Toshiko Akiyoshi will always be remembered a famed artist in music and especially throughout jazz culture. Her famed career includes roles such as pianist, composer/arranger, and most of all, leader of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra. Akiyoshi was born on December 12, 1929 in Liaoyang, Manchuria to wealthy Japanese immigrants. Her rooted passion for music was abruptly interrupted by the need to flee to Beppu, Japan as the Soviet Union, Japan, and China battled for sovereignty over Manchuria. Akiyoshi vividly remembers when the atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had great impact on the country. After moving to the United States with husband Lew Tabackin, the two constructed the famed Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra. When Akiyoshi read about the death of jazz performer Duke Ellington, she was struck by the pride he took in his heritage. This newfound perspective caused her to view and musically express her heritage with cultural pride. Concentrated studies of Japanese music allowed Akiyoshi to “return to the jazz tradition something that might make it a little bit richer”. Japanese instruments and elements are seamlessly threaded into the music, including: susumi, taiko drums, and combining the jazz rhythmic syncopations with the execution style of Japanese music. This combination positively supported her cultural identity and fueled her career. Akiyoshi continues to be revered as one of the most accomplished jazz leaders and arrangers of the era. In her autobiography, Life with Jazz, Akiyoshi discusses a Buddhist priest and jazz enthusiast who encouraged her to re-visit the subject of Hiroshima. She was inspired to compose Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss, which received abundant praise and attention from surrounding critics for her high quality work. This piece, Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss, expresses the composer’s response to issues of diversity through contextual aspects, distinct musical features, and hybridity.
Akiyoshi’s hunger for increased cultural awareness is clearly expressed in Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss. The overall compositional execution could have only been completed by one who has witnessed the horrific event and experienced the shift of a globalized society over the decades. While remaining true to jazz form, Akiyoshi provided fusion through integrating new elements that represented the tragic event and changes witnessed over time through her life in Japan and America. The boldness of seen in the music is subsequently seen in her owning of her pieces. While it was not common to have female composers share such unique work as well as perform and lead the performing ensemble, the pieces remarkably withstood decades of jazz critique on multiple continents. She once remarked, “I’m trying to draw from my heritage and enrich the jazz tradition without changing it.”
Over the years, Akiyoshi continued to strengthen her cultural expression and identity. A Buddist priest, Kyudo Nakagawa, was also effected by the aftermath of Hiroshima, hometown. In 1999, he requested that Akiyoshi compose a tribute that reflected on the horrors of Hiroshima and the countless lives lost from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. Two years later, Akiyoshi finished the work, in time for the 56th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. With a strong background in jazz, Akiyoshi created an ethnic jazz fusion. This integration of two distinct musical genres, American jazz and Japanese form, creates a unique paradox of sound. Jazz, since it’s origin, has openly accepted various kinds of fusion. This is in part due to the fact that the emergence of the jazz genre was greatly facilitated by our diverse immigrant brothers and sisters. Jazz remains an outlet to help those from any culture express their diversity and educate other’s on their culture’s values and history. Akiyoshi carefully executed a synthesis of jazz and Japanese forms while maintaining awareness of cultural trends.
The pride of diversity exemplified by Akiyoshi is visible in her choice of musical elements and instrumentation in the work Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss. Her development of fusion stems from having lived in China, Japan, and America. This exposure is reflected through the use of bebop rhythms, ethnic style and unique Japanese instrumentation for added musical color and timbre. Constructed in the 1940s, bebop is generally identified by improvisation, unpredictable rhythmic structure, complex harmonies, and moderate tempos. (New World Records) Additionally, the piece includes Japanese excerpts by Ryoko Shigemori from “Mother’s Diaries”. This vocal element helps the audience more deeply reflect on the single atomic bombing which killed thousands and forever altered lives. The emotional movements thematically transmit a message of horror while supporting a global anti-war position, “No More HIroshimas”. Akiyoshi states that this piece represents an “anti-nuclear weapon, anti-atomic weapon, and anti-war sentiment”.
The iconic work opens with “Futility-Tragedy”. Intangible horns with a soft and simple percussion rhythm start off the piece, providing an immediate sense of unrest. Tension continues to rise as more solo instruments are introduced, including Akiyoshi’s husband, Lew Tabackin on tenor. The movement continues with growing improvisation over smooth swing patterns, forming into structured, discordant turmoil. The improvisatory instrumentation is interrupted by a drawn-out drumset solo, preparing the audience for the looming explosion. The explosion section invokes feelings of chaos and tragedy as the soloists perform a cohesive improvisation. However, Akiyoshi composed most of the instrumentation, leaving little interpretation for the soloists, following big band language. Ending the movement with the focus of the piece, the bombing, is an appropriate transition into the second movement, “Survivor Tales”.
A single trumpet continues on a solo note into the second movement, symbolizing feelings of isolation and the few who survived at the end of the bombing tragedy. Light and eerie instrumentation along with a Korean flute accompany readings from “Mother’s Diaries” in Japanese. The verbal accounts of survivors add a layer of life to the previously morbid movement. This movement is the longest, allowing the music and text excerpts to be appropriately reflected upon. Nearing the end of the movement, solo flute, tenor, trumpet and trombone make independent entrances, contrasting the disturbing group improvisation in “Futility-Tragedy”. The solo lines remain mournful, crying out in the midst of pain and sorrow.
When the Buddhist priest asked Akiyoshi to compose Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss, he sent pictures and stories to help persuade her. One of the pictures shows a young woman wearing a delicate smile. Akiyoshi expressed that she felt hope when looking at the picture, prompting her to leave the audience with an inspirational message of hope in the last movement. The slow ringing of sounding bells transitions the audience into the third movement, “Hope”. The blues focused first movement is contrasted by this movement as Akiyoshi ambitiously reveals unique forms and creative structure that invokes both optimism and solemn reflection. A soft timbre is heard in the solo saxophone, offering a peaceful melody with notes of mourning. The tragedy and mourning followed by optimistic notes effectively remind the audience of “the atrocities that occur on a regular basis around the world, so that we may all hope and wish for peace.”24 Since the debut of Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss, Akiyoshi has ended every concert with the main melodic message from “Hope”. In this way, she supports an anti-war and peaceful platform, placing messages of hope and peace into the hearts of the audiences world-wide.
The hybridity found in this musical work provide a sense of Akiyoshi and her feats accomplished as a Japanese female composer. The positive reviews of her work serve as a testament to her ability to persevere against Japanese critiquing American jazz elements and Americans critiquing a Japanese woman as a composer, musician and ensemble leader. Author of Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music, Steven Loza, supports musical fusion, “Multiculturalism (in jazz) tended to unify”. Toshiko Akiyoshi contributed to the jazz world a new level of integration, expanding the boundaries of fusion. Because of her bold determination, Akiyoshi has caused thousands of people of all cultures to appreciate the hybridity of Japanese and American elements to create a new footprint in the jazz universe.
Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss is a powerful testimony to the emotional sorrow and glimmering hope felt by anyone with knowledge of the Hiroshima bombing. With a high appreciation for both Japanese and American cultures, Akiyoshi successfully created a new style of jazz fusion. Through maintaining an accepting global philosophy, gender and racial boundaries were extinguished, and respect formed between musicians and audiences in both Japan and the United States. Further research into women of other cultures and how their jazz styles have permeated the American jazz stage would continue to shed light on cultural diversity and the expansion of jazz fusion.