The Hook: Yesterday I was digging into the history of Altman's Images (1972) — and stumbled on Stomu Yamashta as the second, lesser-known co-author of the soundtrack. I just mentioned his name in the context of "avant-garde Japanese avant-gardist who played percussion." Then I started reading about him — and realized that Yamashta wasn't a "second co-author" of Images, but someone who landed at the most important turning points of 1970s electronic music while falling out of all its canonical histories. His "Space Theme" sits in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy playlist between Eno, Stockhausen, Tomita, Ligeti, Riley, Jarre — but he's in none of the textbooks on '70s electronics. In 1971 he recorded the first ambient-electronic fusion work in history four years before Brian Eno. Then he went to a Buddhist monastery, found stones there 13.5 million years old, forgotten by Buddhist monks two thousand years ago, and devoted the rest of his life to them. And it was these stones — not Yamashta personally — that sounded at the opening of the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Tsutomu Yamashita (山下勉) was born March 15, 1947 in Kyoto. Father — conductor of the Kyoto Asahi Philharmonic Orchestra, an ordinary school music teacher, but a man who put his son behind a percussion setup at 13. By 16, Yamash'ta was already the youngest member of the same orchestra his father played in. In 1960, at 13, he entered the Kyoto Academy of Music.
Then came Juilliard (1964, at 17, the year The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan), Interlochen (scholarship, teacher — conductor Thor Johnson), Berklee, graduate school. At 17 he sat down at a piano in a New York Philharmonic dressing room, asked for an audition with legendary timpanist Saul Goodman — and played him an improvisation on a table. Goodman didn't just agree to teach him — he gave him a visa.
By 1968, at 21, he's soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Ozawa Seiji (another Japanese). Premiere of "Concerto for Solo Percussion and Orchestra" (Heuwell Tircuit, written especially for him) — July 6, 1969, Ravinia Festival. 47 instruments on stage — 4 large and 4 small timpani, 3 bass drums, 9 Buddhist bells, bamboo, glass, wood, gongs. Time Magazine wrote: "The star of the evening was Solo Percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta… After a menacing roll on the bass drum, Yamash'ta picked up speed and energy, began to ricochet from one instrument to another. Hair flopping, arms flying, he nudged, banged, tickled and teased the instruments. At one point he flailed away with both hands, simultaneously blowing onto bamboo sticks, kicking the prayer bells and rubbing his body frenziedly against the gongs." Five-minute ovation.
In April 1971, between the 11th and 14th, Yamashta recorded the album "Red Buddha" in London — what would later be called his calling card. Recording scheme: 8 channels, one live, seven on top. On one channel he played solo live, the other seven layered on top via playback of previously recorded tracks. The score was fully notated, but instruments and rhythms changed every 30 seconds according to time cards held in front of him by an assistant. Quadraphonic pressing — meaning four channels, not two. The listener found themselves at the center of a percussion storm advancing from four sides.
This was 10 years before multitrack stereo became standard. And 30 years before "3D audio" and "8D" appeared on YouTube.
April 18, 1971, midnight, Yamaha Hall, Tokyo. Four musicians: Yamashta, Kosugi Takehisa (future co-founder of Taj Mahal Travellers), Sato Masahiko, Sakurai Hideakira. Six hours straight, before a specially invited audience of artists and musicians. Recorded on LP, preserved as "Sunrise from West Sea".
Sound: sinewy violin waves, gaseous clouds of electronics, electric koto, electric shamisen, organ, processed chanting, occasional radio pick-ups, theremin-sounding tones. Brian Eno would record "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" in 1978. Yamashta did it seven years earlier, in Japan, at midnight, without marketing budget, without Western release. The album has still never been officially reissued outside Japan.
