Spotlight: Tatsu Aoki; Making art that's collective.

re: Rooted, the latest disc from musician Tatsu Aoki's Miyumi Project, begins with a few spare beats on a Japanese taiko drum. A second taiko joins in, then a third, followed by silence. For more than two minutes, the drumming builds and fades, finds a rhythm and drops off, starts a conversation and then lets it go. Finally, suddenly, it's joined by a burst of groove and melody from a trio of reedists, a violinist, and Aoki himself, his standup bass pushing the drummers' search into a joyous song.

It's a great example of Aoki's kind of music, a combination of Black improvisational jazz, Asian folk music, and his own spiritual quest. It's the product of a musical discussion about his identity, his community, and the evolution of both.

After growing up in Japan in the family of a geisha, Aoki spent several years wandering around the United States and hanging out with avant-garde artists. He eventually settled in Chicago, where many of his favorite jazz musicians were based, including members of the experimental collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He spent enough time with them--and was such a talented bassist himself--that some of his heroes became mentors, then collaborative partners.

Even as his career was taking off, though, Aoki's artistic search continued. "I got to thinking, 'This is really a Black music we're playing, and I'm not Black,'" he says. "I'm not going to be able to own this music."

Aoki went back to the first instruments he'd learned as a child, the taiko drum and the shamisen, a Japanese lute. He connected with other Asian musicians, and in the mid '90s, he started a Chicago edition of San Francisco's Asian American Jazz Festival.

In the last few years, Aoki has produced an astonishing range of work, including a pair of albums by the Miyumi Project--a big band of Black and Asian artists--duets with AACM legends, and a live set with taiko drummers. Aoki performs all over the world while serving as executive director of Asian Improv aRts Midwest and teaching at the School of the Art Institute, Northwestern University, and Chicago's Japanese community center.

He hopes that all of his work says something about his own story, while leaving space for others. "The outcome of art, whatever you do, it has to be collective," he says.