Thesis in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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.

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

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.

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 detail in the literature review where I explain how my research takes off and departs from existing discourse. Many accounts from Japan discuss histories of regional festivals and how musical material became codified or transformed over time. Accounts from the United States focus more on community music-making dynamics and cases of return, revival and reimagination of cultural material within diasporic groups. Academic discourse about New Zealand taiko2 tackles transcultural music and identity construction that parallels the Australian taiko climate. Others address education,3 aesthetics,4

2 Henry Johnson, “Why Taiko? Understanding Taiko Performance at New Zealand's First Taiko Festival.” Sites: New Series 5:2 (2008): 111-134. 3 Kimberly Powell, “Inside-out and Outside-In: Participant Observation in Taiko Drumming,” Innovations in Educational Ethnography: Theory, Methods, and Results, edited by George Spindler and Lorie A. Hammond. Mahwah, 33-64. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006; and “The Apprenticeship of Embodied Knowledge in a Taiko Drumming Ensemble.” Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds, edited by Liora Bresler, 183- 95. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. 4 Mark Tusler. The Los Angeles Matsuri Taiko: Performance Aesthetics, Teaching Methods, and Compositional Techniques. Santa Barbara: University of California Press, 1995.

7 acoustics,5 history,6 psychology,7 politics8 and cultural change.9 Only one article about TaikOz exists to date, and it assesses the Australian group’s public reception and successful marketing tactics circa 2005.10

A central claim of my thesis is that TaikOz make art that both continues and deviates from Japanese models, from Australian chamber music models, from academic discourse about taiko, and taiko discourse within popular media. As TaikOz’s practice does not tidily fit into prevalent stories told by any of these fields, confusion about whether their output is authentic arises, in ways not universally applied to others. Particularly in text, each iteration of praise or disapproval is defensible by narrative strands that intersect and diverge from a non- homogenous, conglomerate taiko discourse. This makes discussion rich, but observations hard to substantiate. I hence attempt revelation rather than resolution of the score about TaikOz. Through highlighting the performativity (by Judith Butler’s conception)11 of TaikOz’s musical performance, I argue their art is constituted but not determined through their practices of music making, and that their remaking of subjectivities through performative processes continually re-signify them as artists. Identity categories such as Japanese or Australian, ancient or contemporary, secular or deified, are not then neutral but laden with situated, social, historical, political, and ethical meanings whose weights must be

5 Ono Teruaka et al. “Acoustic Characteristics of Wadaiko (Traditional Japanese Drum) with Wood Plastic Shell.” Acoustical Science and Technology 30:6 (2009): 410-416; and Michael Gould, “Taiko Classification and Manufacturing.” Percussive Notes (1998): 12-20. 6 Izumi Masumi, Kym S. Rice and Benjamin Filene, “Big Drum: Taiko in the United States,” Journal of American History 93:1 (2006): 258-161. Also see Henry Johnson, “Japanese Roots and Global Routes: The Place of Okinawan Music in the 'World Music' Industry within and across Cultural Borders.” Musicology and Globalization: Proceedings of the International Congress in Shizuoka 2002, in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Musicological society of Japan, 507 -511. Tokyo: Academia Music Limited, 2004. 7 Eriko Mizuno and Haruo Sakuma, “Wadaiko performance enhances synchronized motion of mentally disabled persons.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 116:1 (2013): 187-96; Deborah Wong, “Finding an Asian American Audience: The Problem of Listening.” American Music 19:4 (2001): 365-384; “Moving: From Performance to Performative Ethnography and Back Again.” Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory Barz and Timothy J. Cooley, 76-89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge, 2004. 8 Deborah Wong, “Taiko and the Asian/American Body: Drums, Rising Sun, and the Question of Gender.” Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, edited by Jennifer C. Post, 87-96. New York: Routledge, 2006; “Noisy Intersection: Ethnicity, Authenticity and Ownership in Asian American Taiko,” Diasporas and Interculturalism in Asian Performing Arts: Translating Traditions, edited Um Hae-kyung, 85-90. New York: Routledge, 2005. 9 Kimberly Powell, “Composing Sound Identity in Taiko Drumming,” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 43:1 (2012): 101-119; and “Drumming Against the Quiet: The Sounds of Asian American Identity in an Amorphous Landscape.” Qualitative Inquiry 14:6 (2008): 901-925. 10 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan beating: The making and marketing of professional taiko music in Australia,” Popular culture, globalization and Japan. Eds Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto. London: Routledge, 2006. 11 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge,1997; and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2007.

8 considered contextually.

TaikOz perform a staged variety of taiko, professionalised by Japanese performers (and Americans,12 Taiwanese, Brazilians,13 Germans, more) since the 1960s. TaikOz use many of the techniques, transmission modes and social introductions (to other apex players) of such performers to legitimise their music. Additionally, TaikOz form relationships with lived traditions in Japan, like Hachijo-daiko (spiralling side-on style drumming from Hach Island) or Onikenbai dance from Iwate: these relationships continue historical forms of drumming that predate and inform contemporary taiko, but do not directly constitute it. TaikOz collaborate in Australia with musicians of many ilks, with dancers and theatre makers, to produce modern and relevant music to their taste, and to the tastes of local audiences. These collaborations at times confound witnesses who believe taiko to be ancient, spiritual and unchanging, which marks TaikOz as appropriators who only tokenistically apply foreign materials for commercial gain. This is however a perverse reading that will be explained more fully within the opening chapters via explanations of histories, key figures, philosophies, and cultural miscommunications.

Given the absence of academic literature about TaikOz, I exhaustively reviewed TaikOz’s presence in print-media. Reportage on TaikOz betrays little-to-no expert knowledge derived from taiko experience or taiko literature. Reviews imply concert hall conventions to which TaikOz are said to bring fresh dynamism. These reports are not untrue, but direct attention to facets of TaikOz’s practice at the expense of others. Reviewers make sense of new experiences by reference to their existing ones, and this means that associations to martial arts or spirituality seem important because these appear to correlate on the surface. Traditional print-media reviews see muscles and hear vibrations because these are immediately observable and these deviate from conventional concert hall presentations, and for media voices the concepts of difference and newness are exciting. Newness and difference then dictate the form of journalism and should not necessarily stand for the content reviewed. Writers usually generate a critical assessment based on comparison, so taiko is compared or linked to known symphonies, dance or sport which do not explain anything

12 Samuel Fromartz and Lauren Greenfield. “Anything but Quiet: Japanese Americans Reinvent Taiko Drumming.” Natural History 107:2 (1998): 44-50. 13 Shanna Lorenz. “Kinesonic Repertoire and Racial Discourse in Japanese Brazilian Taiko Practice.” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 2:1-2 (2016): 68-97.

9 innate to taiko or TaikOz.

In parallel academia and popular media, taiko discourse caters to a type of taiko unlike what TaikOz produce. This covers mostly traditional settings in Japan,14 or cultural work performed through community taiko outside Japan.15 TaikOz instead sell a professionalised version, following Japanese greats like Kodo ensemble and Eitetsu Hayashi. This does not make TaikOz’s taiko any ‘less than’ the types routinely discussed but opens a field for discussion of how this seemingly homogenous genre encompasses several coterminous overlapping traditions. This thesis assesses discourses about taiko and TaikOz, focusing on ways inaccurate and misleading stories take hold. This investigation reveals associations are largely formed arbitrarily but that by cumulative processes these discourses become naturalised and then effect ways TaikOz are perceived. Discourse thus has a negative impact on TaikOz, as my informants from TaikOz discussed in every interview.

However, TaikOz’s public interacts with this discourse less than TaikOz insinuate, and therefore the philosophical problems TaikOz tackle in their art, and its explanation, resound louder in the heads of TaikOz than in their public. Actually, few are watching or reading, and in the words of famed baseballer Yogi Berra, “If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”16 TaikOz are instead under pressures from shifting entertainment cultures and public funding reallocations, and must continually invent ways to remain relevant and commercially viable under these conditions. Nevertheless, several myths in taiko discourse stem from the following eight misconceptions. These frame TaikOz as players of something Japanese, when I argue taiko is cosmopolitan and that TaikOz do it as self-expression, not as appropriators.

14 Hiroyuki Hashimoto, “Between Preservation and Tourism: Folk Performing Arts in Contemporary Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies 62:2 (2003): 225-236. 15 Izumi Masumi Izumi, “The Pioneering of Taiko Drumming in the United States: An Examination of Three Distinct Routes.” Doshisha Studies in Language and Culture 11:2 (2008): 139-168; and Eddy Chang, “Wadaiko from East to West: Contemporary Japanese Drumming in the World Today,” paper in progress. Published at www.academia.edu/14568091/ Accessed August 22, 2020. Millie Creighton, "Changing Heart (Beats): From Japanese Identity and Nostalgia to Taiko for Citizens of the Earth." East-West Identities: Globalization, Localization, and Hybridization, edited by Chan Kwok-bun, Jan W. Walls and David Hayward, 203-28. Boston: Brill, 2007. 16 Quotes from Yogi Berra, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quoberra.shtml, accessed February 7, 2020.

Complicating mythology about taiko TaikOz meet challenges while ‘making taiko their own’ because taiko discourse (in academic literature and vernacular media) is distorted by several factors. While typical TaikOz witnesses know little of taiko’s history or adjacent traditions, the acquisition of parts of these stories lead to further confusion. These eight central narratives show how partial histories politicise TaikOz's mission.

