Writing: Articles & Essays

Boom Times: Portland Taiko drum ensemble celebrates a decade of performing

The Oregonian, September 23, 2004

The taiko drummer stands wide-legged, her arm raised in silence. With a sly smile, she swings, and hits the mark.

The sounds evoke the danger and exhilaration of a thunderstorm.

Boom! Bang! Sitting in Portland Taiko’s warehouse rehearsal studio, the drumbeats vibrate through your chest, down your legs, out the soles of your feet.

This weekend, Portland Taiko, the 19-member Asian American drum performance ensemble, celebrates its 10th anniversary with the concert "On the Shoulders of Giants." The show brings together the country’s foremost taiko artists including composer Kenny Endo and features a new collaboration with dancer/choreographer Minh Tran.

It’s been a good 10 years for Portland Taiko, whose roots run back even further, to the day that Stanford University student Ann Ishimaru, an accomplished violinist and martial artist, walked into a class called "Taiko and the Redress Movement."

"When I first encountered taiko, something came together," said Ishimaru. "I saw a woman playing the drums with power, people playing music, martial arts. I saw my culture. Taiko combines all the facets of who I am and it was a way of connecting to my history and the Japanese American community."

That kind of connection is vital to taiko’s rebirth and flowering as an exuberant, and surprisingly political, contemporary performing art.

Taiko means simply "drum" in Japanese but the word has much broader reverberations. It is also the name of an art form that’s been practiced in Japan for more than 2,000 years in religious ceremonies, community festivals and theater. During Japan’s 20th century modernization, taiko fell into danger of becoming a forgotten folk art.

That changed after World War II, when Japanese interest in taiko was reborn as a way of reconnecting to the country’s cultural traditions. American taiko emerged in the 1960’s, during the United States’ Redress Movement, when Japanese Americans sought restitution for their incarceration during the war years in internment camps.

Today, if you count all the student groups, Japan has about 18,000 taiko groups. The United States has about 200, of which 25 are in the Pacific Northwest.

Taiko features some of the loudest drums in the world, even larger and more resonant than the timpani of the European symphonic orchestra. The biggest of the drums – the Odaiko -- is 5 feet in diameter and 6 feet high and takes more than six people to move it.

"In playing the big drum you have to push yourself to a different place, get to exhaustion and move past it," said Semke. "When you’re exhausted, you’re forced to access from your center."

American taiko in particular has pushed beyond the form’s traditions. Contemporary composers renew taiko by bringing in fresh musical influences and non-traditional instruments. Endo’s composition "Wind, Water, and Wood" has a distinct Afro-Cuban feel and features Israel Annoh on congas and 3 Leg Torso’s Courtney Von Drehle on saxophone. Portland Taiko has its own musical rarity: improvisational violin, played by co-founders Semke and Ishimaru.

Taiko’s appeal isn’t just rhythmic and it isn’t just musical: like dance, it’s also a visual art. Musicians move like martial artists as they sweep in unison from drum to drum. They vocalize in improvised staccato shouts called kiai (pronounced kee-I). Sometimes, they scrape the edge of the drum or bang the rim or lightly rub the drum skin.

Portland Taiko has been expanding and deepening its skills for a decade. After Ishimaru co-founded Stanford Taiko, Semke, a fellow violinist in the Stanford Symphony, dropped by for the first rehearsal. He never left. Upon graduation in 1994, the two moved to Portland to return to their native Northwest and founded Portland Taiko.

Since then the multicultural ensemble, one of the country’s few professional taiko groups, has been a staple of Portland community celebrations. It’s also toured widely from Japan to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The "giants" honored by this weekend’s concert are the pioneering taiko artists who have inspired the group with new compositions and the community members who have supported the ensemble by donating everything from graphics to lighting.

Taiko is about making a connection at the center: from the artist, through the instrument, into the community. "We ground ourselves in community," said Semke. "There’s a tendency to think that artistic excellence and community work are mutually exclusive. We make time for both."

Taiko artists have collected stories from community members and used them to inspire compositions or as text in performance.

"There’s a spiritual connection we have with the instruments," he said. "When we hit the drum we want to get the truest sound. There’s an exchange of energy between the player and the drum. From your hara – or center – to the drum’s center. That’s where you want to get in playing the drum."