“Tamashii no Hibiki” (“Soul Beat”) by taiko master Yoichi Watanabe (right in above photo), leader of Amanojaku, is a truly beautiful “odaiko” (big taiko) piece.
It is storytelling in percussion _ the talking drum _ at its height Japanese-style.
The video (in the link below) shows how my son Isaku Kageyama played it as a guest at the Tokyo International Taiko Contest.
He won a couple of contests himself with this piece, starting with the 2000 Mount Fuji contest when he became the youngest player at 18 to ever win the honors.
Please go to the site below, scroll down and download “Soul Beat.”
It takes a while but I think it’s worth the wait.
Video, though, never quite does taiko justice because of the physical sensation of taiko that goes beyond just hearing it _ imagine the walls, your blood veins, the insides of your brain and all the spaces of air around you shaking.
The Giant Drum
Amanojaku Taiko Concert
Fresh back from a trip to Brazil to celebrate the centenary of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Amanojaku gave two Tokyo concerts this week.
What’s striking about their performance is the vision of leader Yoichi Watanabe that is underlined by his fantastic compositions.
Inspired by stark imagery and story-telling, from sword-flicking samurai to the eternal power of dashing waves, Watanabe’s tunes never fail to deliver an exciting and articulate musical experience.
His taiko concerts aren’t the clap-along feel-good affairs of showmanship that many associate these days with modern taiko.
They make deeper, sometimes painful statements about Watanabe’s perceptions on life and art as defined through his compositions/choreography woven together like fabric.
He told the concert crowd about how he composed “Dotou.”
He said he started out with a piece for the big drum, and then that evolved into a tune about the snarling waves.
While he was at a studio in a prefecture outside Tokyo to work out the composition, there was a thunderstorm.
There was so much rain the sewage gutter outside the studio began overflowing in torrents.
Thus was “Doutou” born.
Watanabe wrote “Kaiun” after his parents died, and the piece has elements of prayer and wishes for everyone’s happiness.
The song has allusions to universal symbols of hard work and preserverance such as worksong chants, swaying of the body and rigorous repetitive beating that is almost excruciating.
But in a mysterious way, the song is also about deliverance from the madness of everyday survival.
It is a moving song about how a man is dealing with the sorrow of losing people he loves, the gratitude he feels toward his forebearers, and the total fear yet total courage artists feel in perpetually facing up to our inevitable deaths.
Amanojaku Taiko Concert
AMANOJAKU CONCERTS:
IN TOKYO
Amanojaku Taiko Concert – Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Japanese Immigration to Brazil
Amanojaku with Kyosuke Suzuki (yokobue flute), Katsunari Sawada (shamisen)
August 13, 2008 Wednesday at 19:00 (Doors open at 18:30)
August 14, 2008 Thursday at 14:00 (Doors open at 13:30)
Nerima Bunka Center TEL: 03-3993-3311
Ticket Prices: Advance Tickets: JPY 4000
Door Tickets: JPY 4500
All seats are non-reserved
Ticket Pia – http://pia.jp/t P-Code: 293-971
TEL: 0570-02-9999
Contact: Amanojaku － http://amanojaku.info
TEL: 03-3904-1745 FAX: 03-3904-9434
Amanojaku led by Yoichi Watanabe has just returned from Brazil where they led 1,000 Japanese Brazilian drummers in a performance at a samba venue in Sao Paulo, the Brazilian city with the biggest population of people of Japanese ancestry.
Watanabe has gone to Brazil six times in the last several years to lead workshops in taiko drumming in Japanese communities throughout that nation. This year marks the centenary of Japanese immigration to Brazil, where pioneers went with big dreams after they were blocked entry by segration in the U.S. Taiko has long been a major part of the Japanese American community. Taiko is growing into a major part of the Japanese Brazilian community. Taiko is that pulse that unites people everywhere and helps make that vital connection to our cultural roots.
