Miya Masaoka

Miya Masaoka is a performer and composer who works simultaneously in the varied musical fields of jazz, western classical music, traditional Japanese music and free improvisation. Masaoka has studied traditional Japanese Court Music (gagaku) under Imperial Court musician Mr. Suenobu Togi. She is currently the director of an ensemble of the S.F. Gagaku Society. Masaoka received a Bachelor of Arts in Music, magna cum laude, from S.F. State University and Master of Arts in Music Composition from Mills College. She has performed both solo and with a wide variety of musicians including Pharoah Sanders, L.Subramanian, the Berlin Rias Dorchester Symphony and the Berlin Opera, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Steve Coleman, Mark Izu, Francis Wong, George Lewis, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Wadada Leo Smith, Rohan de Saram (Arditti String Quartet), James Newton and many others.

Miya Masaoka Interviewed by Maren Woodruff December 1, 2001

Were you always interested in music?
MM I studied classical piano from when I was a young child.  And taught myself guitar, and made up things on the piano and the guitar.  So, I had always been playing music, making things up.

What was your transition from piano and guitar?
MM It was really piano.  For a while I played both koto and the piano, and I did some concerts where I did both.  And it just got to be where I really needed time wise to practice a lot on one instrument or the other, and then had to commit to one instrument.
So, then decided to go with the koto.

Was it because you liked it more?
MM I think that I had played the piano for so long, and there were more possibilities with the koto.  And it was just more intrinsically interesting.  It created possibilities.

Do you think that it is necessary to be traditionally trained in an instrument?
MM Well, I never want to make rules for anybody.  I think everybody should make their own rules and all artists really need to decide that for themselves.  I personally did that because that was just natural for me, to learn the repertoire, to learn the traditional type of music, to study and learn different styles from a number of different masters, so that ís just what I chose to do.  But I really think I don�t like it when people make rules for me, and tell me, �Oh, you have to do this or that� So, I don�t want to do that for anybody else.

Do you feel that a person needs to be traditionally trained in an instrument like the koto, where certain notes have certain meanings?
MM In some ways, it would probably help them.  They would run into a lot of obstacles if they didn�t, but I don�t want to say what they can or can�t do.

You don�t think that it would be disrespectful if someone just picked up the koto and started playing?
MM No, I don�t think so.

How would you define your music?
MM It�s changed over the years.  I�ve been playing music for so long, and it changes from different projects I am involved in as well.  Because now I am really working toward a music that is based on a language, so I am incorporating a lot of vocals to it.
Your vocals?
MM No, but I am using language as part of it, so its not singing, but its vocals.  So, now it�s really different from a year ago.  But I would say that I push, I am a risk taker and always have been.  I have pretty much always disregarded the niches, a lot of rules that people try to make for artists.  And I am not in any one circle or cliques.  Schools or cliques, you know?  I would say I am independent.  I just really try to follow my own course.

So, it�s pretty easy for you to do improvisation?
MM Improvisation is probably another question because that is really another whole set of skills.  If you know what I am talking about

Do you feel women have an easier time being improvisational because they have an easier time expressing their emotions?
MM I don�t know what improvisational means.  When I look at the genre of improvisational music, I think that everyone approached it quite differently.   Men are just as easily able to express themselves.  It�s more about the individual, not the gender of the person.

Do you ever feel like the life of a musician is tough?
MM Oh, every day.  It�s worth it though.  Being a musician and all.  It�s different if you are a musician and you are being paid to play at gigs a lot, I think that it�s a lot easier.  You just wait until you get called and play this or that. Because if you are being more of an artist, who also does music, it�s really tough because you have to do a lot more self-producing.  You don�t have the clubs that will just naturally want you.  It�s hard on your personal life.  It�s hard financially.  It�s hard on your psychic and spiritual life.  I mean - there are highs of course.  You get huge paybacks and it�s something you choose, but and then the older you get, there are more difficulties.  It�s different too, that go on as a performing artist rather than a composer.  You�re more in the background as a composer is.

