Robbie Basho, "the father of the American Raga," recorded for John Fahey's Takoma label. He's often grouped with Fahey, Max Ochs, and Sandy Bull as a progenitor of "guitar soli," complex avant garde acoustic guitar (and other stringed instrument) playing. The Basho archives has posted two live shows, one from 1978, and the second from 1982, for streaming or download, and a 1983 radio interview and show for streaming.
posted by OmieWise on Jan 15, 2012 - 10 comments

This one time in Edo Japan, Bashō got together with a bunch of his rich friends from Nagoya to make up a set of interlocking poems (renku) — 36 of them, to be exact (a format called kasen). Then, 320 years later, the complete cycle was animated by a diverse international team of artists. [more inside]
posted by Nomyte on Nov 14, 2011 - 26 comments

Given recent economic woes, in conjunction with ecological, national security, and community issues regarding food production, does Japan have an interesting idea? [more inside]
posted by barrett caulk on Apr 15, 2009 - 25 comments

...Record collectors are typically thought of as irascible loners, but in the Washington of the ’50s and early ’60s, there existed a group of scruffy young blues and folk fans who could’ve given the Illuminati a run for their all-seeing eyes. They thought of themselves as the guardians of a tradition the rest of the world had either forgotten or misinterpreted. They adopted fake names. They invented strange mythologies. They hatched plans to bring their favorite historical figures back from the dead--or at least back from the commercial oblivion to which the music biz had consigned them. But most of all, they inspired admiration and awe. Though they never used the term themselves, this bunch of vintage-78 obsessives was known by others as the East Coast Blues Mafia.

The Thong Club
via FaheyGuitarPlayers
posted by y2karl on Jul 13, 2006 - 20 comments

Basho: Many old places brought down to us through poetry, but landslides and floods have altered paths and covered markers with earth, and trees arisen generations gone, and hard to locate anything now, but that moment seeing the thousand-year-old monument brought back sense of time past. One blessing of such pilgrimage, one joy of having come through, aches of the journey forgotten, shaken, into eyes. - Cid Corman's tr. of Basho's Oku no Hosomichi. 4 translations online.
posted by chymes on Dec 7, 2003 - 6 comments