Earth Celebration Part 3 - North American Taiko

I believe this will be the final entry for the 2009 Kodo Earth Celebration series.  I may have wanted to write more, but as I get further and further away from when we attended Earth Celebration, I am remembering less and less.  Anyhow, it's been a month and a half or so since we attended so it is probably time to move on to other things as well.

For those of you who are patiently waiting for us to become active, here is a quick update on our situation.  Our most urgent need right now is a place to store and practice our drums, which are probably about half way through their journey from Japan right now.  They are scheduled to arrive sometime in the second half of October, at which point we will probably have to pay import taxes in order to get them (and who knows how much that will be).  Anyhow, I have looked at a few places, the most promising one so far is in Novi, but I worry that it will get snapped up before I can get my hands on it.  Oh well, one of the benefits of a poor real estate market is that there are probably plenty more spaces like it around.

From the performing and teaching standpoint, there are also a couple things in the works.  There may be several opportunities for me/us to perform in October and November.  Should the events be open to the public, I will certainly post them here.  We are also considering doing some one-day workshops in November in preparation for starting regular classes in the beginning of 2010.  Again, if they happen, details will be posted here.

Back to Earth Celebration...

My final thoughts on Earth Celebration are not so much about the event itself, as much as they are about an article I read in one of the newsletters, "The Kodo Beat" which was available during the festival.  In the summer 2009 newsletter (Volume 89), there was a write up of the KASA Workshop Tour 2009, lead by Yoshikazu and Yoko Fujimoto, two senior members of Kodo.

For those of you who may not know, KASA stands for "Kodo Arts Sphere America".  What is KASA all about?  To quote from KASA's website:

KASA is a United States public benefit nonprofit corporation established to encourage, enable and support programs and opportunities for North Americans to study and understand the traditional and contemporary Japanese music of the taiko and its related performing arts.

Their actual mission is a bit deeper than just to provide opportunities for North American groups to get authentic instruction in taiko, and if you're interested, you should visit the KASA site and read all the info under the link, "Mission".  In a nutshell, there are over 150 taiko groups in North America, and many of them have had very little exposure to "Japanese Taiko" and simply because of a lack of opportunity, these groups have missed out on many aspects of the art.  I believe KASA is hoping to provide more opportunities for people to understand the history, the culture, the art and ideas behind taiko drumming.

In order to reach this goal, they travel around North America doing workshops, helping to educate taiko drummers in North America.  Some of the reactions from the Fujimotos were published in the newsletter I picked up.  I will share some excerpts from the article, with some of my own commentary added in.

Wherever we went participants were keen to learn.  It was wonderful seeing people play for the sheer joy of drumming, regardless of technique, which can always come later.  We did see groups however with both technique and a passion that brought tears to our eyes.  As Japanese we admire in North Americans their rich ability for self-expression, not only in body movement and conversation but in taiko too.  Occasionally there are things which can seem odd to us for instance North American-style kakegoe (shouts of encouragement) - which are fundamental to the Japanese taiko sound - sometimes seem strange to our ears.

Actually, I have not seem many North American taiko groups perform live, but from watching videos on YouTube, I have also noticed a difference between the Kakegoe of the NA groups and Japanese groups, even in myself.  It is hard to look at oneself objectively, but even though I have learned all my taiko in Japan, surrounded by Japanese taiko drummers, when I watch videos, I sometimes feel like my kakegoe is slightly different than those around me.  I wonder why that is?  Anyone have any thoughts?

Another feature of taiko activity in North America is that everything is about the taiko.  There is very little song or dance, so we thought it useful if we could introduce a bit more of that.  Obviously taiko is the star of the show in Kodo, but in Japanese historical terms the drum was used as a background to song and dance.  Ironically it was our group that was one of the main forces to bring taiko to the forefront, so we must accept some responsibility for changing that dynamic.   To that end we do a lot of dancing and singing in our performances, whereas North American groups do rather little. [...] So part of our aim with our workshop tours is to present a more complete picture of the Japanese performing arts.

I guess I hadn't thought of it in that way before, but I had noticed, whenever I go to a Kodo performance, that they do include a wider variety of melodic instruments and dance than most other taiko groups that I have seen.  Even more than some of the internationally touring groups.  My wife and I have tried to collect as many melodic, traditional Japanese/Asian instruments as we could, like shamisen, flutes, kokyu, urhu and so on, and we are trying to learn them for the purpose of using them in our performances.  My wife has been very diligent about getting as many lessons as she could in Japan, because she knows that once she returns to Michigan, the chances of her finding a shamisen teacher, or teachers of the other instruments are very slim. I believe part of the reason that the use of flutes, stringed instruments and traditional dances in NA taiko is not because the groups don't want to use it, they just don't have people to teach it to them.  Thanks to KASA, however, there are perhaps more opportunities than there used to be.  Again, any thoughts?

 Taikoist - who now include people of all races - are exploring ways to create something new with taiko.  North American Taiko is creating its own history.  It is our hope that in doing so however, they hold on to this thought.  Japanese taiko is not simply percussion.  There is a special essence to taiko.  One aspect of that essence is 'ma' (empty space).  What and when you don't play is as important as what and when you do.  You can hear it in Yoshikazu's singing and drumming.  The distinctively Japanese use of ma is found in the breathing, and in the communication among players.

Ah yes, the good old 'ma' concept.  We talked about this a lot in my Kaga Taiko classes as well.  It wasn't a rhythm we were playing, we creating spaces in between the drum beats.  I think an effective use of 'ma' is one of the things that can really set apart an amateur taiko group from a professional level taiko group.  I think playing Odaiko in particular, it is important to effectively utilize 'ma'.

We were also struck on this tour by the power of taiko and song together.  With just one phrase of a song there were tears, and after 3 minutes of taiko joining in there were sobs.  Though that wasn't our intention, it happened naturally, as if together they hold some natural, almost therapeutic strength.

I couldn't agree more, and apparently, I'm not the only one.  In fact, hearing about the healing effects of taiko and drums from one of the members of Holland's Circle Percussion is what first got my wife interested in taiko drumming and music therapy.  On more than one occasion I too have become misty eyed whilst attending a taiko performance.  Whenever I was sick in Japan, if I had enough strength to get myself to taiko practice, I went because I knew I would feel better after playing taiko for 90 minutes.  It's all part of that mysterious power of taiko drumming.

I thought the article gave some interesting insights into how Japanese may view NA taiko drumming, as well as gave some ideas and advice to keep in mind as we continue to found and develop our taiko groups.  I also hope that in the not too distant future, the Great Lakes Taiko Center can also invite KASA to provide workshops for the people in and around Detroit.