How does one bridge the span between our past and an uncertain future? If you can put yourself inside the mind of one, Kazuo Uehara, perhaps you can deduce that answer. You see, it was he who had the same question. It was sometime in the ‘60s, while listening to The Beatles’s “Revolution #9”, that Kazuo realized that this, seemingly, alien sound, provided one clue. What would follow would eventually lead to his own ideas on 1990’s ストレス解消の音楽 (Bright Spring).
Kazuo began his journey in music in post-WWII Japan. He was born in 1949 to two parents involved in the music sphere. Raised in Osaka, it was their influence that shaped Kazuo’s earliest artistic explorations. Back then, it was Kazuo’s father, a piano teacher, who introduced him to masters of classical music and led him to focus his love of music into “classical” training.
It wouldn’t be until Kazuo, like many other Japanese youngsters, discovered rock music that he discovered that there were other forms of music outside the traditional cultural sphere. Kazuo’s turning point, though, the one that would mark his future work, would come courtesy of discovering the music of Pierre Schaeffer while trying to piece together how The Beatles recorded their own musique concréte. Whatever he was learning in Japan, at that moment, seemed woefully conservative when placed next to the works of Stockhausen and Luc Ferrari, to name a few. So, to the surprise of his parents, Kazuo decided to head to America and spend time in New York City to pursue this world of contemporary music.
In America, Kazuo came to realize that there were other ways to create these new forms of contemporary music. On one track, he was able to explore early “west coast” sound synthesizers from the likes of Don Buchla that allowed one to create music that was based on texture, noise, and more. On another track, Kazuo would join other visionary composers who helped exhibit their own soundworks at the pioneering New York experimental arts venue, The Kitchen, then under the tutelage of Rhys Chatham. Kazuo would remain in New York until 1973. When he came back to Japan, Kazuo came to dive deeper into another world he had begun to study: computer music.
Kazuo had heard of works by pioneering computer-based American composers like Max Vernon Matthews (who’d go on to influence the development of FM synthesis with Dr. Chowning) and Lejaren Hiller. However, back then, to fully dedicate oneself to such a pursuit was cost-prohibitive outside of educational institutions. Japan’s boom economy also signaled a forward-leap in personal computer technology and had gotten to a point where Kazuo could create his own computer-based music studio. It would be sometime in the early ‘80s when Kazuo would be one of the early, Japanese, few who had a chance to play around and compose with Iannis Xenakis’s UPIC image-based computer sound synthesis system in Japan.
In due time, Kazuo’s studies had lead him to explore the world of environmental music and music therapy (aka “healing music”) allowing him to both reside in the spheres of the Japanese avant garde and experimental scene – contribution compositions to influential spaces like Shibuya’s Jean-Jean venue – and that of more accessible places like sound design and music for contemporary dance theater and film. By 1983, Kazuo’s musical prowess had won him the prestigious Concours de Bourges for electro-acoustic music which makes 1990’s ストレス解消の音楽 (Bright Spring) that the more shocking.
Anyone who has heard some of Kazuo’s collected works like Assemblage and Cosmos I (Live In Soviet / Brazil / U.S.A.) = コスモス I (上原和夫作品集) can understand just how masterful his sound collage and computer-based music sequencing can be. It was those works that feature his haunting mix of found sound, granular sampling, and otherworldly sound design. Now whether such music can speak to everyone, that may perhaps explain what you’ll hear today. Running parallel to this experimental vision was this other idea that was experimental in its own way: that of creating music for “therapeutic” purposes.
It was in the early ‘90s when Kazuo founded the AIR Sound and Design Institute in the hopes of finding ways to involve environmental music in contemporary Japanese life, in a positive way. It’s no secret that the Japanese bubble economy that bursted in the ‘90s introduced a stress that was markedly different from the past. Simply having the ability to relax and relieve one’s stress seemed impossible for many. Yet, Kazuo felt it was important for him to create music that could be heard by anyone, that could use the principles of psychotherapy to create that space for you.
音楽健康法 or the Music Health Act series would be his totemic 8 album-spanning work where Kazuo went somewhere most wouldn’t expect: back to the classics. Kazuo, through his studies, discovered that a great way to center your mind would be to play music like that of Camille Saint-Saëns, Franz Liszt, and use known “classical” touch points as a means to ease people through more naturalistic sound and original soundscapes. Rather than completely surprise the listener, you could edge them toward the essence of a classical work without divorcing them from contemporary sound design. Switch-on Bach this wouldn’t be.
What it means is that on ストレス解消の音楽 (Bright Spring) you get to hear Fritz Kreisler’s spritely “Schön Rosmarin” transform from a sweetly-orchestrated interpretation into an original electro-acoustic interpretation of the feelings behind the music. Somewhere on this album you get to hear Luigi Boccherini’s vernal “Minuetto” fade out into a stream of bird song and ambient melodies. What I love about what Kazuo is doing is that he is not saying: “let’s throw the baby out with the bath water!” – Kazuo’s developing the language to use contemporary atmospheric music as a means to build that bridge to the past (for those unaccustomed to the more “experimental” stuff).
Interspersed within all the gamut of this classical awakening are gorgeous original compositions Kazuo dubs “Natural Sound & Sound Design” staking his own territory in that new world of Japanese environmental music that CD-quality technology allowed. Here “ナチュラルサウンド&サウンドデザイン (Natural Sound & Sound Design)” mixes binaural soundscape with his own kind of vernal-inducing tonal music piped directly through your headphones with no need to visit a gatekept situation.
It’s the reason I recommend this as a genuinely perfect entry-point to his music (and into the wider world of healing music, itself, as a genre) to the novice listener. With time, then, you can go into his masterpieces with a brighter mind knowing how his body of works fits into the world of those iconic composers. In a world where it’s easy to dismiss the past, as Kazuo puts it perfectly in the liner notes:
“…by meeting various masterpieces, during the journey of the mind, you can bring peace of mind, refresh your mind and body, and measure the achievement of a healthy life.”
I mean, we all need to relieve a little stress some time. Wouldn’t you want to do so without completely turning off your heart or mind (and by re-introducing yourself to the classics)? And, hopefully, whoever owns the full box set can one day provide a mix or a sampling of all the tracks that feature Kazuo’s originals.