Noah Kawaguchi ‘22

"An Autoethnographic Approach to Composing Japanese American Music”​

Nominated by Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake, Noah Kawaguchi’s independent research project took a deep dive into the background, approches, and composition of Asian American music through the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute.

Kawaguchi completed this project as an independent research project for the Oberlin College Research Fellowship (OCRF) in summer 2021, mentored by Miyake and Assistant Professor of African American and African Diasporic Musics Courtney-Savali Andrews. Miyake commented on Kawaguchi’s commitment to the subject: “Noah truly wrestled with and built on the knowledge created by others, filtered these ideas through his identity as a Japanese American musician, and created music.”

Kawaguchi said of his project, “I see the creation and dissemination of distinctly Asian American art forms in contrast to orientalized stereotypes as an important aspect of the push to shift societal views and counter racist violence. Therefore, my work contributes to this effort by furthering discourse on methods for composing Asian American music in culturally and historically informed ways.

Kawaguchi was the Inagural AAPI Experience Grant Winner of a project entitled “Honkyoku, Horiuchi, and Beyond: A Research-Based Approach to Autoethnographic Japanese American Music Composition“ which you can read about here.