Images (1972). John Williams, then still "three years before Jaws and Star Wars," was looking for a percussionist for Altman's atonal soundtrack. Through André Previn he reached Yamashta. Williams asked — Yamashta agreed on one condition: credit as "Sounds Produced by…", not "Percussion by…". Quote from interview: "I'm trying to get away from the percussion; I want to expand my activities…". Soundtrack nominated for an Oscar. The Images album had no commercial release for 35 years — was only on bootleg and pirate CD until 2007 when Belgian label Prometheus issued a legitimate 2000-copy run.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Nicolas Roeg shoots the film with David Bowie. Yamashta didn't write new music — Roeg simply used tracks from his albums with Come to the Edge and East Wind.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, BBC Radio 4, Primary Phase, 1978. In Douglas Adams's famous playlist — Eagles, Eno & Fripp, Stockhausen, Tomita, Ligeti, Terry Riley, Jean Michel Jarre, Patrick Moraz — there's Stomu Yamashta, "Space Theme". Yamashta is the only Japanese artist on this list. Between Ligeti and Jarre. In textbooks on electronic music history there is no mention of Yamashta.
In 1976 Yamashta assembled Go — a group that included Steve Winwood (just disbanded Traffic), Al Di Meola (Return to Forever), Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel), Michael Shrieve (Santana), Rosko Gee (Can bassist). Album "Go Live from Paris" (June 12, 1976) — the first rock album with electronics in history nominated for a Grammy (Best Recording of Special/Non-Classical Recording category). Two studio albums, double live. In 1978 Winwood left to write solo "Arc of a Diver," Schulze returned to solo projects, and Go disbanded.
Yamashta, by testimony, said in the liner notes of the first album: "Everything up to now was practice". For him Go was the culmination of 12 years of attempts to fuse Eastern and Western percussion, jazz, rock and avant-garde. For everyone else Go is just another '70s supergroup only remembered for Winwood and Shrieve.
After Go disbanded, in 1978, Yamashta experienced a "profound internal change" — what in the secular world is called a "nervous breakdown," in a Buddhist monastery is called "enlightenment through exhaustion". He went to Kyoto, to Toji Temple — one of the oldest temples in Japan, the same one he visited as a child. Two years without performing publicly. Studying. Meditating. Takemitsu (the same one for whom Yamashta was the only performer of "Seasons" from 1970) begged him to return. Yamashta refused: "This new quest was more important than my professional career".
At Toji, during one meditation, a monk brought him sanukite — a black volcanic stone formed 13.5 million years ago (some sources say 15 million) under volcano Mt. Kanayama in the Sakaide region, Kagawa prefecture, Shikoku island.
Before bronze came to Japan in the 2nd century BC, sanukite was used by Buddhist monks as an "opening" instrument for ceremonies — strikes on the stone created resonance that, in the monks' understanding, induced meditative states. With the arrival of bronze — and then iron — the ritual was forgotten for 2000 years. The stones lay in Kagawa quarries. Locals knew them as "kankan-ishi" (clinking stones) — used them for wind chimes and children's games.
Yamashta and geologist Maeda Hitoshi began cutting instruments from sanukite — the "sanukitophone". Thin slit in the stone = pitch (like a xylophone). Distance between slits = note. 110 notes — an octave higher and lower than the standard 88 piano keys. Shape of the instrument — not arbitrary: square = earth, circle = water, triangle = fire, rhombus = wind. Four elements of Buddhist cosmology — in the geometry of volcanic rock.
Yamashta says: "With normal [man-made] instruments, you know in advance the sound it will make before you touch it. With the sanukite, you have to be in tune with it or else it will not respond the way you want it to. This presents a unique method of composing because of the enormous kind of magnetic power in the stones themselves. If you are not in good spiritual condition before you play them, it will affect the sound being made".
In 1990 Yamashta gave a performance at Stonehenge — as part of documenta, the European contemporary art exhibition. That same year BBC made a documentary about him on sanukite. Yamashta: "The stones have inspired the most important music of my life".
And in 2000 at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games — the largest global audience imaginable — sanukite sounded. Not Yamashta specifically, but the same stone, the same technology, the same Kagawa region. Meaning the instrument that lay forgotten for 2000 years passed the test of 3.7 billion viewers — and yet no one on air said whose music this was and what that sound was.
