The healing force of nature transmuted through lush synthesizer arrangements and uplifting melodies. Pseudo-mystical ramblings bathed in maudlin electronic drivel.

Those are the polarities of opinion that surround the music of Kitaro, a Japanese synthesist whose music emerged out of mid-'70s space music. But now Kitaro is an avatar of the New Age and his music has been embraced by that audience with its promise of fantasy and relaxation couched in music that travels the space ways.

Since 1977, Mtaro has been creating atmospheric space operas full of swirling electronic textures, sweet melodies, synthesizer orchestral arrangements, environmental effects, and a rock ambience straight out of Pink Floyd, circa Ummagumma and Meddle. But Kitaro's space music credentials go back even further than that, to his early '70s group The Far East Family BandJapan's answer to the Grateful Dead. The Far East Family Band intoned portentous melodies and pounding trance rhythms on albums like Nipponjin and Parallel World.

It's difficult coming to grips with Kitaro. Those who discovered his music in the '70s saw it as an alternative to the jabbering of punk and the party fascism of disco. It seemed like the logical extension of '60s psychedelia worked through early progressive-rock. It was the next step forward, but everyone else seemed to take two steps sideways and out. But as the '80s have worn on, Kitaro's music has been embraced by the New Age with all its attendant mystical trappings-and certainly Kitaro has been a willing party to it.

Speaking with Mtaro, who made his first North American tour this fall, can be difficult. His English is rudimentary, but although a translator is present he often ignores her in trying to convey the meaning of his music. He laughs frequently, but he doesn't understand my incredulity at some of his stories. He relates a tale about seeing a ghost at the Manor Recording Studios in England. When I ask if there were any drugs around, he laughs but launches into four more stories about manor studio ghosts as if they are common knowledge. (For the record, Tom Newman, house engineer when Kitaro was recording at the Manor, denies any ghostly visitations.)

Pinning Kitaro down is like listening to one hand clapping. Tech magazine editors are perplexed by Mtaro's electronic naivete. Even though he's been surrounded by electronics for years and employs sophisticated computer synthesizers like the Kurzweil 250, he expresses the ignorance of an idiot savant. "The synthesizer is electric, but it's a traditional instrument," he says innocently. "A long time ago they wanted a sound so they hit the wood and made a sound. I think it's the same. I need a sound so I'm making a sound."

The problem is, he is innocent. Mtaro has a childlike demeanor that is disarming. I looked for guile and found utter guilessness. "It was like he was presenting his music to us thinking it was nothing," exclaims tabla player Zakir Hussain, who performs on Mtaro's new album, The Light Of The Spirit. "He thought it was so little and so humble and we were supposed to be the gods who would make it listenable. It was unbelievable to see a great musician like him do that."

Unbelievable is only one of the criticisms leveled at Kitaro, a musician who often appears to be too innocent to be true. I look at him askance when he relates a story about the proof of the healing powers of his music. "The sound has a power for humans, for nature," he says. "I took two speakers and in front of each speaker I placed a flower. On one side came loud music, on the other side came my music. After one week, the flower in front of my music is bending towards the speaker, the other one is dead. I think it's the same thing for humans."

Nothing humble there. But there must be more to this musician, who had the reputation of a recluse, living until recently at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Kitaro was born in Japan in February, 1953, at which time his parents named him Masanori Takahashi. He claims that he received the name Kitaro, which means "man of love and joy," as a nickname in high school. Whatever happened to Fats, Lumpy, and Nerd? While his biography would have you believe he grew up on a small country farm with devout Shintoist parents, Kitaro admits that the farm was a sideline and that everyone in Japan belongs to one Eastern religion or another. There's nothing exceptionally spiritual, mystical, or monastic about it.

As a teenager he took up acoustic guitar. "In the beginning of my music life I started the guitar, rhythm guitar, and I just learned chords out of a music book." He was listening to American and British rock & roll like the Beatles in his teens. By the end of the '60s, he was enthralled by the British progressiverock movement. "I was listening to a more traditional Japanese feeling," says Kitaro, "and the other side is more British rock, progressive-rock, Pink Floyd, King Crimson."

In 1970 he and a group of Japanese hippies formed The Far East Family Band, which also included Fumio Miyashita and Ikira Itch, two other well-known Japanese "space" musicians. It was with Far East that Kitaro switched to synthesizer. He got a crash course on the instrument when German synthesizer legend Klaus Schulze produced the Far East albums Nipponjin and Parallel World. "Just watching Klaus compose and perform was a real education to me," recalls Kitaro. "More than the specifics of what he did to the instrument, it was the whole approach to the instrument. His personality had a childlike quality that led to a fresh approach to the use of synthesizer, using the instruments and other equipment in the studio in ways that were totally unconventional. For example, he would take tracks he had built up to a certain point, play them through a Leslie cabinet, mic the cabinet, and re-mix that into the overall piece."

