Tsuchitori was born in 1950 in Tadotsu, Kagawa. He was introduced to music through percussion, and began playing festival
taiko at a young age. As a teen, he played
modern jazz in
Osaka. In the early 1970s, he started his career as an avant-garde jazz percussionist and came to collaborate with
Kondō Toshinori,
Takagi Mototeru,
Oki Kano, and others. He has also performed with dancers such as
Ōno Kazuo and musicians from outside the country including
Derek Bailey and
Milford Graves. Beginning in 1976, Tsuchitori composed theatrical scores for the works of
Peter Brook. In 1981, while studying native
folk music from Asia and Africa, he met the
shamisen player
Momoyama Harue, the last disciple of . In 1987, he and Momoyama established the record label in
Gujō-Hachiman,
Gifu Prefecture as a base for their activities. From 1988 to 1998, Tsuchitori produced and performed in the "Ryūkō Gakusha Festival" every summer, an event featuring performances based on local folk tales and legends of
Mino Province. Musicians and dancers were invited from across the country. Around this time, Tsuchitori was also involved in a series of projects aiming to recreate
prehistoric Japanese music. In the early 2000s, he recorded reconstructed
paleolithic music in the
Cougnac Caves near
Payrignac,
France. He is currently researching the songs left by musicians of the
Meiji and
Taishō eras, particularly
Soeda Azenbō but also including
Hisada Kiseki,
Iboshi Hokuto, and
Nagai Yoshi. Tsuchitori has done live performances of Azenbō's songs as well as uploaded numerous recordings of the songs to his
YouTube page. == See also ==