The Art of Taiko
I was recently at a planning meeting at the Mitchell Street Branch for the upcoming Unity In The Community event, when the idea came up for having a Japanese Drum group perform. I was baffled by what “Japanese Drumming” in particular was, and suddenly my mind took me to back to May, 2009, at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. I was at a concert for The Decemberists. Suddenly, for one song in the winding opera of an album, the usual lineup of rock instruments like guitars, keyboards, and the standard drum kit was almost entirely replaced by a series of colossal Japanese drums, pounding out deep rhythms that felt like they went through me. I finally got what everyone was talking about - those drums were the highlight of the show.
Now revved up for the upcoming appearance by Milwaukee Taiko Group Hibiki, I caught a few short videos of their past performances on Youtube in two videos, and then went to librarians at the Tippecanoe Branch for some help with a little pre-show research on this Japanese tradition called “taiko”, hoping to learn what made an authentic Taiko performance different from the little sampling that I got in a rock show.
A lot of searches directed us to manga and anime titles with taiko included in a scene or two, but I was looking for something more studious that would help me understand where and why the Japanese started playing outrageously huge drums and in such choreographed performances. Luckily we found The Way of Taiko by Heidi Varian in the Countycat catalog. A great read, I found out that Taiko is said to have originated as a way of scaring pests away from crops, and that Taiko is seen not entirely as a performance, but as a “vehicle to master focus and concentration”, so much so that a Taiko school is often called a “Dojo”, the same Japanese word that is used for schools of martial arts.
Milwaukee Taiko Group Hibiki will be performing at MPL’s Unity In The Community event, at Mitchell Street Branch on Saturday, November 9, along with other live performances and foods to sample. Visit the MPL website for more details.