Drumming to a different beat
By Christopher Robinson
March 3, 2010 10:06 p.m.
If you walk anywhere near Fowler Museum tonight, you might think you’re hearing the rumbling destruction of a small earthquake coming from inside.
If you walk inside, you’ll probably feel like you’re in the middle of a thunderstorm as UCLA’s two Taiko drum performance ensembles, Yukai Daiko and Kyodo Taiko, show off their group’s skills in what is sure to be one of the most energetic and explosive performances to occur on campus. The concert will bring winter quarter’s Fowler Out Loud series to a close with a bang ““ or several.
“Our drums are pretty big and pretty loud,” said Jessica Yun, a fourth-year Design | Media Arts student and one of two directors of Yukai Daiko. “Playing Taiko is a complete adrenaline rush.”
Taiko, the Japanese word for “drum,” is often used to refer to the various art forms of Japanese drumming, especially to the recent art form of ensemble drumming that evolved in the 20th century. Yukai Daiko and Kyodo Taiko are both examples of performance groups that have adopted this large ensemble approach to Taiko drumming.
“Taiko drumming originated in Japan as a part of festival music and was traditionally a much smaller thing,” said third-year sociology student Eryn Tokuhara, one of the directors of UCLA’s Taiko ensemble Kyodo Taiko. “Usually there was only one drummer providing a backbeat, but it turned into a group performance when it was brought over to America.”
This change has made modern Taiko a performance ensemble tradition, and large groups create complex polyrhythmic percussion that fosters an intense energy and bond between members.
“What we try and do is highlight the versatility of the ensemble as an art form and how far it has come in the Americas,” Tokuhara said. “Since this is the year of our group’s 20th anniversary, this concert is going to be a showcase for just how far we’ve come and how much fun and passion we put into playing.”
Both teams will perform a handful of songs from their respective repertoires, which mostly consist of songs composed by past and present members, as well as traditional songs that have been tweaked to fit each group’s individual style.
“Each year, we have a pretty big turnover where all of the senior members leave and we acquire a bunch of new members with varying degrees of knowledge,” Tokuhara said. “We just keep trying to foster that sense of creativity after the seniors leave, and each year we come up with completely different things.”
This creativity leads to a lot of questions of identity for each group, and both ensembles have come to include different styles distinguished by the ways that the drums are positioned during performance, the ways in which they are played and the types of compositions that are created.
“Because the idea of the Taiko ensemble is relatively new in the history of the drumming, we are constantly trying to figure out how much tradition we are supposed to keep, and what sort of new stuff can we add while still retaining the identity of Taiko,” said fourth-year physiological science student Isabella Niu, the other co-director of Yukai Daiko.
This tension has forced the instruments to be used in new ways, adapting to changing artistic demands and desires by players over the years.
Luckily, the instruments have been well-suited to the demand for versatility and change.
“The drums fit so many different settings and atmospheres,” Niu said. “One minute you can be playing something soft and delicate, and the next moment it transforms into something incredibly intense.”
Paralleling the introduction of the instrument and musical style from Japan to America, Niu notes that the ensemble style of Taiko has come to represent a sort of Japanese-American identity, a fusion of Western orchestral styles with this traditional Japanese instrument.
“The Taiko ensemble now represents a meshing of past and present, tradition and modernity, and it speaks across these cross-cultural boundaries,” Niu said. “I think both groups performing are powerful not only as musical groups but social ones as well.”
