Katari Taiko at the Powell Street Festival last summer.

Katari Taiko, the first taiko drum group to be formed in Canada, will celebrate its 35th anniversary with a concert which will include a collaborative work with some of the other Tiako groups which have come into existence in their wake. The theme of the work will be the return of the salmon, which is appropriate as the sea and fishing played such a pivotal role in the lives of the early Japanese inhabitants of B.C. There will also be a drum workshop for the public at a later date.

Taiko has been associated with various social movements. In Japan, a group known as the Baralcumin have experienced discrimination and Taiko has been used to bring attention to the plight of this group. In North America, the Sansei, Japanese who are the descendants of those interned during the Second World War, have returned to the traditional cultural practises that were previously frowned upon. Taiko became a part of the way in which they reasserted their culture and which began at the same time as the broader civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Origins

Taiko refers to a type of drum that was used over the centuries for many different functions such as signalling or warning. Ritual uses of various kinds were very common, as well as the drum’s incorporation into Nohand Kabuki drama. But the type of use implied by the word kumi-daiko began only sometime in the 1950s, although there are disagreements as to exactly where and when this happened.

Kumi-daiko, says Atsuko Yamashita, born in Japan and a longstanding member of the group, refers to the style of music involving the deployment of a wide variety of drums played by a group of musicians and is done primarily for artistic purposes. This form of music began in Japan, but has now spread around the world. Katari Taiko was the first such ensemble in Canada, having been formed
in 1979.

Performance

Yamashita says she first joined the group in 1992. She was attending the Powell Street Festival, a Japanese cultural festival, when she first heard the music and was quite taken with it right away.

“When I heard them I decided, hey, that’s what I want to do,” she says.

She particularly enjoys the concerts the group gives at various schools, especially for kids from disadvantaged areas. She says the children really respond to the drumming.

Kamil Kiesel is 31 years old and was born in Poland. He joined the group in 2011 and says he first encountered taiko when the company he was working for sent him to Japan for a year. He attended taiko festivals there, and upon returning to Vancouver saw an ad in a local newspaper advertising a workshop, which he promptly enrolled in. Interestingly, both Yamashita and Kisiel have backgrounds in percussion. Yamashita played the xylophone and Kisiel played in his high school band.

Taiko performers usually wear some form of traditional dress when they perform. This includes a robe and usually a headband. Katari Taiko has made its own costumes in the past as well as importing them from Japan. The drums are played by a wide variety of different sticks depending on the type of effect the performers want to produce. The best sticks are made from Japanese white oak, a particularly strong and durable wood, and Yamashita says she has had some sticks which have lasted over 10 years. The drums themselves have a barrel shape and there is a leather membrane on each side. Katari Taiko gets its drums from California, where they are constructed from old wine barrels. The drums can also be obtained from Japan, but the cost of these is prohibitive.

An important feature of taiko is the movement that the performers engage in while they play. These movements are stylized and choreographed, and the performance becomes, in a way, a kind of dance.

“The movements are as much a part of the performance as the music,” says Kisiel.

For more info on Katari Taiko, visit www.kataritaiko.bc.ca