Collection: Akira Ishikawa

Akira Ishikawa grew up in Yokosuka, began his career with Shin Matsumoto and New Pacific in the early 1960s, worked with Toshiyuki Miyama’s New Herd, served as bandleader for the Japanese production of the musical “Hair,” and formed Count Buffalo in the late 1960s as a vehicle for a specific project: to fuse jazz, rock and African percussion into a single ensemble sound. “Electrum” (Victor, 1970), composed and arranged by Masahiko Sato, opened the Count Buffalo catalogue with jazz-rock and free jazz that held together more coherently than most Japanese fusion of the period. “Bakishinba: Memories of Africa” (Polydor, 1970) followed immediately, a laid-back electric jazz-rock record that pointed toward where he was going. He then did what the title promised: he travelled to Uganda, absorbed the native music, and came home with new percussive vocabulary and a collection of African instruments. “Uganda” (1972), co-composed with saxophonist Takeru Muraoka, who had played with Terumasa Hino, mixed deep tribal drumming with acid rock guitar from Kimio Mizutani across four lengthy compositions. It is one of the most genuinely unusual records in the Japanese jazz catalogue: not jazz-with-African-flavouring but something closer to a genuine collision between traditions. He also introduced the tsugaru shamisen, a Japanese long-necked lute, to jazz music for the first time on a subsequent recording.