Do you ever feel like a job or something that you feel like you have to do?  Or does it always just
MM There are different things that become like jobs, like trying to find funding. There are a lot of administration parts that feel like a job.

Does it ever get tiring?
MM Definitely, unless you have a lot of money and can hire people to do it for you.  Off and on over the years, I have hired other people help me.  You just do what you have to do.  It is all part of survival.

How do you feel technology affects your music?
MM Well, in a lot of sense, technology is such an intricate part of creating music and forming music.  It�s not a separate part of it; it�s in the core.  It works very symbiotically with the creative process, its like the instrument and tools that you work with.  So, it�s really important.

Do you think that when people are trying to make music that it is more about the technology than the music?
MM Hopefully no.  I mean, hopefully there�s the music and the technology is just part of that.  It can enhance it, and just like I say, it�s not being separated from the music.  And hopefully that will determine everything.  The creative impulse and the art just are stronger.

Do you feel an exotic value playing the koto?
MM It�s probably more of an unusual instrument and therefore, there�s an exoticism that can be applied to certain cultures.

Is that what attracts you to it?
MM No, not necessarily because anytime things become exotic zed, they become objectified, and they lose their real essence.  And people see things differently.  The nature of exotification and objectification is that it is seen through a lens, a filter, and I�d rather people just see things for what they are.

Can you talk about your laser koto?  Do you still play it?
MM I do.  And it has laser beams and the beams are pretty much and extension of my instrument.  I have 900 samples.  That I am able to trigger. The laser koto grew out of my monster koto, which I developed at STEIM, that was also gesture controlled with my own sounds.  So, I sample my sounds live and then play them back live.  And then I also have prerecorded samples.  And it�s a way of really its in some ways an effect of the feticshisation of sound because that is all that I am doing.  But I am using all different kinds of techniques to create something new.  For example, I can just play the koto in the air without even touching the instrument.

Did you make the laser koto?
MM My friend, there�s a hardware part and a software part, the originally technology was developed at STEIM, with different technology, I renamed parts but I a lot of it is very similar.  But I have a friend Donald Swearingen, and he develops some of the hardware for me, so he uses it and calls it the laser harp.  And he�s helped me with that.

Do you feel that your background in music has helped?
MM I have quite an intensive background in music.  I have different degrees in Western music and degrees that weren�t quite finished in eastern music.  And I led a traditional Japanese Gagaku ensemble for 8 years.

Does that comprise of koto instruments?
MM It�s the oldest orchestral music in the world.  It�s really old.
 I think a lot of my background in music has really helped me.  For instance, I have a long extensive background in jazz, so I can play B-bop piano.  I have performed with very famous jazz musicians and understand the music extensively.  And then I made it overlap to the koto to a certain extent.   Have a relationship with African American music and jazz that I know other people don�t.  They never were guided into it that deeply.  So, it�s not just collaborating with them or something.  I was a jazz musician.  Even now, a lot of the panels and things I am on, I am in that category.
The jazz category?
MM The jazz category is often the open category and can include anything.  But there�s problems with that too because the jazz category doesn�t like electronics.  So, then I get shunned out.  And they don�t understand why I have all of these toys.  Or they have an attitude in a lot of jazz musicians.  So, there are a lot of problems.  And actually I have gotten into some major arguments with famous jazz musicians on panels regarding electronic music, to the point where they didn�t want me to play on their record the next time.
Oh my god.
MM Yea, it�s very bad. So, I try not to engage in these kinds of conflicts anymore.  But I know that they are there so I know that I am also really out of this category.  I don�t fit in.

Does that play into your music at all?
MM Well, it makes it harder.  It makes it harder for me to get gigs or do anything.  Actually it�s all the schools, teaching in jazz studies or electronic music.  It�s always this really boxy thing.  And then it�s the same thing in commercial work too.  So then it is just harder when your music incorporates those different things.

Do feel that there is a gender role in electronic music or improvisation?
MM Yes, undoubtedly.  I mean, - it�s a society that is pretty gender based, when you look at statistics.  So, it�s not going to be any different in the music industry.
 

