Kitaro : Caravansery Song

Caravansery Song

Caravansery Song + Video

A Caravanserai (Persian: كاروانسرا kārvānsarā, Turkish kervansaray) was a roadside inn where travelers could rest and recover from the day's journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa, and South-Eastern Europe.

Most typically a caravanserai was a building with a square or rectangular walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. The courtyard was almost always open to the sky, and the inside walls of the enclosure were outfitted with a number of identical stalls, bays, niches, or chambers to accommodate merchants and their servants, animals, and merchandise.

Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption, washing, and ritual ablutions. Sometimes they even had elaborate baths. They also kept fodder for animals and had shops for travellers where they could acquire new supplies. In addition, there could be shops where merchants could dispose of some of their goods.

The word is also rendered as caravansarai or caravansary. The Persian word kārvānsarā is a compound word combining ''kārvān (caravan) with sara (palace, building with enclosed courts), to which the Persian suffix -yi is added. Here "caravan" means a group of traders, pilgrims, or other travelers, engaged in long distance travel.

The caravanserai was also known as a khan (Persian خان) or han (Turkish).

Kitaro Biography

Kitaro’s style is the epitome of the contemplative, highly melodic synthesizer music often associated with the new-age movement. Interestingly enough, this famous Japanese composer taught himself to play electric guitar in high school — inspired by the R&B music of Otis Redding. In the early ’70s, Kitaro formed the Far East Family Band, which released two albums of progressive rock. In 1972, however, he met the innovative German synthesist Klaus Schulze during a trip to Europe. Kitaro was hooked. He built his first synthesizer and began experimenting with all kinds of unusual sounds.

His first solo album, Astral Voyage, appeared in 1978 and quickly gained a cult following. Two years later, he produced the first of several soundtracks for Silk Road, a Japanese television documentary series that ran for five years. Several albums of music from Silk Road were released to a growing international contingent of fans who admired his combination of lush, majestic textures and gentle, almost naive, melodies. His music started gaining popularity in nearby Taiwan, for instance, by 1983, and he even performed in a large venue in Taipei in the middle of 1984.

Kitaro, however, was still considered an underground artist in America until he signed with Geffen Records in 1986, which re-released seven of his earlier albums and gave him the support to expand his scope in many ways. For instance, after years of creating albums in the privacy of his home studio near Japan’s Mt. Fuji, Kitaro produced his 1987 release, The Light of the Spirit, with the help of Mickey Hart. The album featured an array of American musicians and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best New-Age Performance category. That same year, Kitaro also made his first live tour of North America and sold two million albums in the U.S. alone. Kitaro’s style had changed as well, becoming more theatrical and assertive while retaining a certain level of innocence and purity.

His more recent recordings also show a renewed interest in the rock and pop elements that originally attracted him to music in the late ’60s; in 1998, he also released the soundtrack to Cirque Ingenieux, a production bound for the Broadway stage. Thinking of You followed a year later; Ancient appeared in spring 2001. It was well received, leading to a sequel of sorts in the like-minded Ancient Journey in 2002. His contributions on the soundtrack to the controversial Chinese drama The Soong Sisters came out the same year, as did a live album and DVD.

Kitaro Profile

Kitaro

Born : February 4, 1953 (1953-02-04) (age 56)

Origin : Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Occupation(s) : Composer

Genre(s) :
Instrumental music
Electronic music
New Age
Folk

Record producer :
Arranger
Instrument(s) :
Piano, Synthesizer
Keyboards
Drums
Percussion

Label(s) :
Geffen/Warner Bros. Records (US)
Geffen/MCA Records (US)
Domo Records