Kitaro: The Healing Power of Music – Musicians
His unique approach to the culturally diverse music of his homeland has enabled Kitaro to travel a journey on a path of musical redemption. Long recognized as one of the most acclaimed composers and multi-instrumentalists in the Orient and America, Kitaro has used his music like a painter uses a canvas: creating ethereal images of sound that colors the imaginations of his many fans throughout the world.
Born into a Buddhist/Shintoist farming family in Toyohashi Prefecture in Central Japan in 1953, Kitaro has maintained a public presence has always been cloaked in the tradition and mysticism of the culture into which he was born, yet Kitaro’s music does not yield to regional boundaries or national categories.
Self-taught on the electric guitar and later keyboards, Kitaro first gained prominence when he created the synthesizer-enhanced sound of waves. The Japanese public was fascinated by Kitaro’s music and the critics soon referred to it as “sound pictures” and “mind music”. In 1980, Kitaro’s growing circle of popularity became even wider when he wrote and produced the music for an hour-long documentary that explored the “Silk Road” the overland trade route from Europe to Japan.
Thanks to European and Japanese import albums and a compilation released by Geffen Records, by 1985, Kitaro was firmly entrenched in the mind of the American public.
During the next ten years, Kitaro may have been at his most prolific. Producing award-winning albums like “Tenku” and “The Light of the Spirit”. In 1992, Kitaro became even more accessible to pop culture in the U.S. by a collaborating with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of YES on the “Dream” album. Later that year, Kitaro scored the Oliver Stone Vietnam War film “Heaven and Earth”, which also earned him a Golden Globe Award.
In the ensuing years, Kitaro has showed no signs of slowing down. Earning Grammy Nominations for Mandala, An Enchanted Evening and Gaia Onbashira. He captured the gold in the ‘Best New Age Album’ category for the “Thinking of You” album.
His latest album is “Spiritual Garden”, which hit stores in early 2006.