1) Taiko is spiritual and ritual, stemming from Buddhist and Shinto roots. Taiko drums feature in Buddhist and Shinto celebrations and rituals including matsuri (festivals). Matsuri have altered significantly by rapid urbanisation17 post World War II and are subject to cultural protection laws18 which preserve aspects of culture but exclude expressions outside strict definitions of tradition. Much taiko literature in Japanese and English addresses this.19 Japanese taiko groups including Ondekoza and later Kodo professionalised versions of matsuri drumming, stylising a new genre designed to promote ‘old Japanese values’ on stages.20 Their work is not considered Japanese or traditional in Japan, given its constructedness and its absence of linear transmission across eras.21

2) Contemporary taiko evolved from centuries-old Japanese court music and other elite art forms. Taiko are played in gagaku (court music), noh and kabuki. Musicological perspectives on the importance of this drumming to contemporary taiko are skewed resulting from early ethnomusicology's priorities to investigate ‘high art’ of other cultures.22 Anthologies of Japanese instruments deliver information on traditions previously shared performatively.23

17 Linda Fujie, “Effects of Urbanization on Matsuri-Bayashi in Tokyo,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 15 (1983): 38-44. 18 Jane Alaszewksa, “Promoting and preserving the Chichibu Night Festival: The impact of the Japanese Cultural Properties Protection Law on festival music transmission,” Conference paper, Bukkyo University, Japan, 2010; Barbara Thornbury, “Folklorism and Japan's Folk Performing Arts.” Journal of Folklore Research 32:3 (1995): 207-220; and Thornbury, “The Cultural Properties Protection Law and Japan's Folk Performing Arts,” Asian Folklore Studies 53:2 (1994): 212. 19 Shimamura Takanori, “Cultural Diversity and Folklore Studies in Japan: A Multiculturalist Approach,” Asian Folklore Studies 62 (2003): 195-224; Barbara Thornbury, “From Festival Setting to Center Stage: Preserving Japan's Folk Performing Arts,” Asian Theatre Journal 10:2 (1993): 163-178; and Yosihiko Tokumaru, “Intertextuality in Japanese Traditional Music,” The Empire of Signs: Semiotic Essays on Japanese Culture, ed. Ikegami Yoshihiko, 139-155, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1991. 20 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom: Drumming in Place and Motion. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012, 48-115. 21 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating: The making and marketing of professional taiko in Australia,” Popular culture, globalization and Japan, eds Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto. London: Routledge, 2006, 81. 22 Martin Stokes, Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. New York: Berg, 1994. 23 William P Malm, Japanese Music and musical instruments, Tokyo: Charles E Tuttle, 1959; Nagauta: the

These transfer information systematically which is unlike traditional lived-experience’s winding paths, thus concreting fluid processes and genericising richly local expressions. While the instruments in question share roots, the cultures performed on these objects differ.

3) Ancient taiko traditions have assimilated into classical music subject to Western hegemonic and colonial power-imbalances,24 even when initiated by Japanese subjects. Twentieth-century Japanese composers enamoured with particularly German composition studied Western classical music.25 Composers including Maki Ishii, Isao Matsushita, Toshiro Miyazumi, Makoto Maroi, Minaru Miki, Ichiyanagi Toshi and others re-introduced Japanese folk instrumentation and tropes, some say to indigenise their output. Inclusion of taiko in these cosmopolitan compositions helped popularise these drums outside Japan and supported uptake of parallel kumi-daiko. Therefore, precursors to TaikOz's melding of taiko with Western classical music exist and are, in fact, foundational to the contemporary taiko genre. Japanese co-minglings of taiko with orchestra tend not to attract concern for ‘foreignness’ regarding whose culture belongs to whom, in which ways, and to what ends. Japanese composers absorbed Japanese tropes into the behemoth of universal classical music, whereas TaikOz rely on generic definitions of the specific art forms they combine into a ‘departure from classical music’. Neither can be assessed according to the values of classical music alone.26

4) Ensemble-taiko playing is pure, historic, Japanese and grounded in matsuri culture. The inception of contemporary-taiko around 1950 is attributed to Oguchi Daihachi, an amateur jazz drummer. He heard Hawaiian pop music while a prisoner of war in China. He re-created sounds of American music on abandoned taiko upon return to Japan.27 Known as a kit-player, locals came to him with a Shinto drumming score, found in a derelict miso factory. Daihachi, unfamiliar with Shinto drumming, could not read the notation, and so was forced to

heart of Kabuki music, Vermont: Tuttle, 1963; Six hidden views of Japanese music, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986; Alison M Tokita and David Hughes, The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. 24 Revathi Krishnaswamy, “The Criticism of Culture and the Culture of Criticism: At the Intersection of Postcolonialism and Globalization Theory.” Diacritics 32:2 (2002): 106-126. 25 Mina Yang, “East Meets West in the Concert Hall: Asians and Classical Music in the Century of Imperialism, Post Colonialism and Multiculturalism.” Asian Music 38:1 (2007): 1-30. 26 J Lawrence Witzleben. “Whose ethnomusicology? Western Ethnomusicology and the Study of Asian Music.” Ethnomusicology 41:2 (1997): 220-242. 27 Shawn Bender, “Drumming between Tradition and Modernity: Taiko and Neo-Folk Performance in Contemporary Japan,” unpublished dissertation, University of California, San Diego, (2003): 69.

12 innovate with the help of an old blacksmith. The art form he invented is kumi-daiko (group taiko). In Japan kumi-daiko, like professional staged taiko as exemplified by Ondekoza and Kodo, is not considered traditional or Japanese28 because it does not have a traceable lineage but instead recreates foreign sounds (those of pop music) on local objects. Kumi-daiko is about community engagement and its rhythms tend to consist of repeated patterns and simple hockets. The direction of cultural flow here is firmly from West to East.

5) American taiko is a continuation of entrenched Japanese traditions. Contemporary taiko in 1950s Japan was closely followed by a wave of participation in West- Coast United States a decade later, led by groups including Kinnara Taiko, San Jose Taiko Group and San Francisco Taiko Dojo. Unlike pre-existing Japanese drumming traditions, these groups asserted Japanese-Americanness (especially in response to internment camps and their legacies) and they respectively held community associations with martial arts, Buddhist temples and spiritual leaders. These have been theorised as iterations of Asian- American identity formalisation in a migrant-rich nation.29 This is a deeply political field for some, and these discourses inform current values in American taiko, a scene in which more than 300 groups have formed since the 1970s. Literature in English values social aspects of taiko including gender30 and race politics31 which are distinct from both the Japanese professional and amateur taiko cultures, and American taiko literature carries these values to an emerging global definition of taiko. This literature tends to document specific instances of taiko music making and uses these instances as generic descriptors of an art form imagined to be whole and uniform.

6) Taiko looks like dance, martial arts, war drumming and musical acrobatics. Taiko performances in general are spectacular because their elements are so visual, rhythmic

28 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating,” 2006, 81. 29 Grace Wang. Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015; and Paul Jong-Chul Yoon, “'She's Really Become Japanese Now!': Taiko Drumming and Asian American Identifications.” American Music 19:4 (2001): 417-438. 30 Kim Kobayashi, “Asian Women Kick Ass: A Study of Gender Issues within Canadian Kumi-Daiko,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin 40 (2006): 1-11; and Hideyo Konagaya, “Performing Manliness: Resistance and Harmony in Japanese American Taiko,” Manly Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities, ed. Simon J. Bronner, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, 135-156. 31 Paul Jong-Chul Yoon, “'She's Really Become Japanese Now!': Taiko Drumming and Asian American Identifications,” American Music 19:4 (2001): 417-38; and Deborah Wong, Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge, 2004; “Finding an Asian American Audience: The Problem of Listening,” American Music 19 (2001): 365-384; “Noisy Intersection: Ethnicity, Authenticity and Ownership in Asian American Taiko,” Diasporas and Interculturalism in Asian Performing Arts: Translating Traditions, New York: Routledge, 2005, 85-90.

13 and theatrical. The expression in Japan is “you don't go and hear taiko, you go to see it.”32 When the way things ‘look’ and things ‘are’ do not correlate cleanly, it is easy to prioritise what one has seen rather than contradictory information. This situation strengthens the hold of mythology and seems to validate assumptions about muscularity and spectacle made by taiko witnesses.

7) Every contemporary iteration of taiko springs from a Japanese origin which has sophisticated yet simple history, mythology and cultural impulses. In defining a traditional Japaneseness on which to base a diasporic or ‘returned’ identity33 in post-war United States, American taiko players made claims to Japanese mythology, origin stories and war histories.34 Samurai tales and war accounts still abound, and the Shinto myth of Ame no Uzume is regularly cited.35 It conveniently reinforces community aspects of kumi- daiko, particularly inclusion of women and older people who, despite the media image of masculinised bodily display, form the vast majority of amateur taiko players in Japan and the world. Fantasised and borrowed mythologies enter discourse through multiple avenues and are justified using arbitrary data. What is universal to contemporary taiko globally is a proclivity to mythologise and for these stories to be more valued than the same stories’ relationships with evidencable truth.

8) Eastern thought permits aesthetic choices contrasting those of Western thought. Classical Japanese philosophy understands the basic reality as constant change, or muyo (impermanence, as from Buddhist teachings).36 Only that flux we witness is reality: there is no conception of a stable ‘Platonic’ realm above or behind phenomena.37 Japanese arts have traditionally celebrated this fundamental impermanence, giving way to evolving practices and the easy absorption of current vicinal material. Similarly, mono no aware (pathos of things) imbues objects or events with beauty because of their transience. Hence, origins are less

32 Riley Lee quoted in Ben Langford. “Pounding drums to fill Darwin auditorium.” Northern Territory News, 2006. 33 Philip Bohlman, “Erasure: displacing and misplacing race in Twentieth Century music Historiography,” Western Music and Race, ed Julie Brown, 4-23. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 4. 34 Wikipedia. “Taiko: Use in Warfare” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko#Use in warfare, accessed February 21, 2020. 35 Heidi Varian, The Way of Taiko. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2005. 36 Yoko Arisaka, “The Controversial Cultural Identity of Japanese Philosophy.” The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, Ed. Bret W. Davis, published online November 2017, www.oxfordhandbooks.com, accessed December 18, 2017. 37 Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan, The Hague, Boston, London: Nijhoff, 1981, 2-31.

