Review Details
MUSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY THE WAY OF THE DRUM MUGENKYO TAIKO DRUMMERS
Alan Cooper
14 May 2009
Arts Lecture Theatre
As one door closes, another opens so that while Thursday’s celebration of Taiko Drumming was the final event in Aberdeen University Music’s concert season, it was also one of the opening flourishes in the University’s Word Festival. This year one of the Festival’s main themes is the culture of Japan. To launch what turned out to be a thrilling and mind-expanding performance Professor Alan Spence welcomed the audience by reciting a selection of his own short poems based on the Japanese Haiku tradition. Many of the traditional Japanese poems celebrate different seasons and Alan Spence took us through the year with his first selection. These short word pictures wonderfully immediate, perceptive and vivid led our imaginations far away from the cavernous Arts Lecture Theatre and set the atmosphere for what was to follow.
I saw the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers the last time they came to the University in 2004. Music student Fiona Stoddart also saw their performance in the Mitchell Hall. She attended their workshop and was hooked. She is now one of the five performers who tours with the ensemble. There were quite a number of young children in Thursday’s audience and during the ensemble’s last two numbers, one little boy in front of me, wielding two empty plastic soft drink bottles as “bachi” (drumsticks) was joining in with evident enthusiasm on the seat in front. It looks as if the group could have got themselves another convert. This was what made this performance so alluring; the enthusiastic introductions of Neil Mackie and his team made what is a very complex and intricate musical tradition seem very “user friendly” they even got me to join in with a couple of Japanese songs and do a bit of in-seat dancing!
In addition to explaining and demonstrating the various instruments used in the tradition, the ensemble took us on a musical journey through the different islands and regions of Japan where each place has a different Taiko tradition. In some areas the drumming has religious and ceremonial connotations. Elsewhere, the impetus is a festival or a seasonal celebration or again it can just be a musical performance.
There was far more than just drumming in the performances however. Every movement was impressively choreographed and in one piece Hachijo, this developed into full blown dance as a kimono clad Miyuki Williams performed elegantly with fans, parasol and scarf.
In Gojinjo Taiko the group became mask clad demons celebrating a moment in Japanese history when villagers warded off an invasion by dressing as demons and playing their drums on the shore.
Some of the earlier pieces like Shichisan Stomp had a decidedly jazzy feel to the drumming sound. I’m sure Leonard Bernstein would have called it “funky”. In the piece entitled Gekko the amazingly fulsome sounds of the huge gong and the moonlike Odaiko drum really dazzled the ears and then in the two final pieces Hibiki and Nagareboshi the performers almost became a Japanese Riverdance as they moved in perfect formation across the different drums.
I left the concert amazed at the seeming endless flow of different sound textures the group was able to conjure from these few drums. I had learned just a little more about The Way of the Drum and I had enjoyed the experience immensely.