Can you talk about some of the styles you have developed for the koto?
MM Well, there�s a lot that I have developed.  And some of them have to do with more jazz sounds.  I have developed ways of playing very difficult chromatic pieces in jazz on the koto.  And a particular style I use is bowing the koto.  I do a lot of bowing and a lot of drumming on the actual koto.  They aren't� necessarily my trademarks but sort of.

Have you learned instruments like drumming, or bowed instruments?
MM I�ve learned bowing from different cello players.  I asked them to help me with different techniques.  And then I have studied different kinds of drumming for years to, so that has helped me.

Do you use music to express emotions?  For instance, I often use playing soccer or playing the guitar to express emotions.
MM I don�t know.  Maybe that�s true.  I try not to use it as therapy.  I try to do other things that might help instead.  But I know what you mean.

How did you feel when you first began to play non-traditionally?
MM You know it wasn�t easy because you are so used to playing something one way, and then you play it different ways.  It�s at first fun and then to get into it deeper is harder.  At first it�s all of these things and its all fun, but to really hone in on the uses of it musically requires a little more thinking.  My master teacher told me that she would take away my master koto training certificates if I kept because she was reading in the Japanese newspaper that I was doing this concert or that concert and just doing my own thing.  She said, you know, if you don�t have permission from us to do things, we could take away your master certificate.  And I paid a lot of money and worked hard, even though I knew it was kind of bogus, you know I don�t really respect that school system then because there is, so actually that�s when I started really rebelling then because I was just disgusted.

Was that in the United States?
MM That was in San Francisco.  She was just very old fashioned, but also threatening me.  I just realized that something happened.  We�re friends now, but I just chose not to go that way.

With a master certificate in koto, would you be linked to your teacher in that way?
MM Yes, to the school in Japan.  And then you could say, "Oh, you�re a master".  It�s a title.  But you kind of have to play these pieces and stuff.  And they are not that difficult pieces, it�s not about changing them and then playing them again.

Do you identify yourself as a student of this teacher?
MM I chose not to.  The one that I do choose to be linked to is my Gagaku master, the one that I had the ensemble with.  So, that�s the one that I chose to be linked to.

Do you play a certain style each time?
MM No, but I do find myself depending on situations how I am responding.  It can be changed by but I hope it is different each time.

Do people perceive you as being a good improv person because of your instrument?
MM I don�t really consider what I do as improvisational. I have a long history of playing in different styles, for many years.  You can hear someone when they play, how they are responding, how large of a bank of what they have to give is there.  You can hear if what you are hearing is what you are going to hear in the next three hours, or if people have a wide range of expertise in which to draw from, so I think that that is part of it too.

How do you feel your background and gender play into your music?
MM Your background and gender play into who you are as a person, and how you function in society, and how society looks at you, and how they perceive you, and how they treat you.  Just from being on the street to even professional levels of how you get treated.  So, all of those things affect you and it�s hard to know how you would be different if you were different.  It�s almost a game in not thinking about it so much that you get depressed or cynical or hateful, and so you can still be compassionate to people and do the best work that you can do and not to have it become too much of a.  And everyone is different.  But I am sure that it must play a role, and I think the things about being a woman as a musician, is that it is constantly working for you and against you at different times and its always related upon itself and it�s always there.

How does it work for and against you?
MM Sometimes you can appear at first less threatening and you can enter different circles.  And then after you become more successful, then you become more of a threat.  Then because you are more of a threat, you might take away some gigs.  Anytime you start messing on that level.  It�s different.

Have you lost acquaintances because of that?
MM No, I don�t think so.  But I think that as you move in your career in different ways, your friends change and your circles change a little bit.  And then especially if you are not in one school, things change.  Maybe they change for me, but maybe for some other people they don�t change because they came out of one clique and they will stay in that clique, and they will die in that clique.