14 critical than are purposeful, present applications. And when traditions elect to remain static (to not change), their significance is consciously engineered. ‘Impermanence’ combined with Confucian self-cultivation along with Buddhist ‘awareness’ (a fundamental condition of existence) make for the likes of lifestyle or ‘ways or living’. This embodiment of practice, as found in chadō (way of tea) or iaidō (way of drawing a sword), becomes both art and ritual. These Japanese approaches contrast a Western academic interest in sources and stable facts (truths that exist beyond temporal performance).38 These differences in thinking between East and West may impact why Japanese taiko players innovate freely (as demonstrated in the following chapters), while Australians TaikOz are guarded and careful not to claim they know anything about taiko, nor to innovate without meticulous authentication processes. It also accounts for taiko innovation among Japanese immigrant communities including Japanese-Americans,39 who use taiko to express their stories of impermanent national identities.

Each of these eight narratives holds a grain of truth, making them more misleading, and the notion of real taiko more elusive still. Despite the co-existence of professional, amateur, expat, non-Japanese and even video-game versions of taiko,40 these cultures rarely engage laterally today. Each rely on diachronic assumptions about inheritance of meaning and tradition. Contemporary taiko is not so much a long-established musical tradition being transmitted and practised – in the sense that the West ‘discovered’ gamelan or Carnatic music – as a global music tradition being constructed continually in response to urban, capitalist conditions. Japanese matsuri-daiko, American kumi-daiko and Australian professionalised wadaiko co-exist, deriving their histories and values from separate narratives, though each have common ancestry. Every version may have some measure of legitimacy, but any claim to an exclusive authenticity is dubious.

TaikOz work hard to justify their practice while pioneering a musical career in a genre that many perceive as fixed, established and Japanese. TaikOz wish their witnesses to see how

38 Even when the fact to be gleaned is impermanence, subjectivity, performativity or social aesthetics, those ‘mappable’ concepts require compatibility. 39 Susan Miyo Asai, “Horaku: a Buddhist Tradition of Performance Arts and the Development of Taiko Drumming in the United States.” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 4 (1985): 163-172; and “Transformations of Tradition: Three Generations of Japanese American Music Making.” The Musical Quarterly 79:3 (1995): 429-453. 40 Henry Johnson, “Mediatising Taiko in Contemporary Technoscapes,” 2010 IASPM-ANZ Conference, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 2010.

15 staged taiko is already hybridised, non-uniform, founded on historical fictions (or elaborations), and that TaikOz nonetheless treat this material with reverence. TaikOz also want to be free to express themselves, to make art, to innovate deliberately, without feeling their combination of local and other inspirations are subject to ethical sanctions that are not universally applied to their contemporaries, mentors and predecessors. My study unpacks the processes that have led to TaikOz’s current identificatory situation and public reception.

Methodology In the absence of academic literature about TaikOz, I gathered information via popular media, through fieldwork and participation within TaikOz’s school. Here I present opinions of TaikOz members and media reportage to produce a less biased account. I quote extensively rather than presenting interpretive claims based on my research, partly because during my research period I lacked confidence to present my findings. Interviews with TaikOz and their community members were conducted with ethics approval.41

My relationship with TaikOz predates the research period, as I have been enamoured with their performances since 2005. I participated with the organisation and their school for taiko amateurs intensively for an eight-year period between 2007-2014, attending community classes several times per week, and workshops with international guests at every opportunity. I played with TaikOz’s student off-shoot group Taiko no Wa and joined their Onikenbai Club to rehearse an obscure festival dance involving swords and Buddhist demons. I performed with TaikOz at events like Sydney Festival in 2012 and at Sydney Opera House in subsequent years. TaikOz admitted me into their advanced education program called IDP (Individual/ Independent Development Program) in 2011 where I trained daily for six months towards an in-house performance with two other participants.

Also, between 2009-2011, I undertook a master’s degree in performance of shakuhachi (vertical Zen bamboo flute) with Riley Lee, in part because Sydney Conservatorium of Music would not permit me to audition on taiko as they deemed it an inappropriate instrument without available local teachers, despite TaikOz members’ proximity and undeniable proficiency in the institution’s musical values. Also during this period I reviewed classical music and experimental performance for RealTime Arts Magazine where I routinely critiqued

41 Human Ethics approval, Appendix 1

Sydney ensembles including TaikOz, their sibling and predecessor ensemble Synergy Percussion, alongside the likes of new music group Ensemble Offspring and composers’ collective Chronology Arts. My participation in Australian media influenced my choice to perform an exhaustive evaluation of TaikOz in print. An interest in philosophy and epistemology governed my research into truth-production and interpretation.

Theoretically, I find a sympathetic system in Judith Butler’s conception of performativity. It accounts for the liveness of identity construction, seeing the distinction between traditional taiko and non-traditional taiko is “variable and fluid.”42 These variations are considered to have certain qualities based on circumstances that fluctuate from one individual to another, and from one situation to another. Then, what is important is whether this taiko is interpellative; whether the musical performances hail and form their subjects, requiring obedience to the laws of each’s domain. Taiko proponents define the meaning by which they comply, each separately, so every one is authentic. Each version works as a citational practice through which available identities are regularly (re)constituted. Social acts constitute subjectivity through ritualised repetition of norms. The staged rituals of taiko performance function as stagings of the body, as symbolic actions, as ethical events and aesthetic spectacles. In this way, these performances not only shape TaikOz, but the community who views them, oscillating between conflicts and processes of integration.

By Butler’s analysis, the performative conceptualises the world as something not necessarily chosen by the individual. This throws up contentions to assumptions of shared identifications, particularly about who is doing what, to or for whom.43 When TaikOz members compose, they have expressed they do it for themselves (and not for a future audience’s approval). Yet the making of the ‘us’ through concerted action (in TaikOz auditoria) is not related just to past communities and their characteristics but could be “bound up with a future that is yet to be lived out.”44 Processes of identification do not take place in private, but are always negotiated in relationship with others, emerging between self-image and public image.45 No

42 Frank Burch Brown. “Musical Ways of Being Religious,” Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts, edited by Frank B. Brown, 109–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 43 Betty Martin, “Wheel of Consent,” https://bettymartin.org/videos, accessed June 29, 2021. 44 Judith Butler, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. 45 Richard Jenkins, Social Identity, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008, 93.

17 matter the norm imposed or agreed upon, ‘discriminatory universalism’ is just as pernicious as ‘imposed difference’.

This assumption that a staged expression of taiko can be somehow neutral suppresses, marginalises, or erases TaikOz’s own identities. It removes the possibility for diversity and innovation by curbing TaikOz’s expressions and their witnesses’ impressions. The cohesive aims of music criticism, and the inherent diversity of the contents they review, may thus come into conflict when processes of community building collide with individual identities and values. The apparently simple act of recognising, rather than restraining, multiple beliefs and purposes, is now understood to be an integral part of neutral witness, but is an impossible state to achieve collectively, unless divergence is accepted.

Structure Overview This thesis is structured to define TaikOz and not taiko generally, but requires histories of taiko instruments, stars and innovations through time. As such, the structure reveals truer stories about TaikOz and is not presented chronologically. Themes and pieces of music reappear across chapters. Part One contains two chapters contextualising TaikOz’s artistic and educative priorities in Australia. Part Two revisits histories of Japanese taiko stars and the relationships between taiko and orchestral music, then how this impacts TaikOz, over three chapters. These three chapters all mention yatai-bayashi, a much appropriated piece/genre worldwide. Part Three contains three chapters problematising TaikOz’s identities, business operations, artistic choices, media engagements and philosophical quandaries.

Part One Chapter one investigates TaikOz’s contemporary projects that collaborate with visual- and media-artists, accentuating visual aspects of performance. TaikOz have been criticised for departing from ‘traditional’ taiko, or for recontextualising Japanese cultural artefacts in these projects, but I demonstrate how TaikOz’s processes are identical to their predecessors’ and mentors’ who have not received such admonitions. I review TaikOz works Origin of O and TaikoDeck, comparing their reception to that of coterminous project City Jungle by Synergy Percussion (TaikOz’s business sibling). I reveal how critical discourse about TaikOz’s electronic mash-up projects focuses on themes unlike reviews of modernist percussionists Synergy. TaikOz enact multiple versions of taiko and differentiate their concurrent versions

18 by adopting the audience culture or venue culture of each space. Chapter one also reviews decades-long collaborative project between TaikOz and Synergy Percussion variously called Beat It! and pulse:heart:beat.

Chapter two presents an overview of the Australian taiko scene, tracing firsts and big moments of individuals and troupes. Most Australian taiko teams have emerged since 2005, while Synergy Percussion and TaikOz members have been performing on taiko in Australia since the 1980s. I compare how TaikOz describe their art versus ways other Australian taiko players advertise. Australian taiko groups publicise using popular themes like spirituality and community, to different ends. This reveals the rhetorical tendencies that perpetuate false histories.

Part Two Chapter three tells stories of innovators, those Japanese artists who pioneered the contemporary taiko genre. A brief comparison to an American taiko forefather, Seiichi Tanaka, reveals how some taiko appears like art while other taiko operates like culture. I quote star Eitetsu Hayashi extensively to establish relationships between contemporary taiko and the Japanese traditions from which it departs. I pair this with pivotal moments in TaikOz’s career to affirm how TaikOz authentically do taiko like its progenitors. Chapter four addresses taiko in classical music, and TaikOz’s relationship with orchestras. It explores compositional processes, workshopping possibilities and curious instances of racial discrimination. TaikOz repertory discussed includes Maki Ishii’s Monochrome and Mono- Prism, Gerard Brophy’s Book of Clouds, Lachlan Skipworth’s Breath of Thunder, and Andrea Molino’s Winners.

