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 reVISION concert Lying on sofa Counting my bruises Carry Odaiko Full throttle weekend Our 15th Anniversary Concert, reVISION, is one week from today, yet all the many hours of rehearsal together haven’t quelled my joy for my taiko buddies! It had been 39 hours since we last saw each other, so we got together for Star Trek and Chili’s. See, we DO watch other things besides the many gigabytes of rehearsal videos Karen has been posting on our private Youtube account!  Karen, Tanya, Jasmine and Sheilarae at Chili's   Odaiko New England showing off our new happi coats The Harvard Lampoon celebration was our first chance to get a group shot in our new noshi ribbon happi coats. We’re a pretty decent looking group, if I do say so myself. 
As Mark said, “The Cool Factor was definitely on the high side!” How often do you get to drum in the middle of Harvard Square amidst a laser light show with fog machines and a confetti storm – all while staring down a 2-3 story float shaped like a Harvard Prof??? That’s cool enough, but then add to that the reason why we were there – to welcome revelers celebrating the Harvard Lampoon Castle‘s 100th birthday! On May 2, this was exactly the scene for about 300-ish party goers plus all the people who just happened to be on the street at the time.
A few of us played at the top of the stairs and sitting on the railings. So, we had a slightly different vantage point than those on the sidewalk. While we didn’t get barraged by confetti up there – there was a point when all I could see was a bunch of bachi (drumsticks) above the fog and swirling confetti. The atmosphere was fantastic. This is definitely one of my favorite taiko moments. Two weeks later, we are still finding purple, yellow, and gold confetti tucked amongst the crevices of our equipment. I hope we are still finding them 6 months from now….
You can learn taiko at our upcoming workshops! Here’s the info from our website: In our popular workshops, new drummers learn taiko fundamentals such as kata (form), kiai (vocalization) and kumidaiko (ensemble drumming). Translation: Look really cool while yelling and hitting things with friends! Using our entire bodies to drum, we’ll explore first-hand the mesmerizing, heart-pounding power of taiko. It’s an invigorating experience for body and spirit! Participants in the Youth workshop will enjoy fun musical games that incorporate movement and vocalization as we learn about respect in Japanese culture and phrases in Japanese. Using the oral tradition of passing down taiko rhythms, we’ll learn and play a taiko song.
No experience is necessary! ONE brings enthusiastic and encouraging instructors and all necessary drums and equipment. Participants bring plenty of energy, spirit, and joy! Space is limited, so sign up today! Youth Workshop (8-12 years old) is on Monday, May 11th, 4:00 to 5:00 pm Both workshops will take place at the ACAS Center, 29 Montvale Avenue in Woburn. Contact us with any questions regarding this workshop or to reserve your space now: (781-938-3786 ) or classes@onetaiko.org These workshops are made possible as as part of Woburn Arts/Culture Initiative coordinated by SCI with support from Northwest Suburban Health Alliance/CHNA 15 DoN funds from Lahey Clinic. 
Odaiko New England is looking quite fabulous these days. In anticipation of our 15th year anniversary concert, reVISION, (Arlington Regent Theatre, 7 Medford Street, Arlington, MA, May 30th and 31st, 2009), we will be quite colorful in our new happi coat costumes. What are happi?Happi is a traditional Japanese robe imprinted with a distinctive crest. Originally worn by shopkeepers, servants and firefighters, the crest represented the organization they belonged to. Festival happi coats originated from Japanese firemen jackets. In the Edo period, firefighters were not paid for firefighting, but the promptness of their arrival. Thus conspicuous happi and dancing near fires were essential to them. Later on, happi coats were worn in festivals and parties in fond memory of dancing firemen! After months of online shopping, we found the perfect look from store BOKUNAN-DO. We highly recommend their selection and friendly service. Many thanks to their customer service rep Natsu for all her help! Our happi is a traditional short kimono styled jacket in bright red and black with violet and gold noshi ribbons. Originally, noshi was a ceremonial gift meant to wish good luck in the coming year. The gift was adorned with rice paper folded to resemble colorful, tied ribbons, which symbolize the unity between the giver and the recipient. Today, noshi ribbons have come to symbolize a special gift. How appropriate for Odailo New England, we bring the special gift of awe-inspiring taiko. And now, we look as fabulous as we sound!  Tiger Okoshi warms up before the show.  David Wiggins pre-sets a hira.  Diane and Cat putting on their brand new happi.  Kristen and Tiger during the concert.  Weary travelers, Diane and Juni, arrive at the hotel.  Lunch!
Our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, is playing and I badly want to sit down. It’s not my patriotism in question — I’m just dead tired! I’m actually playing the anthem on taiko drums, so that’s another reason to keep upright for a bit longer Backing up to the beginning: Odaiko New England formed a relationship with jazz trumpeter and Berklee College of Music profressor Tiger Okoshi in the spring of 2007 when he arranged a jazz trumpet and taiko version of the national anthem as a tribute to Boston’s new pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka. ONE and Okoshi played for the Red Sox several times since (and the Sox have won every game!). Today’s gig isn’t at Fenway Park, but at The University of Massachusetts’ Amherst campus. We’re doing an educational concert with Okoshi to celebrate the start of baseball season: A Salute to Baseball. Amherst is a long way from Boston, so we set out around 11:00 pm the night before (after a three-hour practice!), checking in at our hotel near UMass at 1:00 am. Yes, it’s late, but it’s also my first taiko road trip, my first performance with another artist AND our first performance in our brand new happi coats — who can complain? Wednesday, after an 8:00 am load-in, I’m wicked tired. (And Joy is wicked naked when the stage manager pokes his head into the dressing room to make an announcement.) But still, the UMass people are awesome, Okoshi is wonderful, we look fabulous in our new costumes (Joy eventually got dressed), and there are at least a thousand happy school kids filling the concert hall. After opening with the anthem, we cede the stage to Okoshi and his amazing pianist. The kids love them! ONE takes the stage again to play Mahora and more, including another piece with Okoshi and back-up ambiance for Japanese poetry readings. My favorite moment in the show: while whisking a chu daiko off the stage after Mahora, I encountered a tall scholarly-looking guy in the dark wings. He shook my hand and shot me an enormous grin before dashing out the stage door. Have I mentioned how awesome the UMass people are? Not only did they provide a veritible buffet of yummy pastries in the green room and wheel all our equipment around on their enormous carts, but they also took us to lunch afterwards!  Diane perfecting her mischievous stage look. Matt getting his groove on...or maybe his tabi...or perhaps both. One thing that made Kokyo especially festive--the addition of Cat on fue and Joy on chappa. The New Snuggie Spokesperson!