Does that work all right with you?  Being less stable?
MM I don�t know.  I just try to cope.  I just try to survive.  I mean one of the things that I try to do is initiate things.  Like I initiated the San Francisco Electronic Arts Festival and it�s going into its third year now.
Wow, that�s really cool.
MM Yea�, and it�s been a big success.  It�s a three-day festival and a lot of different people play.  So, if you keep doing positive and constructive things, it helps against the things that might be negative.
Well, that�s an amazing outlook on life.
MM Thanks.

Well, I guess that I don�t have any more questions.  Thank you for your time.
Miya Masaoka Interviewed by Maren Woodruff December 1, 2001

Were you always interested in music?
MM I studied classical piano from when I was a young child.  And taught myself guitar, and made up things on the piano and the guitar.  So, I had always been playing music, making things up.

What was your transition from piano and guitar?
MM It was really piano.  For a while I played both koto and the piano, and I did some concerts where I did both.  And it just got to be where I really needed time wise to practice a lot on one instrument or the other, and then had to commit to one instrument.
So, then decided to go with the koto.

Was it because you liked it more?
MM I think that I had played the piano for so long, and there were more possibilities with the koto.  And it was just more intrinsically interesting.  It created possibilities.

Do you think that it is necessary to be traditionally trained in an instrument?
MM Well, I never want to make rules for anybody.  I think everybody should make their own rules and all artists really need to decide that for themselves.  I personally did that because that was just natural for me, to learn the repertoire, to learn the traditional type of music, to study and learn different styles from a number of different masters, so that ís just what I chose to do.  But I really think I don�t like it when people make rules for me, and tell me, �Oh, you have to do this or that� So, I don�t want to do that for anybody else.

Do you feel that a person needs to be traditionally trained in an instrument like the koto, where certain notes have certain meanings?
MM In some ways, it would probably help them.  They would run into a lot of obstacles if they didn�t, but I don�t want to say what they can or can�t do.

You don�t think that it would be disrespectful if someone just picked up the koto and started playing?
MM No, I don�t think so.

How would you define your music?
MM It�s changed over the years.  I�ve been playing music for so long, and it changes from different projects I am involved in as well.  Because now I am really working toward a music that is based on a language, so I am incorporating a lot of vocals to it.
Your vocals?
MM No, but I am using language as part of it, so its not singing, but its vocals.  So, now it�s really different from a year ago.  But I would say that I push, I am a risk taker and always have been.  I have pretty much always disregarded the niches, a lot of rules that people try to make for artists.  And I am not in any one circle or cliques.  Schools or cliques, you know?  I would say I am independent.  I just really try to follow my own course.

So, it�s pretty easy for you to do improvisation?
MM Improvisation is probably another question because that is really another whole set of skills.  If you know what I am talking about

Do you feel women have an easier time being improvisational because they have an easier time expressing their emotions?
MM I don�t know what improvisational means.  When I look at the genre of improvisational music, I think that everyone approached it quite differently.   Men are just as easily able to express themselves.  It�s more about the individual, not the gender of the person.

Do you ever feel like the life of a musician is tough?
MM Oh, every day.  It�s worth it though.  Being a musician and all.  It�s different if you are a musician and you are being paid to play at gigs a lot, I think that it�s a lot easier.  You just wait until you get called and play this or that. Because if you are being more of an artist, who also does music, it�s really tough because you have to do a lot more self-producing.  You don�t have the clubs that will just naturally want you.  It�s hard on your personal life.  It�s hard financially.  It�s hard on your psychic and spiritual life.  I mean - there are highs of course.  You get huge paybacks and it�s something you choose, but and then the older you get, there are more difficulties.  It�s different too, that go on as a performing artist rather than a composer.  You�re more in the background as a composer is.

Do you ever feel like a job or something that you feel like you have to do?  Or does it always just
MM There are different things that become like jobs, like trying to find funding. There are a lot of administration parts that feel like a job.

Does it ever get tiring?
MM Definitely, unless you have a lot of money and can hire people to do it for you.  Off and on over the years, I have hired other people help me.  You just do what you have to do.  It is all part of survival.