Chapter five investigates what ‘Australian taiko’ might mean, accommodating TaikOz’s establishment in a classical music canon. I trace Australian sonic markers such as inclusion of didgeridoo, and present how TaikOz members felt about its adoption. I compare the reception of two coterminous projects – Shifting Sand and Toward the Crimson Sky – to show how the same performers, playing the same instruments, to the same audiences, during the same period, exploring the same themes, met antithetical criticisms. Shifting Sand looked too Japanese, and Toward the Crimson Sky was not Japanese enough. Shifting Sand, a theatrical and film production by former member Graham Hilgendorf, placed taiko in Australian landscapes. I assess the impressionistic movement O-Matsuri in which Hilgendorf uses

19 traditional Japanese musical materials such as yatai-bayashi to convey cross-cultural festivities. Chichibu’s yatai-bayashi is one of the most investigated pieces/genres in taiko literature46 so I do not offer musical analysis, but instead show how TaikOz’s inclusion of yatai-bayashi follows a long tradition of its assimilation by others such as Ondekoza, Maki Ishii and contemporary American groups. Toward the Crimson Sky by Ian Cleworth was composed for taiko, bass kobo and synthesizer using Hungarian modes, which confused fans and critics. An anecdote of TaikOz’s student offshoot group’s debut in Japan problematises definitions of Japanese or Western taiko.

Part Three Chapter six describes TaikOz collaborations with dancers and theatre makers. Media appraisals of these projects came from performance studies experts, not typical music critics, so explored nuanced themes about cross-cultural sharing. A co-production with Bell Shakespeare of Pericles, the anti-hero’s odyssey, was criticised for essentialism. Whereas TaikOz’s collaboration with Lingalayam dancers (company blending Bharatha Natyam and Kuchipudi dance), Chi Udaka, was strongly praised and toured repeatedly. Chi Udaka media by theatre reviewers better captures TaikOz’s operations and identity. I conclude that TaikOz’s multi-faceted identity confuses most reviewers who intercept isolated moments in TaikOz’s practice so are hard-pressed to evaluate the complexity of TaikOz’s reflexivity.

Chapter seven tackles whether Zen, a regular designation, has anything to do with TaikOz. I describe Onikenbai, an ancient, ritual, ‘demon sword dance’ from Iwate, Japan, that TaikOz began practising after encouragement from professional stage performers Kodo, who also dance it. Through doing Onikenbai, TaikOz enact many of the assumptions pinned onto them such as Eastern spirituality, or old regional Japaneseness. Though generally these associations are more imagined than evidencable, TaikOz seek ways to bring out these elements in their image creation, so a real Japanese art condensing these qualities holds value for TaikOz. I unravel philosophical conveniences, origin myths and popular stories TaikOz attract, and pair these lofty vagaries with TaikOz’s actual experiences of studying Onikenbai to show how parochial life experiences are ‘the real deal’ spiritually. While Onikenbai stems

46 Keith Howard, “Promoting and Preserving the Chichibu Night Festival: The impact of Cultural Policy on the Transmission of Japanese Folk Performing Arts,” Music as intangible cultural heritage: policy, ideology, and practice in the preservation of East Asian traditions. London: Routledge, 2012; and Benjamin Pachter, “Wadaiko in Japan and the United States: The Intercultural History of a Musical Genre,” Thesis. Kenneth P Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2013.

20 from both Buddhist and Shinto origins, it has no meaningful relationship with Zen. Yet by adopting this tradition – which encapsulates the presumptions that TaikOz’s witnesses misconstrue – TaikOz validate local Australian beliefs while gaining additional legitimacy from Japan.

TaikOz have formed robust relationships with cultural custodians of Onikenbai and invited them to perform in Australian concert halls. While independently performing Onikenbai in Australia, TaikOz have been asked to remove the ‘demon’ from translation of Onikenbai to avoid upsetting spiritually-minded attendees. This interpretive problem has nothing to do with music or culture – both these remained unchanged in TaikOz’s performance – but Australian curators tried to control ‘acceptable stories’ about unfamiliar art. This predicament stands for my entire thesis: TaikOz are habitually asked (by a personified market) to change their art so that it better fits to existing stories, which are mistaken. TaikOz fight to achieve neutral witness.47 This chapter uses allusion and allegory to connect Zen concepts with TaikOz’s process, while emphasising the artifice in doing so. By pairing philosophy with phenomena, function follows form and art supplants academic morality. My form playfully mirrors this subject-matter.

Chapter eight looks at war mythology and how TaikOz capitalise on such stories when convenient. As a commercial operation, TaikOz depend upon markets to support their art- making, and often patrons and employers shape producible art. I write how TaikOz engage with Australian rugby culture, and how TaikOz drummed for the world’s biggest weapons fair in the United Arab Emirates in 2013. I argue that managerial notions of the group, while ‘realistic’, may have undermined the performers’ self-conceptions48 and affected artistic choices, leading players to adopt a ‘guns for hire’ attitude. When TaikOz enact versions of taiko that disagree with their personal philosophies, TaikOz contribute to problems of identification that they simultaneous attempt to correct.

Overall, this thesis explores themes of appropriation ethics; ideological paradoxes;

47 Coaldrake, Kimi. “Traditional Japanese Music Instruments in the Concert Hall: The Non-neutrality of the Performance Space.” Musicology and Globalization: Proceedings of the International Congress in Shizuoka 2002, in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Musicological society of Japan, 256-260. Tokyo: Academia Music Limited, 2004. 48 Christine Yano, “Inventing Selves: Images and Image-Making in a Japanese Popular Music Genre,” Journal of Popular Culture 31:2 (1997): 115–129.

21 justifications for aesthetic preferences; discrepancies between teaching and learning styles; philosophical growth, and ultimately the question ‘what makes tradition traditional?’ By adopting theory of performativity, I argue that TaikOz build and pronounce their identity though performative acts, in time and space, and that these are the only places in which meaning can survive. Everything else is associative or belongs to others.

1. Synergy and TaikOz: pulsing images

Taiko is visual music. Visuality adds relational complexity to a set of sounds and cultural practices already complicated in their origins, transmissions, enactments and meanings. This chapter reviews TaikOz’s visuality and visibility in relation to Synergy Percussion – the group from which TaikOz sprang. By connecting both groups’ roles in contemporary Australian musical life I show how their missions compare and depart. This helps explain TaikOz’s complex and often contradictory place in the Australian music scene. It also strengthens my claim that TaikOz became successful commercially as taiko players, piggy- backing on infrastructure from classical music institutions like symphony orchestras.1 I observe contemporaneous projects by Synergy and TaikOz circa 2011-2015 that combined live percussion with electronic popular music and moving images. Ever experimental, TaikOz approached these projects as sites of identity creation and affirmation, but when critics took issue, TaikOz expressed frustration, non-belonging and hopelessness.

I begin here because this thesis is about TaikOz, not taiko in general, and those projects with Synergy, and separately with media artists, capture TaikOz’s versatility (as separate from renditions of an abstracted Japanese music). This chapter is split into two. The first part lists Synergy projects with Japanese or internationalist flavours before TaikOz’s inception, and then the collaborations between the sibling ensembles called Beat It! and pulse:heart:beat. The second part compares media responses to coterminous projects by Synergy and TaikOz respectively, assessing City Jungle (2011), TaikoDeck (2011), Origin of O (2013), and Future Directions (2014).

Innovative Synergy Percussion

As TaikOz sprang from Synergy Percussion, the history of Synergy is a history of TaikOz. I collated data kept in personal records of Synergy Percussion past-member and Sydney Symphony percussionist Colin Piper. Piper granted me access to investigate performance records pertaining to the period 1974-2005.2 These listings contained information about

1 Discussed further in Chapter 4 ‘Orchestras, Racialism and Surroundings’ 2 Colin Piper, personal communication, Stanmore, NSW, October, 2011.

personnel, repertory, venues, piece performance frequency, when critics reviewed shows (if known), and information about recordings made by Synergy. These hobby records are thorough but incomplete, with inconsistencies and changing methods of display over the three-decade span. Subsequent to my mining of this data, percussionist Louise Devenish wrote a history of percussion ensembles in Australia that details Synergy and its predecessor The Sydney Percussion (1974-1978).3 For brevity, I only recount details specific to emerging TaikOz.

Future director of TaikOz, Ian Cleworth officially joined Synergy in 1989, and was already principal percussionist for Sydney Symphony since 1985. He introduced taiko repertory to Synergy that he learned in Japan from sensei Sen Amano. Cleworth composed new works, mostly for shime-daiko in combination with non-Japanese percussion. Riley Lee, who had taken up residence in Sydney for a research degree, attended Synergy performances. Lee’s first collaboration with Synergy was in 1991, a dance and music-theatre work Matsuri, later recorded in 1994, with Sawai-school koto professional Satsuki Odamura and nihon buyô practitioner Chin Kham Yoke. In 1992 Synergy performed Maki Ishii’s seminal taiko work Monochrome at Eugene Goosen’s Hall. Riley Lee attended as an audience member and afterwards telephoned Cleworth to “give him an earful”4 about treating Japanese folk material with more reverence. This conversation set cogs turning for TaikOz to evolve out of Synergy by 1997. It was only during that admonition Cleworth realised Lee had premiered Monochrome with Ondekoza in the 1970s.

In 1992 Synergy toured to Tokyo and Taipei with Sydney Dance Company and from then onwards taiko music featured regularly in Synergy programs. Regularly between 1987-1996, Synergy played works by Takemitsu (From Me Flows What You Call Time, 1993) and by Sen Amano (Reflections, 1987). Cleworth’s piece Taiko no Koe composed 1989 received multiple airings, that predate most Australian ‘taiko firsts’ by more than five years.5 After TaikOz split from Synergy, the concert series Beat It! established a collaborative relationship between the sister groups. High profile gigs were staples for both ensembles: in 2001 Synergy proudly performed alongside the Dalai Lama, but few have assumed Synergy’s spiritual leaning as a

3 Louise Devenish, “The Emergence of Contemporary Percussion in Australia: 1960-1975.” Musicology Australia 37:1, (2015): 1-27. 4 Ian Cleworth, personal communication, Ultimo, October 2012. 5 See Chapter 2 on Australian taiko.

result, in the way imagined spirituality is pinned onto TaikOz.6 Between 1997 and 2002, Synergy regularly played works by Japanese composers Toshi Ichiyanagi, Maki Ishii and Toru Takemitsu. Synergy and TaikOz, both established as elite ensembles in Australia’s music scene, each performed for the 30th Anniversary Concerts of Sydney Opera House. Years 1997 and 1998 were peaks for percussion ensembles’ success and funding, as in 1997 Synergy expanded into a quintet, and in 1998 to a sextet, even as TaikOz split from the group.7

In June 1997, Synergy performed for Musica Viva a Japanese-laden Sydney Opera House program featuring David Lumsdane’s Rain Drums; Ichiyanagi’s Wind Trace; Reflections by Ross Edwards; Okho by Xenakis; and Synergy’s group-composition Akemuttsu (Hour of the Rabbit). Four zodiac themed pieces by Cleworth were interspersed: Hour of the Dragon; Moon over Water; Go and Kenjo. In July 1997 for a Subscription Series called ‘Radical’ they additionally performed Hierophonie V by French composer Yoshihisa Taira (1974), Padma in Meditation by Akira Nishimura (1988), Thirteen Drums by Ishii (1985), Music for marimbaphone, vibraphone and Japanese temple bells by Ton de Leeuw (1993), and other Japanese-inspired works. In this period Synergy incorporated skills and sounds from international study,8 and they collaborated with such luminaries as Fritz Hauser, Trilok Gurtu, Hossam Ramzy, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Palle Mikkelborg, Dave Samuels, Graeme Murphy and Mike Nock, and toured Australia, England, Hungary, Sweden, Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore.

