How does one capture the enormity of someone like percussionist Kiyohiko Semba? Do you focus on his early work as a key member of J-Fusion heavies like T-Square, or on his art-rock leanings with bands like Wha-ha-ha? Do you zoom in on his crucial contributions to the rhythmic grooves underpinning the best work of artists like Ippu-Do, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Akiko Yano? Or do you lean left and highlight his lesser-known—but no less important—collaborations with Akira Ito, Yas-Kaz, and Killing Time (to name but a few)? Judging by what I love and appreciate about his 1996 solo debut Jasmine Talk, the best way may be to keep the spotlight on his visionary ideas as a leader from behind the drum kit.
Born in 1954, Kiyohiko was the first child of Kosuke Semba, head of the Semba school of traditional Japanese music. Under his father’s tutelage, Kiyohiko became steeped in both the “classical” Japanese tradition and its folk idioms. From the age of three, he was already studying and performing instruments like the taiko and kotsuzumi. By age ten, he was gracing the stages of Tokyo’s National Theatre and Ginza’s Kabuki-za with his prodigious talent.
Originally, Kiyohiko intended to follow directly in his father’s footsteps, enrolling in the Traditional Japanese Music Department at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts. By the time he graduated in 1978, he had accumulated all sorts of accreditations and accolades for his excellence as a student. Yet, that same year, the stirrings of his own musical path began to bubble up.
In 1978, Kiyohiko joined the pioneering J-Fusion group The Square (later known as T-Square), helping to usher in a new boom in Japanese jazz alongside bands like Casiopea. That opportunity led to collaborations with major pop artists like Yumi Matsutoya on tour. By 1980, he had left The Square and begun a prolific career as a session musician, working with artists as diverse as Rie Nakahara and Michiko Akao.
His collaborative work with Akiko Yano, Wha-ha-ha, and Ryuichi Sakamoto (notably on Left-Handed Dream) cemented his reputation as a boundary-pushing percussionist equally at home in jazz, Western pop, and experimental settings. He also performed with Akira Sakata’s orchestra at the Berlin Jazz Festival in 1981.
One could argue that it was his work forming Wha-ha-ha with Mishio Ogawa and Akira Sakata that marked his turning point into composition. On their albums for the Better Days label, you can hear an ingenious and frankly unique blend of schizoid New Wave, free jazz, and experimental collage. That sound shared some of the same DNA with what came next: Kiyohiko Semba and His Haniwa All-Stars, launched in 1983.
In hindsight, the Haniwa All-Stars were a supergroup of the Japanese experimental scene. The band included Daisaku Kume and Shuichi Chino of T-Square, Atsuo Fujimoto and Ichiko Hashimoto of Colored Music, Jun Aoyama and Bun Itakura of Killing Time, and vocalists like Reichi (of future Unita Minima and Arepos fame) and Mishio Ogawa of Chakra. Together, they formed what was perhaps the world’s largest—and weirdest—Japanese big band, creating sprawling experimental pop pieces infused with Kiyohiko’s unique sensibility. From the opening track “ちゃーのみ友達スレスレ” to the closer “めだか,” their debut was a tour de force: Japanese court music, jet-fueled to soundtrack the neon nights of Tokyo’s modern metropolis.
As popular as Haniwa All-Stars became, Kiyohiko’s resistance to being pigeonholed soon surfaced. He launched side projects like Haniwachan (a more pop-oriented group) and collaborated with international musicians like Bill Laswell (Material) and Jamaaladeen Tacuma.
It wasn’t until 1988 that he debuted a project under his own name: Buson. A purely instrumental outfit, Buson dove deeper into his roots in traditional Japanese music, enlisting formidable players to transform that heritage in unexpected directions. This spirit rekindled his large-ensemble projects, including reincarnations of the Haniwa All-Stars with over 50 musicians. In those concerts—many still available on YouTube—eclectic guests like Demon Kakka and Unicorn’s Tamio Okuda lit up the stage. That same year, his electro-acoustic score for Reiko Okano’s Fancy Dance showcased a startlingly modern take on percussion.
Through the 1990s, Kiyohiko emerged as a key figure in pan-Asian musical exchange. His “Asian Fantasy” concert series at Tokyo’s Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon paired traditional musicians from Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and beyond in bold cross-cultural collaborations. In 1993, a reformed Haniwa toured South Asia, performing in Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka.
It’s easy to imagine how these global experiences shaped what we hear in 1996’s Jasmine Talk. That influence is immediate on the opening track, “Breeze And I OREKAMA Revisited,” featuring the gorgeous vocals of Indian classical singer Geeta Deshpande. Jasmine Talk becomes a kind of meditation—on music, on culture, on the often-unspoken threads that bind them together.
Here, Kiyohiko reimagines a piece by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona from his Andalucian Suite. Known to many via Jimmy Dorsey’s big band version, “The Breeze and I” is transformed into something aligned with a pre-rock and roll ethos: a time when musicians stitched together cultural threads to imagine a kind of “world music” unanchored from its roots. Kiyohiko, instead, re-roots it—placing those sounds in a different time and place, where the idea of “the Orient” was more abstract, more imagined.
You can’t help but wonder—positively—why he pared down the collaborators for this album. Why take on all the percussion himself? Why cloak what could have been a purely atmospheric record (with great soundscapes provided by longtime collaborator Daisaku Kume) in equal parts fire and pathos? It’s as if his hands finally had something urgent to say—and what they said was a reorientation of “Oriental” influence itself.
Largely inspired by the music of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, original songs like “KOI” (written by Mishio Ogawa and translated into Hindi) and “The Chant Of Death” (co-written by Yoko Ueno) offer twin meditations on musical translation across oceans. The former is a floating tantra of traditional grace; the latter, Korean nongak music pulled toward a newer mystery. In between, “Big Fun”—a brief, two-minute solo percussion showcase—finds Kiyohiko expanding his craft into gamelan-inspired terrain.
But make no mistake: Jasmine Talk is not for casual listeners of “world music” who never ventured beyond a Rough Guide compilation. It’s for those who want to hear the world’s music do something new. You hear that best in songs like “IYE,” a quasi-psychedelic, fourth-world fusion piece that veers into realms of healing music. Tracks like “Shagiri” and “Revelation” bend experimental world music westward along the Silk Road into Middle Eastern modalities.
Toward the end of Jasmine Talk are songs like “Grinning” (written by Tatsuo Kondo), less easily classifiable, giving Geeta Deshpande space to stretch and contract the music in ways that echo a new generation’s idea of “alternative” music. The album closes on its totemic title track—co-written in various pieces with Bun Itakura, Daisaku Kume, Yoshinobu Honma, and Tatsuo Kondo. Judging by the exhaustive list of percussion instruments played by Kiyohiko, it seems to be his attempt at threading all these ideas, influences, and traditions into one through-line. Much like the titular gem, the music shifts in value and meaning across all the cultures it draws from.
Absolutely engrossing, Jasmine Talk is transportive music much like it’s closest kin, Lewis Pragasam’s Spirit Of The People, was. It feels like the product of Kiyohiko’s lifelong attempt to make space for everything that came before him—and to channel it all through two hands and two feet landing squarely on a world that should be pulsing together in polymeter.