Into the flat, polished surfaces of a record company conference room walks a tall, shaggy, middle-aged man dressed in scruffy corduroys and sweater. The contrast is palpable. What is the grizzled leader of free jazz orchestra Shibusashirazu doing in the offices of Avex, a record company best known for packaging glossy pop tarts like Ayumi Hamasaki and Kumi Koda?

It would seem that Avex is using some of the riches generated by its idols to diversify, and that its A&R people have all sorts of tastes. The end result is that after years in the independent label wilderness, Shibusashirazu (roughly: “we don’t understand cool”) are now signed to one of Japan’s biggest record companies.

Aside from wondering when Avex is going to introduce him to the nubile Koda, Daisuke Fuwa takes it in stride. “I wasn’t thinking about appealing to a popular audience,” he says between anxious drags on a cigarette. “I was happy to play for ten people as long as they enjoyed it, but at the same time I’m very glad many people are now listening to our music.”

Emerging from the confines of claustrophobic jazz clubs onto the stages of some of the world’s foremost rock events, Shibusashirazu played the Glastonbury Music Festival in 2002 and have been an institution at the Fuji Rock Festival in recent years, with Fuwa even directing one of the event’s stages.

What is a cacophonous free jazz orchestra doing playing for rock fans? One answer is that a Shibusashirazu concert is more than a musical event; it’s a spectacle. In addition to a couple of dozen musicians, all manner of performers—from butoh dancers to live painters—join in a kind of on-stage Bacchanalia. Audiences around the world have found Shibusashirazu shows a cathartic experience that recalls the uninhibited confusion of a Japanese street festival.

Another answer is that in addition to the honking horns and rumbling waves of percussion that link Shibusashirazu to John Coltrane’s free jazz experiments of the ’60s, there’s also a strong melodic element to Fuwa’s compositions, which can be heard most recently on their painstakingly produced new album, Shibuzen. “Our roots are in free jazz, but I don’t think people view us as a free jazz band per se,” notes Fuwa. “We have free jazz and improv elements, but basically we’re in the tradition of pop music, which of course has always had elements of improv.”

Fuwa explains that the postwar US occupation formed his musical background, with military personnel bringing pop and rock albums with them from the States to Japan, and military radio station FEN heard across Japan when he was a teenager in the ’70s. His first exposure to jazz artists like John Coltrane came by reading the liner notes for a Santana album.

An artist with whom Shibusashirazu Orchestra will perform in Tokyo in June was also a big influence. “At the time we were starting out, punk rock was breaking and No Wave groups that mixed punk rock with free jazz like James Chance and the Contortions were emerging. What we’re doing has more of a rock element to it than the free jazz of the ’60s.”

The group formed in 1989 when Fuwa was commissioned to create music for an underground theater performance. The butoh and go-go dancers originally asked to join on their own accord, and Shibusashirazu’s continuing evolution is an organic process. Fuwa, who comes across as an absent-minded but kindly uncle, jokes that he takes all comers, adding that a reunion would probably number over 100 people.

The barely controlled chaos of a Shibusashirazu performance often seems on the verge of complete breakdown, but Fuwa manages somehow to keep a lid on it. A bassist by training, he takes the role of conductor, pacing about and gesticulating this way and that. “I think, if I were in the audience, what would I want to hear now? Guitars? Horns? So I just call on the musicians to solo, and they’re always up for it, since as jazz musicians they want to stand out.”

An attempt to bring rigor and cohesion to their show didn’t quite work out. “At Glastonbury in 2002, we had a stage director, and decided the song order and choreography,” Fuwa recalls. “But I felt
it was too fixed, and the dancers wanted to improvise. We prefer an element of uncertainty, so we stopped planning our concerts.”

Recently asked to create music for a forthcoming Russian film, Fuwa is vague about his current plans for Shibusashirazu, but he does admit to one unusual dream. “I’d like to erect stages on an American aircraft carrier and circle the world with lots of bands and performers doing different things.”

Knuttel House, May 1; Club Goodman, May 5; C.C. Lemon Hall (with James Chance), June 13. See concert listings (jazz/world) for details.

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