TaikOz personnel crossed over with Synergy in 1998. Ian Cleworth, Colin Piper, Rebecca Lagos, David Hewitt, along with Greg Andresen, Ben Walsh and Riley Lee and guest artist Satsuki Odamura played for Sydney Festival, receiving reviews in Sydney Morning Herald, Sun Herald and The Australian. At Sydney Festival 1999, TaikOz presented seven works: Dyu-Ha by Maki Ishii (composed for Kodo, 1981), Chi (Energy) by Ben Walsh, Asobibachi (Drumstick Play/Flair) by Cleworth, a traditional Yatai-bayashi, Cleworth’s Kenjo, and a rendition of traditional Miyake arranged by Graham Hilgendorf. This show also incorporated

6 See Chapter 6, ‘Dancing with Philosophical Demons – Onikenbai’. 7 Colin Piper, personal communication, Stanmore, October 2011. 8 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating,” 79.

didgeridoo by Matthew Doyle and was filmed by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). In September 1999 Synergy (or TaikOz, company records are unclear) performed in a Subscription Series at the Sydney Opera House ‘Studio’ another program called Haiku, heavy in Japanese and Australian compositions including some already mentioned works alongside Liza Lim’s Anactoria; Seasons by Takemitsu and bridging-pieces Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer by TaikOz members David Hewitt and Ian Cleworth. Since 2005, TaikOz have continued to play with orchestras, contemporary chamber ensembles, dancers, theatre-makers and visual artists. My chapters examine iconic projects spanning 2009-present. These map developing ideologies and approaches to self- identification and authenticity. A short selection of TaikOz’s major collaborations:

• TaikOz perform Australian music in Japan: Kaikyōsai Festival, Kobe (2001), Hibike Festival, Echizen (2005), National Theatre of Japan, Tokyo (2008)9

• Eitetsu Hayashi and Fu-un no Kai in Australia and Japan (2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008)

• Wadaiko Matsumura-gumi tour with TaikOz in Australia and Japan (2004, 2005)10

• Director/choreographer Meryl Tankard in Kaidan: A Ghost Story for Sydney Festival at

Sydney Opera House (2007)

• John Bell and Bell Shakespeare Company produce William Shakespeare's Pericles (2009) • Kodo Senior members join TaikOz in Australian tour - Yoshikazu Fujimoto, Chieko Kojima, Yoko Fujimoto, Motofumi Yamaguchi and Eiichi Saito (2009)

• 150 taiko players and percussionists line city for Sydney Festival First Night (2010)

• Kodo members join TaikOz in Australian tour (2012)

• Crimson Sky, Australian tour with Satsuki Odamura and Timothy Constable, 25 performances at 17 venues, 10 players and 7.5 weeks on the road (2014)11

• USA debut tour, performances and workshops in Honolulu with Kenny Endo, in Sacramento with Sacramento Taiko Dan, and Santa Rosa courtesy of Sonoma Taiko,

9 Eitetsu projects, TaikOz Website, accessed June 18, 2013, www.taikoz.com/TaikOz/profile.aspx#sthash.6sHEAyVY.dpuf. 10 Mark Bretherton, “All the grace of a sonic boom.” The Courier-Mail, October 25, 2004: 15. 11 Crimson Sky, TaikOz Website, accessed June 18, 2013, www.taikoz.com/taikoz/performances.aspx#sthash nlRi03ly.dpuf.

and presentation at inaugural World Taiko Gathering in Little Tokyo, Downtown Los Angeles (2014)12

• Chi Udaka with Lingalayam dancers, touring Australia and India (2014, 2016, 2020)

This list details collaborations across genres, sub-cultures and oceans. It does not include TaikOz’s extensive projects with symphony orchestras.13 Neither does it mention all Japanese guests and collaborators. I have not made a comprehensive chronology of TaikOz performances, though one could be constructed by reference to my exhaustive bibliography of media reviews. I instead draw out themes that traverse projects and seeming genre distinctions. TaikOz regularly collaborate with popular musicians, jazz artists, media artists and film-makers, though they tend to be thought of as purveyors of Japanese tradition, or high-intensity Western classical chamber musicians dabbling in something foreign.

Relating Synergy and TaikOz

In assessing TaikOz’s collaborative, boundary-pushing, electronic and popular music projects, it is useful to re-evaluate TaikOz’s relationship with sister-ensemble Synergy Percussion. TaikOz projects TaikoDeck, Origin of O and Future Directions did similar work to Synergy’s simultaneous projects, but were received differently. In the last fifteen years Synergy have enjoyed exceptional success in the following ways: they were the biggest commissioners of new music in Australia;14 Synergy co-commissioned and premiered Steve Reich’s 2010 Mallet Quartet; won Best Chamber Music Concert of 2011 in Limelight Magazine’s competition for Xenakis’ critically acclaimed Pleiades; produced genre-bending live electronica with stop-frame animation in 2011 City Jungle; in 2012 Steve Reich told the world Synergy Artistic Director Timothy Constable was “the guy”15 and that their performances of Music for 18 Musicians and Mallet Quartet at the Reich retrospective at Sydney Opera House were “the best [Reich] had ever heard.”16 In 2013 Synergy toured

12 United States tour, TaikOz Website, accessed June 18, 2013, http://taikoz.com/TaikOz/PastPerformances.ASPX#sthash.BHmRiKwx.dpuf. 13 See Chapter 4 ‘Orchestras, Racialism and Surroundings’ 14 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013. 15 Steve Reich, quoted in email communication from Synergy Percussion, March 15, 2017. 16 Steve Reich, quoted in email communication from Synergy Percussion, March 15, 2017.

Switzerland for ‘Schallmachine Maximus’ showcase directed by world-leading percussionist Fritz Hauser; in 2014 Synergy commissioned and performed Beauty will be amnesiac or will not be at all by Anthony Pateras, the most ambitious work for percussion composed by an Australian composer, based on semiotic derivations of Sylvie Lotringer. In 2015 Synergy premiered Earth Cry to honour late Australian composer and arts patron Peter Sculthorpe. Earth Cry resulted from four-year collaboration with Noreum Machi: Korea’s premiere samul-nori drumming ensemble. Synergy’s deep relationship with traditional Korean drummers (comprising trips to Korea for Seoul Drum Festival and Tongyeong International Music Festival) is different to TaikOz’s sustained relationships with traditional taiko musicians across Japan, as Synergy’s enduring Korean foray is but one of many specialities. Synergy and TaikOz have collaborated together – to highlight their individuality and similarities. They share central administration through ‘Synergy and TaikOz Ltd’ and consider one another when programming so as not to cancel out potential audiences by staging projects that are too similar or too divergent in close proximity. The groups have strong missions, reputations and independent identities.

Perceptions TaikOz attract that Synergy do not

Despite recognising TaikOz’s musicianship, reviewers frequently express discomfort towards cross-cultural themes, inclusion of popular music, or departures from imagined traditional Japanese material. This was true of TaikoDeck and Origin of O and persisted even years later, for example when in 2017 Melbourne’s David Barmby called TaikOz’s The Beauty of 8 performance “accomplished and engrossing but not the best of its kind.”17 Barmby interpreted physicality as fluff, saying “pure festival fare… all about energy and excitement with not a lot to think about,”18 perhaps missing the ascetic acuity of thoughtlessness. Barmby disliked aspects that incorporated modern or cross-disciplinary content:

John Cleworth’s decorative ‘electronica’ [was] pallid and uninteresting, Anton Lock’s Become, with its Hip Hop inspired amplified vocal effects and unabashed dance

17 David Barmby “TaikOz - the Beauty of 8,” Performing Arts Hub, published February 16, 2017, http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/david-barmby/taikoz-the-beauty-of- 8-253176, accessed June 12, 2017. 18 Ibid.

outlasted its welcome, and [Ian] Cleworth’s use of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Emily Dickerson’s poetry seemed to strain cultural context.19

Barmby preferred Japanese guest Chieko Kojima’s “mesmerising presence… [and] exquisitely expressive dance [that was] shadowed with touching melancholy” meanwhile Riley Lee’s shakuhachi added “profundity, deep reflection and calmness.”20 Barmby acknowledged that, driven by the market, TaikOz were delivering what their audience wanted: High-energy performance, lavish costumes, huge drums and physical display… TaikOz powerfully striking their six odaiko in mesmerising unison, one could feel the palpable energy of the [impending] standing ovation.21

TaikOz have made multiple attempts to appeal to tastes of their audiences while retaining their essence and aesthetic goals, to mixed reviews.22 TaikOz are expected to produce exotic, Japanese, festival drumming in flashy stage shows, but would prefer to express their musical personalities and experiences, merging worlds. While Synergy Percussion popularised taiko performance in Australia long before local amateur taiko groups emerged, TaikOz split from Synergy to indigenise their art. Their collaborations, particularly with didgeridoo, have signalled Australianess, a process they ensure is about sound-resonances and not tokenism,23 and each time TaikOz has worked with didgeridoo it has been at the request of Japanese collaborators or curators, not an internal artistic choice. Between 2011 and 2014 TaikOz routinely collaborated with sound artists, media artists, film-makers, dancers and popular musicians. Media excerpts from 2011-2015 reveal meanings attached to these works by others.

