Taiko Community (a rant)

The North American Taiko Community is an interesting one. We move forward by looking backwards. One could argue that we're not actually able to move forward because of this.

In the last couple of years there has been a big shift in interest towards the history and roots of taiko. More and more people seem to want to learn styles like Hachijo and Miyake, to learn from Japanese teachers, and get a feel for "traditional" rhythms/music/styles.

Even before that, there was a lot of energy spent into making sure the community knew how taiko started in North America, the pioneers, the groups, and all that was done to make it possible for us to do what we do now.

We've collectively turned our gaze back to the past and what's come before, and that action will shape the next generation of taiko groups and players. This in itself is neither a good nor bad thing in my opinion, I'm just stating my observations.

However, I feel that there is this feeling that people now have to "justify" their "authenticity", so as to combat those who question their right to play a certain song or style. This suspicion begets suspicion and then that sucks away the energy that could be spent encouraging and supporting the art within the community itself.

What if there was less focus on making sure every group that played Miyake learned it from an "approved" source? What if there was less worry where a group learned Yodan Uchi from? There will always be people who act as self-appointed Taiko Police, so do we as a community need to focus so much on it? I'll be there are some people are probably screaming "yes!" right now. Hmm.

It's never cool to play a song without proper credit - there's really no way around that. And there will always be groups who play songs that they didn't learn "properly", whatever that might mean. But how much energy do we want to spend on "fixing" it? The only way to do it effectively is to clamp down tight on what's out there now and spend a lot of effort keeping that up...but is that where our focus should go?

So we don't want people to copy styles without direct teaching and we come down on those who do. We have a very small amount of public domain songs available and those that are out there aren't always easy to play for some groups. We want taiko to grow as an art form but we tell people "you have to know what's come before" when so many people don't have access to resources or time to look backwards.

If you're an established group, you have luxuries many newer/smaller groups don't. I think that a lot of smaller groups, because they need the resources of the larger community, fall into line when it would be amazing to see them break away and be...subversive. Would people talk smack about them? Oh yes. But that happens in other arts ALL THE TIME. Why not taiko? The community offers support but it also limits us because of accepted norms and peer pressure. No one wants to be the black sheep!

I look at hip-hop and martial arts and there are similarities to taiko here. Both arts have history that students should learn about, like the importance of knowing key people or where where a style started out from. But in both arts, there are groups that break free from established organizations, regulations, and challenge what's established to find both creativity and new systems. They get flak, they face resistance, but sometime of they find ways to thrive and even take the art to another level.

This post started out as something else and turned into a bit of a rant, but I'm going to post it anyways. My goal isn't to stir up drama for the sake of drama, it's to make people think. To question. So there you go!