum. When they were young, they learned from this founder of our original drum group, and all the rest of the stuff they learned came from stuff we did as a family. It’s very distinctive to have this family business. I tell people it’s a family business in the same way that a restaurant is—daddy owns it, and the kids hang out there and learn stuff. I was hoping my kids would be interested and that they would keep the lineage of my heritage and now the three kids still perform with me and we do shows together, just like how I grew up with my mother and grandmother.

So the difference here is that you didn’t force your kids to do any of this?

Well… I probably did (laughter). I think I did force my son to do it, and then Kioto got interested because my son was doing it. And then when Miyumi was born, she saw her big brother and sister doing it. Miyumi does classical dance, Eigen does a lot of improvisation with taiko, and Kioto does improvisational and experimental taiko but also does visual art. So that’s how my family lineage lives on.

How have these collaborations with your children expanded your own art?

We’re consistently doing things together as a family—it’s a family business. My jazz group, the MIYUMI Project, is named after my youngest daughter and it’s basically improvised jazz. It’s really easy when I have my children with me—I don’t really have to say anything. We just go and they know what to do. When there’s an ensemble work where we play a composition, we do have to practice. Nowadays, I rarely play the taiko and I have my children play.

[At this point, the audience was invited to ask questions. A couple of the questions are transcribed below.]

Audience Member #1: You came from a musical tradition that’s very structured, and then when you moved to Chicago you met folks who were part of the AACM and this was a new convention you had to learn. What was it like to practice communal improvisation and learn those tenets and have this sonic liberation, and how did that shape you as an artist?

For Asian American expression, I would have to give it to the Bay Area guys. They’re like the Beatles of this stuff. How often do you have six people who are very strong Asian Americans all in the same place? I think this iconic social statement was made by them. They made it clear that these formulated compositions could be done by Asian Americans—I was very attracted to that idea. I wanted that in Chicago because we didn’t have it.

Also, improvisation wasn’t much of a change for me because geisha shamisen music, which is not like kabuki shamisen music, has improvised sections. What was new to me when working with the AACM musicians and with some of the people in Japan was the idea of soundscape and noise. I didn’t think it was music back then, but these people assured me that it was. I kind of knew that this was possible from looking at the rock musicians I mentioned earlier, but I didn’t really know it was a conscious artistic choice until I met these people in Chicago.

Audience Member #2: Can you speak about the relationship between your music and film practices?

I don’t know if this is a “relationship” but it’s like how… if there’s something you can’t talk about with your mother, you talk about it with your father (laughter). If I have something I can’t express through music, I do it through film. If there’s something I can’t do in film, I do it through music. There are different things you can do with film when you want to capture space—both the physical and mental space.

Joshua Minsoo Kim: There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

Oh, I have nothing to love about myself (laughs). I always think that I’m doing something wrong, all the time (crowd audibly and collectively says “aww”). But one thing I like about myself is that I’m always true to what I think I should do, and I’m very proud of myself for that. Rather than forcing myself to do certain work, I only do work if I want to do it, especially at my current age. I’m very honest about that now.

More information about Tatsu Aoki can be found at his website.

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Thank you for reading the 207th issue of Tone Glow. Blue, pink.

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