Mid 2011, Speak Percussion, Synergy and TaikOz, each presented programs exploring electronic popular music. Synergy vibed on Jungle,24 Speak Percussion played with Drum n

19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ian Cleworth, personal communications with the author, discussions of ticket sales, venue choices, feedback from audiences, lack of media appraisal, Ultimo, between June 2013 and July 2014. 23 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, Ultimo, March 5, 2013. 24 High-speed, funk-based rave music popular in Britain in the 1990s.

Bass (D’n’B),25 and TaikOz jammed with Hip Hop and Dubstep.26 All three were staged in theatres, not music venues. While Synergy’s project City Jungle was both learned and accessible, audiences liked its apparent spontaneity. TaikOz’s reception differed from their percussionist-counterparts, coloured by ‘racialist’ undertones.

In 2011 Synergy Percussion collaborated with Melbourne’s Speak Percussion to produce City Jungle. The same week TaikOz collaborated with Melbourne DJ M-Royce (Max Royce- Hampton, brother of TaikOz member Tom Royce-Hampton) in TaikoDeck which was also released as a CD and had multiple performance seasons in following years. Both premiered in Sydney in black box theatres. In 2013 TaikOz delivered Origin of O – a project combining electronic music, multimedia video art, dance, taiko and trippy digital shamanism. By assessing media reviews of these three projects, I present ways media silenced and amplified different aspects of these comparable shows, and how these themes reappeared in reviews of other projects since, including aforementioned 2017 The Beauty of 8. Reports and interviews also demonstrate TaikOz’s emotional responses to these interpretations, which have effected future artistic choices. A thoughtful review by blogger Captain Fez dissects TaikOz’s Future Directions program with American experimental jazz taiko artist and flautist Kaoru Watanabe. Captain Fez’s criticism is unlike most TaikOz reportage because he is an intimate TaikOz fan, familiar with their music, legacy, mission, commercial struggles and artistic goals. Future chapters will further demonstrate how journalists’ agendas adversely affect contents of TaikOz reviews. But the Future Directions review shows that even when perfect conditions of review are met, with no wordcount, no culturally-insensitive assumptions or targets, the faults TaikOz perceive in their reception are co-produced with specific performance, and thus TaikOz may control their image.

City Jungle: percussionists in an image-rich, cross-city beat-off

Video clips of City Jungle are viewable on YouTube.27 All music in Synergy’s 2011 City Jungle was composed or arranged by artistic director Timothy Constable, alias Noxious

25 Joshua Tyler Franz. “Rhythmic and Formal Analysis of Electronic Dance Music: House and Drum 'n' Bass.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2019. 26 Josh Bess. Electronic Dance Music Grooves: House, Techno, Hip-Hop, Dubstep, and More!. Milwaukee, WI; Montclair, NJ;: Hal Leonard Books, 2015. 27 “City Jungle,” Synergy Percussion, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAsdlt2YqKU, accessed June 12, 2017.

Aquatic. This music was paired with images by Tokyo Love-In, also known as Michael Chin, who told ‘Asian-Australian’ Peril magazine his contribution to City Jungle was “a schizophrenic bombardment of synchronized images [that would mean you] never look at a maneki neko [prosperity waving cat figurine] the same way again!”28 A reviewer of Synergy’s 2013 repeat performance at Canberra International Music Festival related, “You know [Jungle] when you hear it. It gave birth to Drum’n’Bass, Breaks, Garage, and now Dubstep… fiercely urban… the first underground cult music to arise without any racial context.”29 The writer consequently racialised equivalent musics and discourses, and framed how Synergy’s Jungle was hence racialised by omission.

By fluke, one reporter for Crikey reviewed both City Jungle (October 24, 2011) and TaikoDeck (November 2, 2011) having mistaken both for drama due to their theatre venues.30 See TaikoDeck video excerpts on YouTube.31 Reviewer, Lloyd Bradford Syke concluded City Jungle was “something not only musical, not only theatrical; but a challengingly experiential, multi-dimensional 21st-century hybrid. Whatever the hell it is, it’s satiating, in the way of the finest cultural repast.”32 Syke tackled genre, history, execution, staging, production and interpretation:

[In City Jungle] both groups take [D’n’B] to a whole new plane... D’n’B can be aggravatingly repetitive, which might be OK [on] xtc, but pretty tedious otherwise… Here, it’s a thrilling basis for improvisation and experiment, easily and unselfconsciously crossing the boundaries of jazz, rock and avant-garde… [Historically, D’n’B has] hardcore, underground roots… untainted by commercial exploitation. All are welcome to join the tribe, as makers or consumers. [Some] might liken the scene to house or trance, [but] the genealogy is quite different: jungle (now

28 Michael Chin, quoted in Indigo Willing, “Q&A – MICHAEL ‘TOKYO LOVE-IN’ CHIN,” Peril - Asian Australian Film Forum and Network Special Issue, Edition 12 & 13, published 22 February 2012, http://peril.com.au, accessed March 11, 2017. 29 Thomson, Ashley. “Shimmering City,” BMA Magazine, May 7, 2013, accessed February 20, 2017. 30 Each review apologised to its irate editor for mistaking the genre, then provided far more description than most music reviews, perhaps on account of the word-limits applied to theatre reviews. 31 “TaikoDeck,” TaikOz YouTube channel, https://youtu.be/EkFtdrDQtBk, accessed April 6, 2017. 32 Lloyd Bradford Syke. “City Jungle: Syd vs Melb,” Crikey. Sydney, Sydney, October 24, 2011, https://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2011/10/24/review-city-jungle-syd-vs-melb-the-reginald-sydney, accessed March 14, 2017.

encompassing the likes of D’n’B, breaks, 2step, dubstep, downbeat and more) finds its roots in soul and funk, rather than disco.33

For a non-musician, this reviewer provided superb context. Syke also noted differences between Speak Percussion and Synergy’s strengths and approaches:

Speak spoke first, with astonishingly fine technical precision… alongside video art… a little uninspired and underwhelming. [Speak’s] finesse is nape-of-the-neck tingle territory… Such fine-fingered delicacy [is] more attuned to classical chamber music… Synergy’s set of intelligent jungle (yet another sub-genre) [was] based around the outfit’s impressive cache of gizmos and toys… Behind a trad kit, [space-age Evan Mannell] contributed a kind of spoken word fx strand, while Constable sang. Composition by Noxious Aquatic [was] listenable and virtuosic in a way quite divergent from Speak’s set. Tokyo Love-In accompanied it with a choppily-edited video of city life; exquisitely shot and colour-graded. It was entirely sympathetic.34

Syke’s final judgement of City Jungle:

This isn’t theatre. It’s a concert… Expansive sound, shadowy lighting and an overall ‘sense’ of theatre, take it into an area that’s [not] stadium rock... It’s not opera. But it’s something else [superlative].35

Syke reviewed TaikOz’s TaikoDeck five days later. He mentioned all the buzzwords – spirituality, Japaneseness, muscles, visceral music – and fawned “My editor’s going to kill me… TaikoDeck [is] live music, masquerading as theatre.”36 For Syke, TaikoDeck’s intellectual mission was ambitiously spiritual, but the artists’ self-perception was paramount:

Seen as much as heard. Felt as much as seen… TaikoDeck [is] a dozen pieces which fuse the age-old with the edgily new… Unplanned serendipity is involved, inasmuch as the original intention to create a set of dance tracks was subverted, by dint of organic development, by a more ambitious intellectual and deeply-rooted emotional

33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Lloyd Bradford Syke, “Review: TaikoDeck,” Crikey - Independent Media, Independent Minds, 2 November 2011, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2011/11/02/review-taikodeck-the-reginald-sydney, accessed March 12, 2017.

aspiration, if not a downright spiritual one, to explore the nature of consciousness… Certainly something very primal (definitively so, in fact) has been uprooted.37

TaikOz seemed to Syke muscly and loud, while adept and subtle:

[TaikOz] sport a range of cymbals, gongs, a xylophone, triangles, bells, bamboo flutes and various other clattering objects… The performance looks to be a workout, for body and mind... Taiko drummers tend to have arms like Schwarzenegger in his prime… [Yet] the TaikOzzies finesse on more delicate instruments is spellbinding. Irresistibly danceable… carefully constructed, crafted and compellingly sound- scaped… very dense and diverse percussive profundity.38

Syke made nuanced assessments of his audience role, and of DJ M-Royce’s contribution:

Staggering is the focus, discipline; physical and mental demands [for] M-Royce, who’s managing, balancing, fading, segueing, cueing a multiplicity of samples and sounds. Indeed, there’s as much pressure on him as on [an opera conductor]… M-Royce is fresh... Young… with beats you’re not likely to hear anywhere else. [This has] explosive energy [that resonates] through the whole body… Funky samples and the raunchiest sound bytes [make] your head move like a camel on crack.39

Syke’s City Jungle review called the Jungle genre “fiercely urban… [and] the first underground cult music to arise without any racial context,”40 while his review of TaikoDeck did not mention race or racially-marked cultural mashups. Syke described individual players, named separately in City Jungle, but about TaikoDeck he instead noted visible attributes of the performers in general – rowdy, sly, youthful, brawny. Syke’s comments about TaikOz were not about music so much as conceptual, associative, visual and sensual. This is a trend among TaikOz reviewers, daintily avoiding ascriptions of race. Although Syke’s Jungle was de-racialised through a process of popularisation, underground accessibility or dilution, TaikOz’s version of Dubstep just ‘looked and sounded cool’. This seems to shout about race by omission.

