Taj Mahal Travellers: It's as Odd as You Think...

When philosophical or theoretical concepts are the basis for a music, it might be time to move on over to something else. That doesn’t mean that the music is void of quality attributes, but it might mean that there was more time spent figuring out what the music meant as opposed to what it actually would sound like.

Tracing the Fluxus movement back to its inception still allows scholars, nerds and geeks to move even further back to Marcel Duchamp and his infamous toilet. That installation – which was just a toilet displayed at an art event – was constructed to confound viewers, not necessarily make each question what art is or can be. As fallout from Duchamp’s work, the Fluxus movement went on to value simplistic form over function. And while music wasn’t necessarily the medium in which all of this was envisioned, works by the minimalist composer John Cage became a standard touchstone when discussing the unpinning concepts that Fluxus championed.

With Cage and the New York avant garde – which included a young John Cale prior to his association with a little ensemble called the Velvet Underground – came a self assured strutting that was either perceived as confident genius or haughty nonsense. Whatever the answer, the fact that musicians came to be associated with the art movement served to spread Fluxus’ precepts beyond its European and American progenitors.

The Taj Mahal Travellers[sic] were formed by Japanese born Takehisa Kosugi, who would circle around him a clutch of younger musicians and ramble around Europe in a van. Apart from the striking choice of moniker, the Travellers were focused on using instruments to create swelling swaths of sound that didn’t make use of melody.

To the uninitiated – or even folks well acquainted with droney stuffs – the Travellers are going to come off as a bunch of wasted weirdoes that happened to avail themselves to some instruments. That’s not necessarily incorrect as the work turned in on July 15 , 1972 is comprised of single, elongated notes and spits of moaning.

What’s interesting to note, apart from the fact that the entirety of the Travellers’ discography was recorded live, is the fact that the group, as much as possible, performed out of doors. The setting for the group’s performances obviously contrasts with what it was doing sonically. But again, the fact that a buncha weirdoes made use of electronic equipment in bucolic settings renders the creative act something beyond the scope of traditional bands that functioned before or after.

In the wake of JapRock becoming something of its own genre and Julian Cope distilling its main proponents in his book, the Travellers have of late been receiving a bit more attention than one might imagine. Despite that, though, there’re a spate of more digestible and way less experimental works that came out of the same scene as these guys. So while everything from Les Rallizes Denudes to Tokyo Kid Brother possess at least some semblance of melody, the Travellers eschewed rock influences to have a go at a music that most won’t be able to wade through.