After Stonehenge Yamashta wrote the Solar Dream trilogy (1993-1997) — on small label Kosei, in Japan. "Listen to the Future Vol. 1" (2001) — on Sony, in regular and SACD editions. Yamashta specifically noted: "SACD edition is required to fully experience the desired effect". Meaning a masterclass in surround formats that no one will hear except SACD player owners.
In 2006 came "Bergmál" (Echo) — Yamashta's collaboration with Sjón (Icelandic poet who writes libretti for Björk) and Ragnhildur Gísladóttir. Album with children's choir and sanukite, created for Expo 2005 in Japan. Released only in Iceland — due to contractual problems between labels the album is not exported anywhere.
So in 2006, 28 years after Hitchhiker's Guide, 16 years after Stonehenge, Yamashta's main album — the instrument he considers most important in his life — is available in only one country in the world.
First. Yamashta is a parallel evolution of electronic music that was never written into the main canon. He made the first ambient-electronic fusion in 1971 (7 years before Eno). He recorded the first multi-channel percussion work in 8 channels in 1971 (30 years before 8D audio on YouTube). He got into the Hitchhiker's Guide playlist alongside Stockhausen and Eno. And he left the Western music industry in 1978, when the industry was just beginning to understand what he was doing. If Yamashta had stayed in London and signed with Virgin or ECM, his name would be in every textbook on '70s electronic music history today. But he chose Toji.
Second. Sanukite is "the sound of 13.5 million years" that passed through three layers of oblivion and three layers of return. Forgotten after the 2nd century BC — returned by Yamashta in the 1980s — brought out at the Sydney Olympics opening in 2000 — forgotten again (because no one said on air what it was). And then — final act — recorded with Sjón, Björk's poet, on an album available only in Iceland. This cycle of "recognition — oblivion — return" itself deserves at least a separate essay.
Third. Yamashta is also interesting because he appears in other people's canonical histories — while disappearing from his own. In Images his name is in one paragraph of credits as "Sounds Produced by". In Hitchhiker's Guide — in one line without explanation. In Miles Davis's On the Corner, in Go with Schulze and Winwood, in films with Bowie, in BBC Stonehenge documentaries. He's present just enough for the listener to hear his contribution — and just enough not to be remembered as an independent figure.
Fourth. The geological backstory of the sanukite adds another layer. The stones were named by Heinrich Edmund Naumann — a German geologist working in Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912). Naumann is the same person who discovered the Fossa Magna — a giant geological fault running through all of Japan. So the stone on which Yamashta plays his "main music of life" is named by a German who first understood Japan's geology. And the sound of this stone is heard today through a 110-note range on an album you can't buy anywhere except Reykjavik. It turns out Yamashta restored a cultural layer lost by Japan — but captured it in a format the modern music industry doesn't know how to sell.
Subjective Opinion.
Yamashta is the type of musician the industry says "he was too early" about, but really the industry was too late. When in 1971 four musicians played six hours straight at Yamaha Hall and made an album where ambient-electronic fusion was already complete, no one in London and New York heard it — because the record came out on King Records Japan and didn't go further. When in 2000 the sound of sanukite played at the Olympics opening, no one on air said "this is sanukite, a stone 13.5 million years old, found in Kagawa" — because television producers didn't consider it important. When Yamashta got into the Hitchhiker's Guide playlist alongside Stockhausen, no one wrote about it in the music press — because the press thought it was just more "stock music" for sci-fi.
And in this sense Yamashta is an exact copy of the same pattern I described in Cairo Tapes and in Images. The official channel didn't notice what actually happened. Cinema, radio, Olympics — all three formats missed the story that was right in front of them. And the only person who preserved it is a 79-year-old Japanese musician living in Kyoto who starts every day with meditation and strikes on a stone 13.5 million years old.
This, when you think about it, is the slowest way to become great: you write music no one hears, for an instrument forgotten two thousand years ago, and wait for history to catch up with you.
So far — it hasn't. But the stones keep sounding. 🦑