Tak Shindo

Tak Shindo, a Japanese-American composer of soundtracks, received instruction from Miklos Rozsa. Formally educated as a musicologist, he pursued additional training in traditional Asian music at the University of Tokyo. He drew on this preparation while working in the Hollywood sound studios throughout the 1950s. In between scoring assignments for Eastern-themed films such as Sayonara and Stopover Tokyo, he issued a sequence of albums credited to himself. The LPs on which he functioned as arranging bandleader carry the greatest weight within pop exotica.

Cd reissues have made Mganga, his orchestral fantasy of Africa, the most familiar title among his exotica long-players. Brass and Bamboo and Accent On Bamboo, however, aligned more closely with his usual approach. Far East Goes Western carried Shindo’s daring collision of stock Eastern and Western imagery to its furthest point, recasting Hollywood cowboy numbers such as “San Antonio Rose” and “I’m An Old Cowhand” in Asian hues. Every one of these releases stood out for the composer’s deft merging of traditional Japanese instruments with big-band resources. Through carefully balanced arrangements he integrated koto (thirteen-string zither), samisen (three-string lute), bamboo flutes, and temple gongs alongside brass, reeds, and drumset, applying them to big-band standards and Hollywood themes alike. The resulting sound was witty and urbane, yet it fell swiftly out of step once rock and its youth audience recast American popular music as a contest of generational identity.

In later years Shindo’s catalog, alongside that of other 1950s film and television composer-arrangers such as Les Baxter, Robert Drasnin, and Esquivel, earned renewed respect. Specialists in exotica and a broader revival of interest in vintage film music helped bring about this reassessment. A fresh hearing confirms that the albums offer considerably more than the kitsch of their cover imagery.