Although laden with psychedelic imagery and titles like Join Our Mental Phase Sound, Kitaro believes that The Far East Family Band was more spiritually motivated and disparages the post-Far East work of his contemporaries as being more money-oriented. "I feel that the music the band pursued was more inwardly directed and came more from the soul," he says. "It was a more personal expression. When the time came for me to go solo, it wasn't a dramatic change or departure, but merely a natural progression of the expression of the deep inner self."

His spiritual journey led him to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the self-styled sex guru and guru to the rich, who was recently deported from the U.S. In the mid-'70s, Rajneesh had an ashram in Poona, India. Kitaro went there, but now downplays his experience with Rajneesh, answering questions about him with a cagey smile. "It's not true that I'm a follower of that religion or belief. I believe it is one of many possible beliefs."

Yet many of Kitaro's early photographs depict him in the orange and red garb of Rajneesh disciples, and he often wore a pendant with the Bhagwan's picture. "Yeah, I know," laughs Kitaro. "It's true at one point I took on the trappings of this belief, but it was not necessarily a body and soul conversion. I wanted to learn music for meditations and dynamic meditation, the chanting, many things. So I had a good time at Poona. Chaitanya Hari Deuter [a German New Age composer] made a lot of meditation music for the ashram, but I didn't stay there so long, just half a year. Afterwards I walked around the country."

Kitaro emerged with a series of solo albums beginning with 1977's Ten Kai-Astral Trip, followed by the From The Full Moon Story, Oasis, and Silk Road, still his best known recording. Each album unfolded exotic landscapes that owed much to the melodicism of Vangelis, but filtered through Kitaro's own Asian background with reedy melodies, waves and birds, and hand-percussion. It was an inviting texture, a Persian carpet of sound with melodies embroidered by intertwining synthesizers. Each Kitaro record promised a caravan to exotic locales.

Initially available as rare and expensive Japanese imports, Kitaro's entire catalog has been issued on the imported German Kuckuck label, and in America, on Gramavision and Geffen. Geffen in particular exacerbated a feeling of assembly line music by releasing seven recordings with generic covers. It all drew attention to the redundancy of Kitaro's music. The melodies that were once soothing and fresh became painfully familiar at least to those who had followed him for over a decade.

However, there is a hoard of new legions drawn to the pseudo-mysticism of the New Age who embrace Kitaro's music like the Holy Grail. His U. S. tour played to near capacity houses in 3-6, 000 seat halls. This is an artist, remember, who has barely nudged the Billboard Top 200 Album Charts. And it's a surprisingly older audience comprised of post-hippies, yuppies, and the odd guru scattered in the crowd.

In concert, Kitaro sends a mixed message. At one point someone in a hooded Druid costume comes out to light fires atop two pedestals flanking Kitaro. It's as if he saw This Is Spinal Tap, but didn't get the joke. He sits stage center, dressed in white, surrounded by keyboards, but he plays his melodies almost exclusively on an old Korg monophonic analog synthesizer while he gazes heavenward, his left hand dancing in the air, conjuring the muse.

"His music is sweet and simple, but the technology is not sweet or simple," says violinist Steven Kindler. Kindler triggers a Yamaha TX816 rack with his Zeta violin. In addition, there are 15 keyboard synthesizers and electronic drums. But behind Kitaro are three giant Japanese Wadaiko drums, ceremonial instruments that he uses in annual ritual performances at the foot of Mount Fuji, beating on them for hours.

Despite all the synthesizers, Kitaro's music is surprisingly realtime. Only a few connecting sequencer patterns are used and almost nothing is midi'd-a revelation in these days when groups like Tangerine Dream mount the stage, hit a key on their computers, and let them drive all of their synthesizers. "I'm using just one sequencer, but not often, only on one or two songs, Wings and Sundance. It's playing the rhythm line."

"It's a pretty un-midi'd tour," agrees keyboardist Steve Bach, one of two other keyboard players with Kitaro. "Everything has its own sound. Nothing in his set-up is midi'd. I've got a sequencer running through a Casio FZ-1 Sampler and one of those Yamaha's DMP-7s where the faders move by themselves. But each instrument has its own sound. Some of them don't even have midi. They're out of the museum. But they have a very distinctive sound and it's his sound."

While Kitaro has three Yamaha DX-7s in his own set-up, he plays an ancient Korg 700S and a Roland Vocoder almost exclusively during the concert. And sitting in Steve Bach's set-up is Kitaro's original MiniMoog, his first synthesizer. "We are using the Mini-Moog for bass sound, synthesizer bass," laughs Kitaro. "My instruments are old analog synthesizers. I'm using Yamahas and Kurzweils and digital synthesizers, but my favorite sounds are from the old Korg synthesizer. The digital sounds are clean and sound real, but I like the analog. I can make an image from these sounds that comes into my head. I can put my mind through all kinds of scenes with analog synthesizers."

That's how Kitaro realizes his music, out of "mental pictures" in his mind. Each album has a thematic story. Ten Kai-Astral Trip was his image of a journey to nirvana. From The Full Moon Story created in sound his perception of the phenomenological effects of the full moon. "I start with a mental picture-and it really is a picture, not some abstract idea," insists Kitaro. "For that picture there is a sound that goes along with it and that sound is already in my head before I lay one finger on the keyboard. From there I experiment."

