welll.... *stretches*
there are a few guys out there... naturally...
Joji hirota's a well established Japanese folk singer... but also does traditional japanese drumming and he's AMAZING... seriously, i saw him at this years woman and i was like.... O.O
he often gets a group together and they play stuff... including... i've fogotten the actual name, but it's the Japanese version of the chinese bamboo flute? anyways, it's very good...
Oki Dub Ainu Bando are great... i can't seem to find anything on them on the net which is annoying, but he's suposibly a world renound... tonkori(sp?) player... and he mixes traditional sounds with almost a regea type beet sometimes...
there's also Gou Yue... he's chinese and would blay the chinese bamboo flue (and actually has a recipie book ^^; ) but they're similar sorts of sounds, and his music is absolutely gorgeous, i was moved to tears when i heard him live...
actually a lot of soundtrack music incorparates traditional Japanese instruments... Joe hisashi who dose a lot of scores for the Ghibli Studios films is very fond of using them ^.^
and supprisingly a lot of traditional instruments are used in the Naruto soundtrack too...
THEN... if you really wanna hear some interesting stuff... there's a popular 'rock' band called Kagrra, who incorpatrate a mass blend of traditional Japan with the modern day pop culture... bringing in a merge of jazz beets too to some exstent. infact one of their more rencent PVs (promotional vidios) they feature umm... i think it's the Shamisen... Kinsao will correct me on that (shh don't tell anyone i didn't know
) but it's not 'heavey' rock so if you wanna hear different sounds with traditional instruments, they're definatly your guys!
they're all worth having a look into... i think that's just about it that i know...
o, well there's Sada Masashi too ^.^