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A Changing Rhythm With the release of their second album and over 100 performances per year, these musicians have touched more than just drum sticks. by David Also Portland Taiko started in 1994 as a group of activists and artists who wanted to perform Asian-style group drumming. Ann Ishimaru and Zack Semke founded the group after moving to Portland with the intention of doing community outreach through the performance of taiko. The word “taiko,” as it’s currently used, was once known as kumi-daiko, or group drumming. It started in Japan in the 1950s with jazz drummers looking to connect with their roots. Though it’s based on centuries of tradition, this form of center stage drumming is very new. In America there are over 150 taiko groups. One of the most renowned is our own Portland Taiko. They will do 130 shows this year, including 50 school performances, a handful of productions at the prison, and several shows geared for community groups. The drums take a lot of work to move around. Their largest drum, over 4 feet in diameter, is only used for certain local performances, a rare treat for Portland only. Getting the rest of the gear to a gig can take 5 days of setting up and tearing down. One local, full-sized concert costs the group about $35,000 to put together. A sold out performance, with tickets costing $22 per seat covers about 1/3 of the cost. “I think that we’re taking it a little bit further than the other groups in American Taiko do,” says Ann. Most of the other groups in America are smaller and less refined. But beyond that, Portland Taiko is trying to use the drums to carry a particular message: A: We involve members of the community, who are not artists, in the creative process of creating a new piece. For example, the one that we did most recently was called Rock the Boat. In that we involved members of the Asian-American community in talking about their experiences with racism. We also brainstormed things that we can do, so it’s not all about just negative stuff. Everybody has choices, and we all have opportunities to make change. So we got a bunch of people together, and we did a series of dialogues and workshops where people actually do something creative to help us span the gap between the dialogues and the actual pieces. So in some cases they did movement based stories. In other cases we’ve had them do something where they cut out pieces of paper and write down some goals and then those in some way get incorporated into the final piece. So it ends up being a taiko piece but sometimes it has story-telling or other music in it. Then those folks who were involved in it get to see their ideas performed, and they feel very connected to that process. What other topics have the shows covered? A: Other ones that we’ve done have focused on specific Asian-American communities. Like, the Japanese-American and Filipino-American communities, there’s kind of a gap between those two communities for a number of different reasons. Some of it has to do with the folks who are Filipino-American sort of associate Japanese-Americans with the Japanese occupation during the war. It also has to do with during World War II, when a lot of Japanese-Americans where interned, some of the Filipinos took over land that was left behind. Some just has to do with differences in culture, just like any other two cultures. It was called Bamboo Bridges. We tried to say that we’re very different as communities, but we also have to look at the things that we have in common culturally, or how other people treat us. They may not differentiate between us. So it’s not just racism from whites to Asians… A: You think of Asia, it’s this huge continent Sure. A lot of people. A: The history of immigration in this community is really different depending on where your background is from. I’m 4th generation Japanese-American. My great grandparents came here in the late 1800s. Whereas there
What are some of the visceral solutions that you have as far as dealing with racism? A: It’s sort of complicated. I think a lot of people don’t want to talk about it because it’s not pleasant, and many Asian cultures were taught not to rock the boat. In Japanese culture you’re taught the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. So, as opposed to the squeaky wheel gets the oil or whatever, it’s the opposite. Don’t make waves. So peoples’ tendency is to not talk about it, and almost take responsibility for it, like, “Oh, it’s my fault,” or something like that. So one of the big things we were doing with that piece was just to say, “We’re going to talk about it.” And that’s this huge scary thing for people to do. But part of what we’re saying is that by acknowledging it we can say, “Look, we have some common experiences here.” It means that you’re not alone. That by itself can be very a powerful thing for people to realize. So I think that’s one thing. Another is that we can see that we all have a stake in it. It affects all of us. By extension, though, all of us have these little opportunities where we can do something. We can speak up when we see