How do you feel technology affects your music?
MM Well, in a lot of sense, technology is such an intricate part of creating music and forming music.  It�s not a separate part of it; it�s in the core.  It works very symbiotically with the creative process, its like the instrument and tools that you work with.  So, it�s really important.

Do you think that when people are trying to make music that it is more about the technology than the music?
MM Hopefully no.  I mean, hopefully there�s the music and the technology is just part of that.  It can enhance it, and just like I say, it�s not being separated from the music.  And hopefully that will determine everything.  The creative impulse and the art just are stronger.

Do you feel an exotic value playing the koto?
MM It�s probably more of an unusual instrument and therefore, there�s an exoticism that can be applied to certain cultures.

Is that what attracts you to it?
MM No, not necessarily because anytime things become exotic zed, they become objectified, and they lose their real essence.  And people see things differently.  The nature of exotification and objectification is that it is seen through a lens, a filter, and I�d rather people just see things for what they are.

Can you talk about your laser koto?  Do you still play it?
MM I do.  And it has laser beams and the beams are pretty much and extension of my instrument.  I have 900 samples.  That I am able to trigger. The laser koto grew out of my monster koto, which I developed at STEIM, that was also gesture controlled with my own sounds.  So, I sample my sounds live and then play them back live.  And then I also have prerecorded samples.  And it�s a way of really its in some ways an effect of the feticshisation of sound because that is all that I am doing.  But I am using all different kinds of techniques to create something new.  For example, I can just play the koto in the air without even touching the instrument.

Did you make the laser koto?
MM My friend, there�s a hardware part and a software part, the originally technology was developed at STEIM, with different technology, I renamed parts but I a lot of it is very similar.  But I have a friend Donald Swearingen, and he develops some of the hardware for me, so he uses it and calls it the laser harp.  And he�s helped me with that.

Do you feel that your background in music has helped?
MM I have quite an intensive background in music.  I have different degrees in Western music and degrees that weren�t quite finished in eastern music.  And I led a traditional Japanese Gagaku ensemble for 8 years.

Does that comprise of koto instruments?
MM It�s the oldest orchestral music in the world.  It�s really old.
 I think a lot of my background in music has really helped me.  For instance, I have a long extensive background in jazz, so I can play B-bop piano.  I have performed with very famous jazz musicians and understand the music extensively.  And then I made it overlap to the koto to a certain extent.   Have a relationship with African American music and jazz that I know other people don�t.  They never were guided into it that deeply.  So, it�s not just collaborating with them or something.  I was a jazz musician.  Even now, a lot of the panels and things I am on, I am in that category.
The jazz category?
MM The jazz category is often the open category and can include anything.  But there�s problems with that too because the jazz category doesn�t like electronics.  So, then I get shunned out.  And they don�t understand why I have all of these toys.  Or they have an attitude in a lot of jazz musicians.  So, there are a lot of problems.  And actually I have gotten into some major arguments with famous jazz musicians on panels regarding electronic music, to the point where they didn�t want me to play on their record the next time.
Oh my god.
MM Yea, it�s very bad. So, I try not to engage in these kinds of conflicts anymore.  But I know that they are there so I know that I am also really out of this category.  I don�t fit in.

Does that play into your music at all?
MM Well, it makes it harder.  It makes it harder for me to get gigs or do anything.  Actually it�s all the schools, teaching in jazz studies or electronic music.  It�s always this really boxy thing.  And then it�s the same thing in commercial work too.  So then it is just harder when your music incorporates those different things.

Do feel that there is a gender role in electronic music or improvisation?
MM Yes, undoubtedly.  I mean, - it�s a society that is pretty gender based, when you look at statistics.  So, it�s not going to be any different in the music industry.
 

Can you talk about some of the styles you have developed for the koto?
MM Well, there�s a lot that I have developed.  And some of them have to do with more jazz sounds.  I have developed ways of playing very difficult chromatic pieces in jazz on the koto.  And a particular style I use is bowing the koto.  I do a lot of bowing and a lot of drumming on the actual koto.  They aren't� necessarily my trademarks but sort of.

