Taj Mahal Travellers’ July 15, 1972 and Takehisa Kosugi’s Catch Wave, music from the future resonating with the present time and distorting space-time of 50 years
Takehisa Kosugi (1938-2018) was the first in Japan who founded the “Group Ongaku” in 1960 to practice collective improvisation by employing non-musical instruments such as electric appliances. In 1969, he started representing collective improvisation with renewed ideas through “Taj Mahal Travellers”. Their performance was a harmonious whole of such contemporary arts as experimental music, electronic music, improvisation, psychedelic music, and subcultures (no other bands seemingly had more impact than they had then).
It was in 1971 that the group, which referred to themselves as travellers with their advocation “global music”, actively carried out a trip “to stay at Taji Mahal for 24 hours and come home” (documented in the film Taj Mahal Travellers on Tour). The tour began with a performance at the exhibition in Stockholm every day for three months, and after that, the group went out on a tour around Europe, which brought them money to buy a used wagon. And they got on it and kept on traveling from the Far East to the Taj Mahal. This album was produced from the live recording of the concert at Sougestu Hall with another purpose of collecting donations to join the experimental music festival in England ICES ’72. Feeling the background of the era in the process of formulating the band, however, I highly appreciate its transcendental and liberated music. I envision the sound of the original four-channel mix.
Catch Wave released in 1975, has been recognized as the essence of Kosugi’s live performance thereafter. “Improvisation by violin, voice, electric media, light, wind”, the comment noted on the obi strip means the method of representation exploring the realms of the intermediate area among each independent genre, so-called intermedia. It is about catching “subtle wind, lights, invisible electromagnetic waves, inaudible slow wave undulations of electricity. The realm of no sound beyond the assumption of perception” (from Kosugi’s liner notes), and draws attention to the fact that he inherited and overcome a series of issues raised after John Cage’s 4’33’. It sounds like music from the future resonating with the present time and distorting space-time of 50 years.