something happening or challenge somebody when they’re making a joke. Or, if you’re experience it, you can feel like you can stand up for yourself. There are a lot of bigger, institutional things that happen that we can’t, on an individual, daily level solve. But there are things on a daily level we can do. Then that sort of takes us one little step further. Z: I would also add that the process of developing the piece allows people to do things and say things they would never normally do. Such as outrageous responses like punching somebody in the nose or those kinds of things that aren’t going to get you anywhere, but there’s this release. A: Or imagining transforming into Godzilla. (laughs) Z: That’s one that made it onto the piece. There’s this Godzilla character who’s after the racist. But another thing that we realized with that piece is that racism is less of an “us and them” thing, but that it’s affecting all of us. It’s racism that we’re battling. It impacts white people and Asian-Americans in different ways. It transforms us in different ways. What was the demographic of the show, and how many people where there? Z: This debuted at our fall concert, so we reached about 1,700 people. I’m guessing it’s a quarter to a third Asian-American, as opposed to Art Explosion (a recent community-based performance), which was just over half Asian-American, which in Portland is just unheard of. From the start we’ve wanted to be an arts organization as well as a social change organization. When we bring a piece to 1,700 people of all walks of life and all sorts of political backgrounds, it is very much not preaching to the choir. Being out there about racism, I’m sure disgruntles some of our audience a little bit. A: If there are any people who raise their eyebrows, it’s about that. Sometime even just talking about it, or saying the word freaks people out. I definitely think there are taiko groups out there that think we shouldn’t be saying anything. Z: And one thing that I don’t think any taiko group is doing right now is this kind of community-based, socially minded work. As far as I know, we’re unique. In addition to breaking down the tendency for Asian-Americans to remain quiet, taiko drumming gives Asian women in particular a chance to be really loud and explosive, something which has never happened before. Though Zack and Ann disagree on the numbers, somewhere between 60 to 80% of taiko drummers are women. Ann says, “It’s something that a lot of Asian-American
They’re also trying to play as well as possible. More than just trying to impress the Asian-American community, they try to be respected by the community at large. That’s been a lot of work. Here they tell us about bringing the group together. A: Taiko is its own art form. You can’t just find people who played taiko when they were kids or whatever. You have to train people from the beginning Z: So that group wanted taiko to provide a voice for the Asian-American community. From the start, if we wanted to be a voice and be heard, then we want to do our work as well as we can. So we want to really practice hard, and make sure that we’re playing together and that we’re doing good music. People can be drawn in by that and experience this thing which is very unique for Portland. There weren’t any loud Asian-Americans banging on drums- A: But play well. We could not play really well and try to be an effective voice, but it wouldn’t communicate what we want it to communicate. It wouldn’t be powerful and it wouldn’t share with a really broad audience. It would be stuck only in an Asian-American community. Z: But that combination of vision; of wanting to reach people through taiko and have a voice through taiko really resonated with the community in a really deep way. So, when we started, and we just had this one drum, we had no idea this was where we’d be headed. But in the first couple of years there was a real outpouring of support. There was moral support, with people coming out to see the performances, but also money- A: People started sending us money without us asking them. A: It’s kind of amazing how fast it’s happened. I think part of it’s the art form. It’s just grabs you. Z: There’s this inherent power those drums have. They’re big! A: You feel it in your body when you play it. Maybe the biggest show of the year for Portland Taiko, the fall concert is coming up in the first weekend of September, and should be an amazing concert. They’ll have the full line of drums, perform their newest compositions and have their new cd, Big Bang, for sale. You can hit the MusicFest afterwards. Big Bang CD Release Concert Little Bang: Children’s Matinee |
are other Asian-Americans who came here 5 years ago. Well I’m going to have a very different experience than they’re going to have. But we also recognize that, because of the way American society works, we’re going to have commonalities in terms of how people treat us and the experiences that we have.
women find very empowering. It’s an opportunity to be very strong and loud and powerful and it’s still something that my parents enjoy, because it’s related to my culture.”