Between the Drum and the Future: Kiyohiko Senba's Journey of Continuously Sounding Variations (1960s-2000s)

Between the Drum and the Future: Kiyohiko Senba's Journey of Continuously Sounding Variations (1960s-2000s)

Born into the family of the head of the Senba school of Japanese traditional music, Kiyohiko Senba is a precocious musician who learned to play the tsutsumi at the age of three and began performing on the Kabuki stage at ten. While acquiring traditional percussion skills, he studied hogaku at Tokyo University of the Arts in the 1970s, while also devoting himself to Western music, jazz, and improvisation. 1978 he joined the fusion band "THE SQUARE" and began innovative attempts to cross over between hogaku and contemporary music. 1982 he formed the "HANIWA In 1982, he formed the "HANIWA ALL STARS," and together with Akiko Yano and Akira Sakata, constructed a free musical world that mixed folk music, rock, techno, and traditional Japanese music.

Since 1998, he has led the "Asian Fantasy Orchestra" on a tour of Southeast Asian countries, interacting with local traditional music, and in 2000 he founded the "SEMBA SONIC SPEAR" and currently leads the "Kiyohiko Senba and the Calgamores," pursuing creative percussion expression that turns everyday items such as tea bowls and buckets into instruments. He pursues creative percussion expression that turns everyday items such as tea cups and buckets into musical instruments. His collaboration with jazz drummer Shuichi Murakami "Ponta" has resulted in a masterful performance in which form and improvisation, tradition and freedom resonate with each other. His representative pieces, "Sicilian Rumba" and "Haniwa Bon Odori," reflect his aesthetics that transcend the boundaries between tradition and modernity. Senba has always believed in "variation, not inheritance," and has opened up new horizons in music.