Amanojaku in a Yamagata Taiko Festival
Amanojaku appears in a Yamagata Prefecture taiko festival being billed as a once-in-a-decade star-studded event.
OHAMA, Yamagata Prefecture
July 27, 2008 at 18:00 (Doors open 17:00)
AMANOJAKU with Osuwa Daiko, Oedo Sukeroko Taiko, Chichibu Yatai Bayashi, Choshi Hanedaiko and others.
Kan Nihon-kai Taiko Festival
Ohama Seashore Stage
Advance Tickets JPY 2000, Door Tickets 2500
Contact: Kan Nihon-kai Taiko Festival Organization Office TEL 0234-26-0381
More Amanojaku in Brazil
Video footage of a recent Amanojaku concert in Brazil.
“Kaiun” by Yoichi Watanabe.
Players from left to right:
Mayumi Kawana, Isaku Kageyama, Hiromi Ogawa, Yoichi Watanabe.
Yoichi Watanabe, master taiko drummer and the leader of Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku, wrote “Kaiun” after he lost both his father and mother within a scope of about a year.
Like many Japanese, Watanabe has a tight family (both his sons are fantastic taiko drummers), and he was very close to his parents.
The sorrow was a crushing burden that was visible to anyone who saw him those days.
His own health suffered, and he was hospitalized.
But like all great artists, he found in his ordeal a vital force for this composition that is not only about the kind of person his parents always taught him to be _ humbly enduring but always with integrity and vision _ but also about the message of hope and prayer for everyone.
“Kaiun” means “good fortune” in Japanese.
People use the phrase when they wish good luck to others in the same way people in the West say, “God bless you.”
“Kaiun” is a powerful spiritual statement of art’s transcendence over death and a man’s sense of mission to pass on a musical legacy to future generations.
It is a universal statement about how we can never defeat death but how art can give us eternity.
If you want to see “Kaiun” with a better camera angle, please order the Amanojaku DVD from the online store:
http://www.isakukageyama.com/english/onlinestore/
It has all the greatest Amanojaku tunes, including “Bujin” (seen in the YouTube upload below), “Dotoh,” “Kagura” and others.
A must buy for all taiko fans and students.
Amanojaku in Brazil
Video footage from the recent Amanojaku concert in Brazil.
“Bujin” by Yoichi Watanabe.
Solo by Hiromi Ogawa.
Like many Watanabe pieces, “Bujin” has a solo section that allows individual players to express their own version of Amanojaku taiko.
Hiromi Ogawa’s is a classic.
It never fails to build excitement and tension as the perfect third solo for “Bujin.”
Amanojaku Taiko Workshops
Taiko group Amanojaku, led by Yoichi Watanabe, is offering workshops in Tokyo.
Odaiko (big drum)
FRI July 4, FRI July 18, FRI Aug. 22 and FRI Aug. 29, 2008.
7 pm – 8:30 pm
Working at the Basics
SAT July 5, SAT July 19, SAT Aug. 23 and SAT Aug. 30, 2008.
3 pm-4:30 pm
8,400 yen per month (two lessons).
All at Taikonosato Kyouwakan near Yutenji station on Tokyu Toyoko Line.
Amanojaku in Concert
Aug. 13, 2008 7 p.m. and Aug. 14, 2008 2 p.m.
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Japanese Immigration to Brazil
An event that promises to be a bold statement of legacy and vision, the concert will feature the Japan premiere of “Kizuna,” in Brazil by 1000 drummers for the centenary celebration in June.
Special guests Kyosuke Suzuki (yokobue flute) and Katsunari Sawada (shamisen)
At Nerima Bunka Center TEL: 03-3993-3311
Advance Tickets: 4,000 yen
Door Tickets: 4,500 yen.
All seats non-reserved.