Like previous Kitaro records, his new album The Light Of The Spirit also has a unifying concept. "The Light Of The Spirit is a story of the human cycle: birth, death, rebirth, death," explains Kitaro. "It's like karma."

I asked him what the mental picture was of the opening track,the symphonic sounding Mysterious Encounter.

"Mysterious Encounter is like a small child not knowing anything, but then experiencing something into tneir system or mind. 1 he important thing is for the child to experience it for the first time."

After his New York concert, Kitaro made a pilgrimage to see his forefathers, the venerable Pink Floyd, a band that defined the idea of concept albums. "After the Radio City Music Hall concert, I saw Pink Floyd at Madison Square Garden and they were using many tapes and sequencers," continues Kitaro. "But basically I'm thinking that the live concert means live, so we should play five. Each person has two hands and legs so we're using everything."

Kitaro extends his compositions in performance with long repetitions that hover between trance and boredom. Steve Bach confesses that "the music has less edge" than what he normally plays.

When Kitaro opens up on pieces like Sundance, the music can be rhythmically dynamic. Violinist Kindler and guitarist James Behringer in particular get to trade solos like the old Mahavishnu Orchestra. "Every musician has free parts," says Kitaro. "They can play their feelings."

"He's pretty much given me carte blanche as far as my playing is concerned," agrees Kindler-a recording artist in his own right who put in time with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Jan Hammer Group in the 1970s. He has several records out on the Global Pacific label. Despite the fact that he's a classical violinst, he's the only one on stage not reading from charts. "There's lots of what he calls obbligato, which is just ad lib to him. The other musicians don't have a great deal of that-the guitarist does the most next to me. It's a little bit difficult for people who are used to stretching out a little bit more like Casey [Scheuerll] and Steve Bach. Steve played with Stanley Clarke and his band with Simon Phillips and Icarus Johnson, so it's a little hard for them." Kitaro has mounted an all-American band for his U. S. tour because his Japanese group couldn't get visas.

Kitaro himself is fairly sedate in concert, content to repeat his simple melodies ad infinitum. One of the few spontaneous moments comes when he plays a santoor, or hammered dulcimer, through a digital delay. "When I play the santoor, that's improvised, and the Japanese drums are improvised."

Except for the percussion and drums, there are no traditional Japanese instruments on stage, at least to see, but you hear the sounds of ancient instruments being plucked through the synthesized orchestrations. They emanate from the Kurzweil 250 and Casio FZ-1 Digital Sampler. "The sampling keyboards have traditional Japanese instruments, the koto, the tsuzumi, an hour glass-shaped drum. I'm multi-sampling. I have koto, shakuhachi, tsuzumi on one keyboard."

Kitaro says he does most of his own sampling on the Casio FZ-1. "With the Japanese sounds, my friends, professional koto and shakuhachi and tsuzumi players, just played and I recorded them. First I record them on the [Sony] PCM, and I pick out the good part." He prefers the less expensive Casio over the Kurzweil because of its ease of programming. The Kurzweil has mostly stock sounds, but the Casio has custom Kitaro sounds. "I don't have MacIntosh computer and you need it with the Kurzweil. So I use the Casio FZ-1 because it's easier. It displays the waveform and everything so it's easier for looping. And I think the quality's the same, 16 bits, and the sampling time is almost 30 seconds."

With the samplers, Kitaro is better able to generate his orchestral sound. He's had a couple of his compositions performed and recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, but these recordings-like the orchestral Silk Road-only seem to emphasize the bombast and sweetness of Kitaro's music. "Even before I did the London Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, I wanted orchestra sounds," says Kitaro. "I think the next album will be more orchestral sounds. The orchestra has many members, 100. But now I'm recording alone. So I'm enjoying one person making all the orchestral sounds." 

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KITARO'S EQUIPMENT
Despite Kitaro's vagueness and professed naivete about his instruments, he's amassed a considerable amount of technology around him in his home studio he records into an Otari 32-track DTR900 digital tape machine mixed through a Sound Workshop 38 to 32 console with Dolby SR Noise Reduction.
From his first Mini-Moog, which he still uses on records and tours, he's run the gamut of analog and digital synthesizers. He still uses his Korg ,'00 and 800S synthesizers almost exclusively for his reedy melody lines. He also uses a Roland Vocoder, Roland Jupiter 8, Roland SH-3, and a Prophet 5.
His digital arsenal entails Yamaha DX-7s and DX-5s, the Yamaha Electric Grand Piano, Roland D-50, and for sampling,the Casio FZ-1 and Kurzweil 250. His sequencers include the Yamaha OX-1 and the DMP- 7.
In concert he mixes his own synthesizer setup through a Yamaha PM-1800.
He plays an electric guitar of indeterminate manufacture, and an Ovation acoustic. And then there are the Wadaiko drums-giant ceremonial Japanese instruments of which he uses up to 11 in his rutual performances at the foot of Mount Fuji.