Have you learned instruments like drumming, or bowed instruments?
MM I�ve learned bowing from different cello players.  I asked them to help me with different techniques.  And then I have studied different kinds of drumming for years to, so that has helped me.

Do you use music to express emotions?  For instance, I often use playing soccer or playing the guitar to express emotions.
MM I don�t know.  Maybe that�s true.  I try not to use it as therapy.  I try to do other things that might help instead.  But I know what you mean.

How did you feel when you first began to play non-traditionally?
MM You know it wasn�t easy because you are so used to playing something one way, and then you play it different ways.  It�s at first fun and then to get into it deeper is harder.  At first it�s all of these things and its all fun, but to really hone in on the uses of it musically requires a little more thinking.  My master teacher told me that she would take away my master koto training certificates if I kept because she was reading in the Japanese newspaper that I was doing this concert or that concert and just doing my own thing.  She said, you know, if you don�t have permission from us to do things, we could take away your master certificate.  And I paid a lot of money and worked hard, even though I knew it was kind of bogus, you know I don�t really respect that school system then because there is, so actually that�s when I started really rebelling then because I was just disgusted.

Was that in the United States?
MM That was in San Francisco.  She was just very old fashioned, but also threatening me.  I just realized that something happened.  We�re friends now, but I just chose not to go that way.

With a master certificate in koto, would you be linked to your teacher in that way?
MM Yes, to the school in Japan.  And then you could say, "Oh, you�re a master".  It�s a title.  But you kind of have to play these pieces and stuff.  And they are not that difficult pieces, it�s not about changing them and then playing them again.

Do you identify yourself as a student of this teacher?
MM I chose not to.  The one that I do choose to be linked to is my Gagaku master, the one that I had the ensemble with.  So, that�s the one that I chose to be linked to.

Do you play a certain style each time?
MM No, but I do find myself depending on situations how I am responding.  It can be changed by but I hope it is different each time.

Do people perceive you as being a good improv person because of your instrument?
MM I don�t really consider what I do as improvisational. I have a long history of playing in different styles, for many years.  You can hear someone when they play, how they are responding, how large of a bank of what they have to give is there.  You can hear if what you are hearing is what you are going to hear in the next three hours, or if people have a wide range of expertise in which to draw from, so I think that that is part of it too.

How do you feel your background and gender play into your music?
MM Your background and gender play into who you are as a person, and how you function in society, and how society looks at you, and how they perceive you, and how they treat you.  Just from being on the street to even professional levels of how you get treated.  So, all of those things affect you and it�s hard to know how you would be different if you were different.  It�s almost a game in not thinking about it so much that you get depressed or cynical or hateful, and so you can still be compassionate to people and do the best work that you can do and not to have it become too much of a.  And everyone is different.  But I am sure that it must play a role, and I think the things about being a woman as a musician, is that it is constantly working for you and against you at different times and its always related upon itself and it�s always there.

How does it work for and against you?
MM Sometimes you can appear at first less threatening and you can enter different circles.  And then after you become more successful, then you become more of a threat.  Then because you are more of a threat, you might take away some gigs.  Anytime you start messing on that level.  It�s different.

Have you lost acquaintances because of that?
MM No, I don�t think so.  But I think that as you move in your career in different ways, your friends change and your circles change a little bit.  And then especially if you are not in one school, things change.  Maybe they change for me, but maybe for some other people they don�t change because they came out of one clique and they will stay in that clique, and they will die in that clique.

Does that work all right with you?  Being less stable?
MM I don�t know.  I just try to cope.  I just try to survive.  I mean one of the things that I try to do is initiate things.  Like I initiated the San Francisco Electronic Arts Festival and it�s going into its third year now.
Wow, that�s really cool.
MM Yea�, and it�s been a big success.  It�s a three-day festival and a lot of different people play.  So, if you keep doing positive and constructive things, it helps against the things that might be negative.
Well, that�s an amazing outlook on life.
MM Thanks.

Well, I guess that I don�t have any more questions.  Thank you for your time.