TaikOz ‘get a feel’ for rhythms, scenes, artists, cultural climates and media receptions, yet

37 Ibid. 38 Syke, “City Jungle: Syd vs Melb,” accessed March 14, 2017. 39 Ibid. 40 Ashley Thomson, “Shimmering City,” BMA Magazine, May 7, 2013, accessed February 20, 2017.

they are perceived differently to musicians performing equitable work. Perhaps because witnesses ‘get a feel’ taiko is foreign, or is ‘borrowed by Australians’ for commercial gain, though this is hard to criticise openly, especially without data (which prove otherwise). Staged taiko already exists in Japan and worldwide, but because TaikOz perform such elite work on these instruments, they attract interpretations as appropriators, who financially gain from the lowlier traditions of someone, somewhere, irresponsibly. These traces linger around TaikOz and are so persistent, they become unmentionable. Musicological theories about hybridity (and its hangovers) address this predicament, notably see work of Simon Frith,41 John Hutnyk42 and Timothy Taylor.43 My interest is not to tie theory to TaikOz, but only to write a historical account of the ways they deal with these issues.

TaikoDeck: TaikOz adapt recognisable taiko material

TaikOz merged genres in TaikoDeck via processes from their taiko and classical music training. Performed by DJ M-Royce and four TaikOz drummers – Tom Royce-Hampton, Anton Lock, Kevin Man and Graham Hilgendorf – it fused sound worlds of these artists with popular taiko tropes. Cleworth admitted in our 2011 discussion ‘fusion projects’ were “definitely the way forward”44 and that colleagues in Japan, including past TaikOz associate Kenichi Koizumi were producing jazz-like programs, no longer modelled on classical, staged music. Before joining TaikOz in 2003 Kenichi had been a member of Eitetsu Hayashi Fuun no Kai, but Cleworth told that like TaikOz, “Kenichi’s recent trio project [had] that black-box live-house theatre spirit about it.”45 By comparison the groovy, free-looking TaikoDeck comprised “80% composed- and learned-material and less improvisation [than Kenichi’s gig].”46 Cleworth said TaikoDeck performers “had to read [the last segment by score] because it was quite tricky. There was a weird balance because TaikoDeck had that spontaneous club kind of vibe, but was still very much composed. Tom [Royce-Hampton] was sure about what

41 Simon Frith: “The Discourse of World Music,” Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, Eds. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 42 John Hutnyk, Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics, and the Culture Industry. London: Pluto, 2000. 43 Timothy D Taylor, Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 44 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

he wanted, not leaving much to chance. Improvisation was used [sparingly] for bridges and to give performers their moments.”47

In TaikoDeck, the most improvisation-heavy piece was a tribute to Miyake-daiko. They played in Tsumura-style (original), not the stylised Kodo-style (stage-adaptation), a contradictory choice because Tsumura family never improvises solos on principle, while Kodo does. Additionally, Tsumura custodians do not solo because Kodo adapted the traditional material to include solos, making it their own. Cleworth considered this the most dynamic in the TaikoDeck program, because “they had to adapt Tsumura’s style and his musical- and movement-language to the improvisatory context. [And] it was overlaid on Max's groove.”48 Typically, Miyake sounds steady and metronomic because of the ostinato base-rhythm but really, this base is fluid and responds to the soloists in subtle ways. These shifting relationships became extra apparent to TaikOz players while they tried to match the recorded accompaniment. Cleworth described it as “on the edge: it had to lock into a tight electronic groove but playing a traditional style and yet improvising as well. It had all the elements that in a way sum up TaikOz. Tradition, contemporary-Japanese and contemporary- Australian elements.”49

Another popular segment of TaikoDeck was the Yatai-bayashi50 inspired piece. Cleworth described: “Yatai-bayashi by its nature has a forward-rolling movement and even in performance it’s very fluid in its tempo. Quite often it starts at one tempo and shifts. I don't think it's ‘unmusically’ getting faster, like amateurs get faster, but it's a cumulative affect that adds to the excitement.”51 Yatai-bayashi traditionally appears in unison, but in TaikoDeck “the boys used canon and call-and-response.”52 They played to the front of a beat with driving-thrust, creating momentum even with the restrictive backing track. After TaikoDeck, as fellow audience members, Timothy Constable told Ian Cleworth he “really dug the Yatai- dubstep,”53 potentially a phrase never uttered before or since.

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Discussed in greater detail regarding Shifting Sand in Chapter 5. 51 Ibid. 52 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011. 53 Timothy Constable and Ian Cleworth quoted in Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011.

One piece in TaikoDeck for decks and shakuhachi melded honkyoku (Zen breath music) with backing track. Tom Royce-Hampton arranged Daha (Pounding Wave) for brother Max’s beats and Kevin Man’s shakuhachi. He cut a recording of Daha into segments, then shifted the resultant phrases around. In a thirty-second introduction Man improvised on Daha themes. Man explained, “Tom tried to make me sound like he’d cut it together: it made me extend past the natural phrasing and gave it a new timing.”54 The Royce-Hampton brothers added a diatonic harmonic accompaniment to the modal fragments of Daha, which was awkward to my ear, but Man explained, “It was just learning another piece of music, [another aesthetic]... Because [they created] it basically, there is no creed stylistically. There's no preconception or tradition that says ‘it needs to sound like this’.”55 Man treated this hybrid as completely separate from its components. It sparked our discussion about ‘where creation begins and ends’, and what constitutes a departure from tradition, or continuation.56 For Man, physical limitations of playing this mashup were more pressing:

It was frustrating that the sample was really sharp. I practise with my tuner set to 442, but this was even sharper… When I asked them to change the pitch of the sample they said no… I don't understand that stuff. Apparently changing the sample's pitch changes the speed and the sound quality. With electronic music, the speed and ‘the feel’, the timbre, dictates a sample or beat. So [skewing anything can alter] the mood or the groove.57

The brothers sacrificed live sound quality for digital sound quality, forcing Man to play shakuhachi painfully sharp. Painful because it requires physically challenging techniques as a musical technician, not merely as an aesthete. Man described his methodical practice of shakuhachi with importance placed on Western musical values like intonation, which is not universally part of shakuhachi traditions (some of which value naturalness and ‘how things come’ without artifice or adjustment).58 This threw up an interesting contradiction, that unmatching diatonic and modal harmonies should sit together, but that intonation remained important. Man’s flute could not simply ‘appear flat’ beside the sharp sample and constitute a

54 Kevin Man, interview with author, Ultimo, November 8, 2012. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Jinashi flutes fit this category.

new aesthetic, in the way they treated harmony. This micro-case exemplifies an attitude TaikOz demonstrate repeatedly – absorbing the difficulty of belonging – while enacting a culture that witnesses believe is non-indigenous to TaikOz. TaikOz get uncomfortable, and stay that way, to preserve contradictory opinions about what appears traditional (but is not).

Graham Hilgendorf also described playing in TaikoDeck and how this project shaped TaikOz’s musical direction. His click-track experience marked a disjuncture from taiko:

TaikoDeck was very different to anything we had done, combining the taiko with the track. Taiko-playing [is usually] quite organic. I come from a jazz background where you don't know where a song is going to go. You might take four choruses [or none], it's just got to build naturally. But working with the tracks for TaikoDeck – they boxed us in, in a sense. So within those parameters you have to make the music come to life, which is really challenging. You can't just let it move or shift as a group because that turntable is part of the group and it's not moving. Not just in the rhythmic sense, but in the dynamic sense too… So you have to create the energy… I'm not so into working in that environment, but it's all so new that I don't want to rule it out. I'm still interested to see how TaikoDeck goes as a piece of art, with an audience and a direction.59

Hilgendorf described some of the cultures he participates in, and how they interrelate. Though he talked about the energy of taiko pieces needing to build organically, TaikOz’s repertory tends to be highly structured and composed, so the ‘builds’ are necessarily in dynamics, dynamism and energy rather than improvised layering of complexity. For Hilgendorf, TaikoDeck belonged in a space where people could dance, hold a drink, talk and socialise. He wondered, had TaikOz provided that pub environment, would the audience have acted within that culture, instead of being stiff and apprehensive in a seated theatre. Audience behaviour is very tied to place.60

Venues carry their own audience cultures. Hilgendorf explained TaikOz were pushing TaikoDeck as a future project that might feed a ‘big festival set’ in development – appropriate

59 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, Dulwich Hill, November 14, 2012. 60 Geraghty, Lincoln. Popular media cultures: Fans, audiences and paratexts. Basingstoke, U.K: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.

for a rock concert: “TaikoDeck [could adapt into] a nightclub smaller thing [or] big stage set as well.”61 These quotes reveal ways TaikOz reuse material and constantly think about repurposing staged taiko to appeal to wider audiences. No project’s cultural materials are frozen or unmashable – everything is re-usable – and every utterance must ‘work’ in and of itself. Again with infinite adaptability, pressure builds on TaikOz to make meaningful choices. While they make stages for themselves at enormous popular music festivals and in dingy micro bars, on concert stages and outdoors in parks, the content they play always responds to their audience’s culture and the venue’s conventions.

Identity, Venues and their Audience Cultures

TaikoDeck was quite raw. None of those big [identity] questions mattered because you could ‘get involved in it’… The music spoke loud enough.62

Typically hip hop is politically loaded63 – often used to air marginalised or oppressed views of youths64 – but TaikOz’s play with hip hop in TaikoDeck did not seem a protest, rather an aesthetic choice. An informant from TaikOz’s community contextualised:

I don't know their political beliefs but TaikOz have come at it in that ‘nice’ way [the] classical music crowd in Australia tend to present themselves. They might put on challenging works but these won’t be shocking. They are not sensationalist, TaikOz do not do that. I think Ian [Cleworth] was trying to provide a ‘development’ space [for younger TaikOz members], a place for work. I don't think there's a political drive.65

Indeed, Cleworth made space for TaikoDeck by not drumming on stage and by giving curatorial lead to Tom Royce-Hampton. Cleworth explained that as a taiko player, notions of “identity, progress and change… are always day-to-day questions.”66 He found, while briefly performing with Sydney Symphony in 2011 (instead of participating in TaikoDeck) that his orchestral colleagues did not seem plagued by the same identity investigation: “It's interesting

61 Graham Hilgendorf, interview, 2012. 62 Anonymous informant, TaikOz-community audience member at TaikoDeck 2011. 63 Miłosz Miszczyński and Adriana Helbig. Hip hop at Europe's edge: Music, agency, and social change. Indianapolis; Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 2017. 64 Julius Bailey. “Hip-Hop and International Voices of Revolution: Brazil, Cuba, Ghana, and Egypt,” Philosophy and hip-hop: Ruminations on postmodern cultural form. Basingstoke, U.K: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014: 103-122. 65 Anonymous informant from TaikOz community, interview with author, Marrickville café, October 24, 2013. 66 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011.

that [things have not changed] with the orchestra… the orchestra knows what it is, it has a very strong identity… Yet as you get into contemporary music, [performers’] identities are wrapped up in exploring new things.”67 He categorised TaikOz’s work in line with ‘new music’ practitioners.

