Tak Shindo

Biography

Takeshi "Tak" Shindo (Japanese: 進藤 武, November 11, 1922 – April 17, 2002) was an American musician, composer and arranger. He was one of the prominent artists in the exotica music genre during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shindo also founded a dance band in 1947 and was a frequent lecturer and writer on Japanese music. He first gained prominence for his work on the 1957 motion picture Sayonara, served as the musical director for the television series Gunsmoke, and composed theme music for The Ed Sullivan Show and Wagon Train. He is most remembered for the exotica albums he released from 1958 to 1962, including Mganga! The Primitive Sounds of Tak Shindo (1958), Brass and Bamboo (1959) and Accent on Bamboo (1960). He also released several albums in Japan during the mid-1960s that blended American and Japanese musical traditions. During the 1950s and 1960s, Shindo was a columnist for the Rafu Shimpo covering classical and popular music. In 1980, Shindo made a documentary film, Encounter with the Past, about the Manzanar relocation camp where he was relocated in 1942 as part of the Japanese American internment policy.

Bio from Wikipedia