Sébastien Raineri of the webpage pen-online.com has written a great article called Kitaro, Exponent of the New Age. “This wizard of synthesisers and Grammy and Golden Globe winner has released albums that have become classics of this music genre,” says Raineri.
“Multi-instrumentalist and pioneer in New Age music, Kitaro achieved international fame when he released one of the genre’s classic works in 1980, the album Silk Road, composed for the show of the same name, broadcast by the Japanese public channel NHK. Masanori Takahashi, better known under the pseudonym Kitaro, was born on 4 February 1953 in Toyohashi, Japan. His nickname comes from the famous horror manga by Shigeru Mizuki, Gegege no Kitaro (1959), due to the fact that his hair is similar to that of the main character. As a child, he developed a taste for music by learning the guitar, before turning his attention to keyboards when he formed the progressive rock group The Far East Family Band.
While touring Germany with his group in 1972, he met Klaus Schulze, the drummer for Tangerine Dream, who introduced him to synthesisers and electronic rock. Kitaro subsequently embarked on a solo career, and caught the attention of the New Age community when he released his first album, Astral Voyage, in 1978. The synthesiser became his instrument of choice, allowing him to create a soaring form of electronic rock, enriched by the sounds of Asia.”
Read the whole article here. Highly recommended!
…and if you want some background music while reading, we got you covered: