When she started drumming two years ago, junior LaCona Woltmon didn’t particularly like to yell—or kiai, as taiko performers call it.
“But then you get into it and realize that you need to engage your entire body in taiko—including your voice,” Woltmon says.
Throaty, guttural yells. Rhythmic, graceful arm extensions. Pounding feet. And those massive drums—six feet across, some of them—that literally shake the stage when they are struck. Oh, taiko!
The art form originated centuries ago at rice-planting festivals in Japan, where mere mortals stood back and marveled as folk bands called down the rain gods. But North American taiko has a thunder and athleticism all its own, and the 15-member Stanford Taiko has been a high-energy crowd pleaser since its earliest days.
Established in 1992 with funding from an Undergraduate Research Opportunities grant to build an odaiko, or big drum, Stanford Taiko was conceived in a workshop class that linked the performance art with Japanese-American culture. “Some saw Stanford Taiko as a symbol of Japanese-American activism, and some saw it as helping to break through the stereotypes of the weak and exotic Asian-American female,” says Linda Uyechi, ’79, MS ’81, MA ’90, PhD ’95, a lecturer in taiko who advises the coed, multiracial, student-run group with her husband, Stephen Sano, MA ’91, DMA ’94, an associate professor of music and director of choral studies. The pair also teaches a sophomore seminar called Perspectives in North American Taiko.
Each taiko group builds its own drums and writes its own songs. As Stanford performers literally have bent over backwards to accommodate the stances of slant-style drumming, they’ve become identified with a style that is physically challenging and aesthetically compelling.
And when performers graduate, it’s boom times ahead, says Sano: “We have as many Stanford Taiko alums making their living as taiko performers as we have music department alums making their living as Western classical musicians.”