Ticket Pia – http://pia.jp/t P-Code: 293-971 TEL: 0570-02-9999
Amanojaku TEL: 03-3904-1745 FAX: 03-3904-9434
Amanojaku Taiko in Brazil
Video by someone who was at Amanojaku’s June 19, 2008 concert in Brazil.
Thanks for the video!
Isaku’s blog and entry from his end on the same concert.
The piece being performed is “Five Color Taiko,” in which five players drum out music that is at once together and coherent in unison yet also individual, creative and unique, expressing the essence of the human spirit as interpreted by Amanojaku leader and composer Yoichi Watanabe.
Brazil, home to the biggest Japanese community outside Japan, is also home to a younthful and vibrant taiko culture.
From One Drummer to a Thousand Drummers
My son Isaku Kageyama is in Sao Paulo now as part of the centenary celebrations of Japanese immigration in Brazil _ home to the biggest Japanese population outside Japan.
Taiko drumming group Amanojaku, which takes traditional festival sounds to deliver modern concert-level music, got a standing ovation for their performance there earlier this week.
The English language Asahi did a story about the trip.
This is from Isaku on his blog:
Today was one of the biggest concerts of my life, and a day that I will never forget. When we finished playing and the audience jumped up and started clapping – I thought all our work in Brazil over the past 5 years had truly been worthwhile.
I saw a number of familiar faces in the audience, and it gave me the energy I needed.
Of course there were a number of imperfections, but we managed to pull through. The imperfections were primarily in relation to tempo and lack of responding properly to minor mistakes.
Generally speaking, good rehearsals are designed to iron out mistakes so that they don’t happen in the first place – but they also give players an opportunity to anticipate the types of mistakes so that they can respond to them in a timely and appropriate manner.
The gig is now history, and now we will focus on Saturday’s Sennin Daiko, and the big gigs we have coming up back in Japan.
CONCERTS in Japan:
TOKYO
Wed., August 13, 2008 19:00 (Doors open at 18:30)
Thu., August 14, 2008 14:00 (Doors open at 13:30)
Nerima Bunka Center
AMANOJAKU TAIKO DRUMMERS with Kyosuke Suzuki (yokobue flute) and Katsunari Sawada (shamisen)
Advance Tickets: JPY 4000, Door Tickets: JPY 4500
Ticket Pia – http://pia.jp/t P-Code: 293-971
TEL: 0570-02-9999
Amanojaku － http://amanojaku.info
TEL: 03-3904-1745 FAX: 03-3904-9434
SAPPORO, Hokkaido
July 13, 2008 at 12:30 (Doors open at 12:00)
12th Nippon Taiko Festival
AMANOJAKU appears with other guest taiko groups including Osuwa Daiko.
Sapporo Education and Culture Hall
Advance Tickets JPY 2500, Door Tickets JPY 3000
Ticket Sales: Ticket Pia TEL 0570-02-9999＋Pコード(290-857)
Contact: Nippon Taiko Foundation TEL 03-6229-5577
OHAMA, Yamagata Prefecture
July 27, 2008 at 18:00 (Doors open 17:00)
AMANOJAKU appears with Osuwa Daiko, Oedo Sukeroko Taiko, Chichibu Yatai Bayashi, Choshi Hanedaiko and others.
Kan Nihon-kai Taiko Festival
Ohama Seashore Stage
Advance Tickets JPY 2000, Door Tickets 2500
Contact: Kan Nihon-kai Taiko Festival Organization Office TEL 0234-26-0381
KURASHIKI, Okayama Prefecture
August 3, 2008 at 18:30
Starring AMANOJAKU with local groups in 3rd Japan Taiko Festival
Kurashiki TIVOLI Park “Plaenen Stage”
Just get an admission ticket to TIVOLI Park!
Contact: Kurashi TIVOLI Park Information Center TEL 086-434-1111
ALSO:
Contact Isaku at Amanojaku 03-3904-1745 or email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info
And search for “amanojaku” on iTunes Music Store, Napster, eMusic.com, and other online music distributors.