TaikOz – Performing Australian Taiko Felicity Clark A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sydney Conservatorium of Music University of Sydney February 2018 Abstract TaikOz have for twenty years pioneered taiko and shakuhachi music in Australia to international acclaim. Taiko, the Japanese word for drum, is also the name of a multifaceted collection of Japanese-looking drumming cultures popular worldwide since the 1960s. As taiko players bolster the legitimacy of their activities with tangential histories of older, even imagined, Japanese art forms, Australian musicians TaikOz spend considerable effort trying to match their practice to this discourse while also challenging its validity. Stuck fitting in as outsiders, TaikOz head taiko proficiency globally and collaborate with the pioneers of the staged genre. By assessing several TaikOz compositions and collaborative projects, and through compilation of all print media mentions of TaikOz, this thesis demonstrates that the stories told about taiko and TaikOz are skewed. Through interviews and fieldwork, TaikOz revealed the ways they work, but how their processes are often unrecognised or misinterpreted. This thesis investigates where communicative errors are occurring and promotes that using a template of performativity might yield more honest renderings of this inter-cultural artistic exercise into text. 1 Originality statement This is to certify that • the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD • due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used • the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Felicity Clark 2 Acknowledgements A wide circle of people supported this thesis with conversations, feedback and scholarly input. My supervisors over the years have been patient, encouraging and generous with their time and energy: Charles Fairchild especially, but also Alexa Still and Keith Howard. Many thanks to Riley Lee for investing hundreds of hours in my shakuhachi playing during the Masters degree that preceded this. His calm vivacity constantly inspires harder work. To the members of TaikOz who encouraged my taiko playing and took time for interviews, thank you. Each of you work tirelessly and give of yourselves substantially. The members of the TaikOz community who spoke with me were very generous in revealing their ‘amateur’ expertise and with information not available from anyone or anywhere else, and their perspectives have enriched this thesis. To all of the friends who politely asked for a summary, thanks for helping to distil the ideas. Parts of this thesis have appeared in other forms in scholarly publications. Material from the case studies have been presented at conferences around Australia and New Zealand. Material in the introduction was previously published in “TaikOz, More than Muscles in the Media,” for IASPM, 2015. I’m grateful to the conference attendees, editors and anonymous readers who lent their informed perspectives and attentive questions. 3 Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Originality statement .................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 3 List of Appendices ...................................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ 5 Introduction, Literature Review and Methodology ................................................................... 6 Part One – Who 1: Synergy and TaikOz – pulsing images ................................................................................ 23 City Jungle, TaikoDeck, Origin of O, Future Directions, and pulse:heart:beat 2: Australian Taiko – teams and themes .................................................................................... 64 Part Two – Where From 3: Staging Japan Internationally – rhetoric, symbolism, aesthetics ...................................... 109 4: Orchestral Taiko – Mono Prism, Book of Clouds, Winners, Breath of Thunder .............. 140 5: Taiko on Australian Stages – Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky ............................................... 161 Part Three – Problem Solving 6: Theatre’s Kaleidoscopic Dirt – Pericles and Chi Udaka ................................................... 214 7: Dancing with Philosophical Demons – Onikenbai ............................................................ 232 8: Ancient Drums, War and the Oldest Profession .................................................................... 258 Thesis Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 283 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 290 4 List of Appendices Appendix 1 – Human Ethics Approval 20120830 List of Figures Figure 1 – Partial History of Australian Taiko Table 5 Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology TaikOz, Australia’s premier ‘Japanese drumming’ ensemble, are professional musicians who take their art seriously. Their name is a portmanteau of taiko, the Japanese word for drum, and Oz, the colloquial name for their home country. Most TaikOz members have music degrees and classical backgrounds and have left symphony orchestras and bands alike to pursue a niche music – taiko – that resonates with their passions for tradition, discipline, aesthetics and physically-embodied performance. They perform across genres and venues, collaborating widely, appearing in concert halls, popular music festivals, outdoor parks, black box theatres, with DJs and media artists, with dancers and theatre makers, in pubs, with orchestras and also with Japanese artists. Their versatility invites interpretations of hybridity, when really TaikOz continue a world taiko tradition of assimilation and change. As witnesses perceive Japaneseness in TaikOz’s art, and hence identity, TaikOz work hard to justify why their art is their own, and how they wish to be seen. Their ideal viewing would acknowledge performativity – the concept that reiteration forms identity, always socially – which is a thorough acceptance of their ‘doinghood’. The Japanese term taiko is generic but can refer to drum-objects found in Shinto and Buddhist traditions and Japanese court music. Taiko also refers to the worldwide contemporary activity enacted on ‘Japanese drums’ which has tenuous linear historical connections to those objects or their traditions. Terms like wadaiko (wa means ‘of Japan’, daiko is the suffix for ‘drum’) and kumi-daiko (ensemble drumming) are used interchangeably with taiko. These three terms are sometimes treated as a unified genre; while they diverge, they share mythology that prioritises concepts like liveness, visually stimulating music, ancient extractions, cultural and spiritual associations.1 Despite this, substantial variances in the interpretation of these terms exist – for example taiko when called wadaiko may appear ‘more traditional’ when in fact nothing material about the form determines this. As taiko has now entered the English lexicon, and the types of drumming I describe are international and current, from this point I will not italicise taiko, though I do italicise other Japanese instruments and foreign words. I also treat TaikOz, the group, as plural, given their many concurrent identities. 1 Jennifer Milioto Matsue, “Drumming to One’s Own Beat: Japanese Taiko and the Challenge to Genre,” Ethnomusicology 60:1 (2016): 22-52. 6 TaikOz construct a public identity that values tradition, has integrity and exudes strong aesthetic cohesion, and the group draws on the many conflicting ideas of what taiko is and can be, to capture the imaginations of many audiences – from those seeking exoticism, to those critiquing assimilations or fusions with other genres, to orchestral colleagues, to entertainment consumers, to custodians of recognised Japanese cultural artefacts. In TaikOz’s appeals for validation or public approval, however, they meet interpretations that mark them as appropriators or non-belonging to the cultural material they generate. This thesis problematises why witnesses see what they believe, and not necessarily what is before them, and how this impacts TaikOz’s art and business. I hence present ways TaikOz describe their practice and how media appraisals describe TaikOz, and then discusses where these witnesses’ ideas of TaikOz’s authenticity or appropriation may originate and why. By tracing the meaning-producing mechanisms that surround TaikOz’s presence in media discourse, this thesis demonstrates how these differ from academic or Japanese indigenous readings of the same phenomena. It is worth stressing here that more literature about taiko exists in English language than in Japanese, give the cosmopolitan nature of the activity, popular globally since the 1960s. Academic literature about taiko in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere also covers a wide variety of concurrent traditions and the justifications for their veracity. The following resources are discussed in