Archival Absences and Conditional Listening: How Jazz Shaped Experimental Music in 1960s Japan

Abstract

Between 1960 and 1962, jazz dominated programming at the Sogetsu Art Center (SAC), a central incubator of experimental artistic practices in Tokyo. But today, we hear very little about jazz at the SAC, much less the significance of jazz for the Japanese avant-garde in general. Through a study of the listening practices at the jazz events at the SAC, I argue that centering jazz in a narrative about early 1960s Japanese experimental practices provokes a rethinking of narratives about the history of Japanese experimental practices not only in terms of genre and aesthetics but in terms of specific practices—collective listening in this case. A study of jazz events at the SAC demonstrates how Japanese experimental practices developed through an awareness of Euro-American avant-garde traditions as well as the creative innovations and traditions of African American music. Yet, the emphasis on listening suggests that awareness does not mean that the Japanese avant-garde was determined by the West. The article outlines a history of collective listening in Japan over the twentieth century. Then, two case studies consider how documentation of the jazz events at the SAC reveals tensions within the spaces of collective listening, falling along fault lines of race and gender. Listening was a collective creative process with an experience that significantly shaped experimental practices in Japan. Yet, as these practices produced their new creative possibilities, they also formed their own conditions of inclusion and exclusion.