Highlander Newspaper

Issue date: 1/19/10 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: UC Riverside Presents Bryan Yamami's TAIKOPROJECT exploded at the University Theater Friday night. Traditional Japanese drums blended with beatboxing and video images, showing off the force and originality of new American taiko. The concert was organized by UC Riverside Presents.

A man in a slight loincloth squared against a drum as big as him, his back - and backside - to the audience, and for almost ten thunderous minutes, powered his arms and mallets into its reverberant face. The drummer (and composer), Bryan Yamami, hammered the most big and billowing rhythm so far. TAIKOPROJECT, a Los Angeles-based company of taiko drummers, performed its newest large-scale piece, "(re)generation," at the University Theatre on Friday. The ground beneath the school trembled.

Suspended between two supports on a wheeled wooden platform, its center an arm's length above eye level, the scope of the barrel all but nearly overpowered the drummer below. A single man, a giant drum, a booming coming from both as powerful and loud as from any musician and his instrument. The sternness, the deference to old tradition in the scene were commanding.

Then, as another musician entered, clothed in a track suit and playing a handbell, the mood was lifted. Words projected on the wall behind them that had previously given the names of the instruments - odaiko, the great drum and atarigane, the bell - began to jest at the bell player, urging him to disrobe. "Come on, everyone's doing it," said the words. Jeering from the crowd goaded him finally to yank off his clothes, uncovering the same undergarment, a fundoshi, as the drummer.

The audience laughed. And as the musicians ramped up the force of their playing, closing in a deep cannonade, the people cheered, rustled by the perfomance's visual strictness, spurred by its humor.

"A few times, some of the things they did caught me by surprise," said Linda Bell, a Riverside woman who came with her daughter. "I didn't expect it to be more than just the drumming." As far as traditional taiko drumming goes, much of what the company did was indeed surprising.

The word 'taiko' is Japanese for drum. Its meaning has been extended to refer also to the ensemble of large drum players and the music it makes. The tenets of the musical style, originally formal and rigid, have loosened as American players have replaced characteristics from the Japanese form with their own.

"A Brief History" told the story of American taiko, blending traditional elements - vivid robes, synchronized striking, and the stately sound of the drums - with newer touches - beatboxing, modern clothes and patches of supplementary background audio and video.

Under hanging bright shirts, beneath the shapes of swaying lanterns, tradition, community, and the blending of both, the aims and strengths of American taiko drumming, beat together.

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