Taiko: A Passion and a Path

By Judith Bess

I think the human soul has a need to give itself over to the cocreation of something magnificently beautiful that transcends one's small self. I've felt it in chanting and choral singing—how my own voice joins with other individual voices, merging into an ocean of song that floods me with some indescribable harmonic energy.

I felt it last year when Kodo, the Japanese Taiko troupe, performed at the Marin Civic Auditorium. It was much more than a drum performance. It was an evocation of life in all its passion and joy and power. As soon as the performers entered, surrounding the audience with their exuberance and their compelling rhythms, I knew I had to playTaiko.

A couple of weeks later I went for my first class in Emeryville.

Like the Asian martial arts, Taiko is taught in a dojo—a large room with thick mats on which we work barefoot or in socks (do means "the way, the path"; jo means "place"; so a dojo  is a place to learn the way).

There are two kinds of drums set up this day and students rotate between them every few minutes. Six are shime (shee-may), about 15 inches in diameter and 10 inches deep, set up on stands so they're about at hip level, and producing a clear, sharp sound. And two are large barrel-shaped drums, called o-daiko, turned on their side and set on stands about 5 feet high. Two students play one o-daiko, facing each other through the drum, standing in the "power stance"—legs apart, left leg forward and bent, right leg back and straight.

Just taking the stance, striking the drum, I feel I'm connecting to some deep pulsing core of life.

I discover something in myself that has always wanted to hold the large wooden bachi (drumsticks) and pound the drum with all my force, producing that deep bass tone that reverberates through my body and soul. And not just pound the drum, but play it in concert with the other drummers so that even on the first day in class, even just doing drills, I'm having that experience of participating in a powerful cocreation.

Of course, it's the teacher and the tradition that make this possible. My first impression of Susan Horn, Emeryville Taiko's founder, director, and teacher, is that she's grounded, solid, and smiling—the smile, I infer, of a master who loves what she does. She has been teaching Taiko for 12 years, demonstrating the basics week after week: how to hold the bachi, how to stand, how to move our arms. Yet it is never routine. In the world that Susan creates, each strike of the drum is a new experience, a new opportunity. Each drill is exciting and fresh.

Susan discovered Taiko in 1976, when she was in her 20s. She had gone to Japan just to do something new, had found a job and was living in Tokyo. She happened to see the Kodo troupe performing in a department store. "I was blown away," she says. "My hair felt like it was going straight up in the air and I got major goosebumps." Right then she conceived the ambition to go to Sado, the island where the troupe live and practice, just in the hope of seeing some of them on their daily run. It didn't occur to her then that she might get a more close-up experience of them.

Returning to San Francisco Susan joined the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, where she made a commitment to herself to give everything to her Taiko practice for three years. Her teacher, Tanaka Sensei (sensei means "teacher") taught in the traditional strict manner, deeply inspired by martial arts. Self discipline, respect, and good form are emphasized, as is giving to the group, rather than seeking what you can get. Everybody takes care of the dojo; everybody moves the drums out for playing and puts them away afterwards. And everyone looks out for each other. "He shows you what self-responsibility is," says Susan. "You have to want it badly enough."

Susan worked steadily and successfully and by 1986, when Kodo announced a three-month experimental apprentice program, she applied and was accepted.

It was an incredibly intense and fulfilling experience. She participated in the troupe's 7-days-a-week life: 5:30 a.m., get up, do warm-ups in the cold gym and run for one hour (except on the few days a month you were cooking breakfast), then have breakfast. Clean the gym. Train for three hours, have lunch, train for three more hours. Learn the drum routines by heart on your own time, and after dinner more practicing on your own. It is a monkish life for which only those who love Taiko with a driving passion are fit.

The troupe live, eat, sleep, work, and play together, so they get to know each other deeply, in spirit and character. They all come to understand each other's quirks, each other's timing, even each other's breathing. They develop an intuitive knowing of what every other drummer is going to do, so that when they perform it is with one mind.

Since Susan was already in her thirties, there was never a possibility that she would become a member of the troupe, who were all marathon runners and in their 20s. Susan shared their life for three months and then returned to San Francisco to continue her Taiko studies here.

How was she transformed? "I realized I could do anything!" she says.

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