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

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

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 performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...

member Takehisa Kosugi. 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 drones (compare with Dronology), often using standard musical instruments, albeit in unconventional ways (e.g., a bowed

double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...

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

Personnel

* Takehisa Kosugi:

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 incl ...

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 produ ...

etc. * Ryo Koike: electric double bass,

santur The santur ( ; ) is a hammered dulcimer of Iranian origin.--- Rashid, Subhi Anwar (1989). ''Al-ʼĀlāt al-musīqīyya al-muṣāhiba lil-Maqām al-ʻIrāqī''. Baghdad: Matbaʻat al-ʻUmmāl al-Markazīyya. History The santur was invented ...

, voice, etc. * Yukio Tsuchiya:

tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

, etc. * Seiji Nagai:

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

, Mini-Korg

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

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 (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

, 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 (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

, 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 river frontiers. This special type of riverboat ...

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 experimental noise rock band formed in 1967 in Kyoto, Japan. They gained a reputation many years after their breakup as one of Japan's most legendary experimental bands, and were a forcible influence on the noise rock scene withi ...

, 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 ...

PCD-1463/4, 1998

External links

*

at Discogs
Discography/Biography
at SoundOhm

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