For the second year in a row, ONE played for Northeastern University’s International Gala Night. From the general bounciness of Kokyo to the rock ‘n’ roll of Mahora, we were definitely setting off some good vibrations as evidenced by the enthusiastic response of the audience, not to mention the dust floating down from the overhead lights. (At least this year we didn’t have one of the light gels drift down mid-performance as it did last year.) Kokyo had a bit of a hiccup in the ending signal with several people thinking we were at “last time” before we actually were. But then those folks managed to loop back in such that we all ended together. As Kate said later, this primarily resulted in a lot of laughing at ourselves which added to the “we’re having a blast up here” vibe. We also did talk later, though, about possibly revising Kokyo such that we wouldn’t be so reliant on an ending signal perhaps by adding more variations to the main line. After a brief interval of introductions, we came back for a very powerful rendition of Mahora. This may have been the best I’ve ever heard us play this song, and it certainly seemed as if the audience agreed. We got off stage quickly to make room for a dance group (whose black pants had been noted as just the kind of thing we’re looking for by the costume committee). They were giving us a big-round of applause and thumbs-up as we rolled the drums out to the scene shop behind the stage (where Diane lost a bachi last year….hmmm…does the rung of that rocking chair look vaguely familiar?). After returning drums to the dojo, we all went out to Uno’s for a baby shower for Shigeru and Kristen, the highlight of which was probably the presentation of the Snuggie with photos of Shigeru’s face pasted onto the Snuggie box by Cat. We all agreed he could easily become a success as the Snuggie spokesperson. Now that Emi’s arrived I think we need new photos of Snuggie Daddy with his daughter. Just over a week ago, Odaiko New England founding member Karen Young and advanced student Shane Tysk left Boston and flew to Japan to take part in a two week residency with Shidara. Shidara is a professional taiko group living and practicing in Toei, in the remote regions of Japan’s Aichi prefecture. During our trip to Japan last September, Karen, Beth, Matt and I visited with Shidara for 3 days. It was an amazing experience. As I expected, Shidara’s members are amazingly talented taiko players. What I was surprised by was how welcoming, friendly, and just down-to-earth they are. You can read about our experiences with Shidara on the 8 Bachi (in Japan) Blog, starting with this post about our arrival. Shidara is sharing videos and blog posts about the residency, so those of us at home can follow along and wish we were there. Karen wrote a post on their myspace blog; we’re hoping she’ll write some more when she gets back to Odaiko New England (hint, hint). While they were planning for the residency, Chabo-san, the founder of Shidara (and a huge ham), asked us what we would want if we had the opportunity to participate. I think I went on for about half an hour about all the things I wanted to learn, especially about caring for and playing the shime-daiko, the drum that plays the ji – the base-beat that leads a taiko group. Watching the residency video of Shidara teaching how to tie a shime, I remember a similar lesson on shime tying that we had, and how honored we were that Chabo-san herself taught us the basics of Shidara-style shime technique. I’m looking forward to following the rest of the Shidara residency vicariously. If I’m lucky, I’ll be there myself next year!  Modern taiko has always been a blend of old and new, combining the seriousness of tradition with the creative zeal of a new age. Our school show at Monument High School was a blend of old a new in two ways.  Beth, that's not a bachi. The first way was a purely personal blending of old and new. Sheilarae and I were co-running a taiko workshop. Neither of us had ever run a workshop before. The 6th anniversary of my first taiko workshop is coming up at the end of the month and here I was running one! Thank goodness for Sheilarae! There is no way I could have done it alone and she was so much more engaging than I was. Our first workshop was a little shaky. We didn’t quite know how to time things out. Our second and third groups were much better though, in no small part to the students who arrived full of energy and interest. Our last group was quite small, but the two enthusiastic women who showed up out kiai‘d the other two groups combined. It was a wonderful note to go to the performance on. The performance. Now here was a real blending of old and new. Karen and Greg had been working on their stick flipping for a traditional standard, Matsuri. They needed a third to join them, but none of us had quite mastered it well enough to perform. Beth stepped up to the plate however, but instead of her skill in flipping, she employed her skill in comedy. This is why, two days before, on a dreary afternoon, I went to meet a friend to borrow his rubber chicken. Rubber chicken, two bananas (one real and one plastic), taiko and Beth’s comedic timing made for the most “new” Matsuri I’d ever seen. Bachi flew everywhere, and so did bananas and the chicken, making its plaintive cry as it flew through the air.
Will we ever see the chicken again? Time will tell, but this was definitely a memorable performance and a testament to creativity. Were we making a mockery of the tradition? I don’t think so. I think we were paying tribute to the difficulty of the things that some taiko players make look too easy! Plus we were taking the spirit, old and new, and taking it in our own direction. |
ONE is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency 
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