For Cleworth, the mode of delivery matters when it comes to contemporary music, because the relationship between venue and resultant reception are linked: “Juxtaposing contemporary classical music with totally incongruous places... It's like art: if you put it in a frame in a gallery it can look totally different and send out different messages. One of the positive sides of TaikOz is we can comfortably move between different contexts: between the concert hall, folk festivals, and to a Black Box Theatre. We could potentially rework TaikoDeck for a nightclub. We can set up on the grass outside. I think this is a strength.”68 Cleworth mentioned ways the process of identifying TaikOz’s niches and then differentiating themselves from competitors in their cultural bandwidth. He concluded that the ways TaikOz are perceived by others hold more sway than what TaikOz do or TaikOz perceive. He gave the example of Woodford Folk Festival, where each of the forty-plus stages has a distinct culture:

On the Folklorica Stage [less amplified ‘purer’ folk/ethnic music] we programmed really Japanese traditional-type music. [This choice had] an uncomfortable edge because we're there to reproduce something out of its cultural context. I resolve that for myself by ‘getting back to the way music sounds’ and the quality of performance. A good performance has its own validity. Then if people enjoy it... there's no damage done. And hopefully we've enhanced something. But if you pry a little more deeply, there's a bit more uneasiness there.69

Prying deeply has pained TaikOz because their learning is embodied and investigative. Rather than read about the logic, philosophy or practicalities of these topics via academic literature (or media), TaikOz ‘feel out’ answers through experimental practice. While the resultant liminal territories TaikOz occupy (between categories) is well discussed in

67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.

semiotics, anthropology and even neuroscience, TaikOz do not apply this material to their music, so intersect with uneasiness feeling solitary and fully alive.

In TaikoDeck TaikOz presented something of themselves by combining popular dance music themes with taiko. By comparison, when Speak Percussion’s Eugene Ughetti said his D’n’B set was “not really his thing at heart [and that] as a classical percussionist he felt outside his comfort zone”70 he was taking a different stance towards identification.71 Cleworth read duplicity into Ughetti’s process: “humble, apologetic, when of course he was totally secure in what he was doing.”72 Both percussionists believed “this [D’n’B] sound could be presented in a concert hall as the latest cutting edge contemporary music… [Though the term] ‘art music’ is a bit too highbrow.”73 Cleworth equated Speak Percussion’s D’n’B set with musique concrète, hearing Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry’s 1950s influences, as well as themes from John Cage, Boulez and Stockhausen: “All of that stuff was present [with] the contemporary pop bent.”74 It seems Cleworth, like his critics, is not immune to imposing the cultural values of unrelated forms indeterminately.75 Genre evolutions may not entwine, but meaningful associations may be drawn still. Yet careless associations, even when resonant and potentially truthful, can weaken ‘real relationships’ between perceived attributes. Cleworth’s vision of ‘musique concrète in D’n’B’ almost equates to media claims that taiko is an ancient, spiritual, war music. Cleworth might have associated D’n’B with musique concrète because both were in his purview at the time of assessment. Proximity matters.

To tease out this association further, innovator Pierre Schaeffer’s mission for musique concrète had been “to collect concrete sounds, wherever they came from, and to abstract the musical values they were potentially containing.”76 As with TaikOz’s collection of Japanese instruments, sounds and playing styles, abstractions of musical values have presented hurdles completely unrelated to musical sound. Schaeffer’s aesthetic did centre upon sound as a primary compositional resource, but also emphasised the importance of play (jeu, from

70 Eugene Ughetti quoted by Ian Cleworth in interview with author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011. 71 Ian Cleworth reflecting on discussion with Eugene Ughetti, interview with author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011. 72 Ibid. 73 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011. 74 Ibid. 75 Riccardo Venturini, “Time, inter-subjectivity, and musical relationship in Alfred Schutz,” Societa Mutamento Politica 6:12 (Firenze University Press: 2015) www fupress.com/smp, 165-201. 76 Jean de Reydellet, “Pierre Schaeffer, 1910–1995: The Founder of 'Musique Concrete',” Computer Music Journal 20:2 (1996): 10.

French verb jouer) in the doing of sound-based composition. Fellow concreter, Pierre Henry, conceived of musique concrète as the ‘envelopes and forms’ that music can take, which for him were more fascinating than the study of specific timbre, for example. Henry saw the origin of this music in the act of ‘plastifying’ it, of rendering it manifest,77 implying that music exists only when action is happening and sound is (potentially) audible. Doinghood and other Zen ideas echo these, and potential corollaries between these thought-systems might also contribute to the meanings TaikOz attract. I am not calling TaikOz’s music concrète or Zen, but instead showing how slippery correlative attributions can be, while playing with the ideas these engagements bring forth.

Above, Cleworth appealed to sound as the irreducible unit of musical meaning that could free him from the tyrannies of para-cultural associations. Formalism remains his drug. In the early days of TaikOz he placed strong limitations on the instrumentation TaikOz would use in order to prove they intended to be taiko-players and not just ‘percussionists who could hit the taiko’. Meanwhile Japanese taiko players combined with mallet percussion, timpani, djembes, orchestras and jazz, TaikOz tried to prove their good intensions and commitment to ‘pure taiko’ by studying traditional material like Yatai-bayashi and pieces by acclaimed stage performers like Eitetsu Hayashi. Thus, for TaikOz to communicate their devotion, they needed to appeal first to the playing of taiko (both operating the instruments and engaging with the cultures attached), then to the sound of music, then to the enquiry of whether meaning inhered. When TaikOz now blend taiko sounds with the concrete sounds of other genres like hip hop, they consciously engage in a state of play whereby outcomes are not predetermined and each entity retains autonomy while blending. This philosophy was epitomised in their project Chi Udaka soon afterwards and marks a maturation for the group’s identity.

Media responses to TaikoDeck, Origin of O and Future Directions

I quote reviews of TaikoDeck and Origin of O, then assess critiques of another experimental project called Future Directions to present how taiko discourses differ from other contemporary percussion performance discourses. No mainstream reviews exist of TaikoDeck 2011, save for the online Crikey review detailed previously. All existent media comes from

77 Richard S James. Interview with Pierre Henry, cited in “Expansion of Sound Resources in France, 1913- 1940, and Its Relationship to Electronic Music,” Doctoral thesis, University of Michigan, note 91,1981: 79.

publicity. Mentions in Central Magazine,78 Sydney MX,79 and Inner West Courier80 yielded only six-line promotions. Described variously as a “soulful showcase [by] the TaikOz Quartet,”81 and a “world premiere [that] mixes it up,”82 one preview claimed the parents of Tom and Max Royce-Hampton wanted a ‘nice little family band’ but got a DJ and drummer.83 These hooks do not tell who TaikOz are, or what TaikoDeck is or does.

In 2013, TaikOz presented seven shows of TaikoDeck84 over six days “by popular demand,”85 following their 2012 sell-out run of Shifting Sand.86 LiveGuide publicity told, “East and West styles [fuse in] a visual and musical feast, featuring more than 20 taiko drums and percussion.”87 A TaikoDeck review titled ‘Drumming up one top spectacle’ warned about loud drumming and smoke effects (earplugs were provided).88 A review noted in TaikoDeck “contrast between strong-armed dynamics with more delicate instruments [plus] live hip-hop made it a spellbinding experience.89 Stage Whispers reported:

[TaikoDeck succeeds] not only in blending sounds from opposite ends of the globe, but also in fusing young and ancient, synthetic and acoustic… Rap, spoken word, loops and synthesized instruments [provide] an access point for the younger generation to experience [taiko,] bamboo flutes, bells, gongs and cymbals. [A comfortable] theatre-going experience, it seemed an odd choice of venue and audience for TaikOz.90

These descriptive excerpts lend little context.

78 “Two of the Best,” Central (Magazine), Sydney, October 19, 2011: 30. 79 “These Guys are Hard to Beat,” Sydney MX, October 25, 2011: 1. 80 Rashell Habib, “Brothers team up to beat their own drums,” Inner West Courier, October 25, 2011:8. 81 “Two of the Best.” 82 “These Guys are Hard to Beat.” 83 Rashell Habib, “Brothers.” 84 “Suburban Snapshot: Drummed up,” The Manly Daily; Manly, August 21, 2013: 11. 85 Rod Bennett, “Setting the stage: Diverse Mix Planned for Glen Street,” Manly Daily, September 26, 2012. 86 Ibid. 87 LiveGuide, “TaikoDeck @ Glen Street Theatre,” accessed April 6, 2017, www.liveguide.com.au/Events/826503/Max Royce Hampton/TaikoDeck. 88 “Drumming Up One Top Spectacle,” Northern District Times, July 10, 2013: 29. 89 Cheryl Northey, “TaikoDeck,” Alternative Media, Posted July 26, 2013, www.altmedia net.au/taikodeck/80135, accessed March 14, 2017. 90 Jessica Lovelace, “TaikoDeck – Review,” Stage Whispers, www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/taikodeck, accessed March 15, 2017.

In 2014, TaikoDeck was rehashed alongside Roger Vs The Man, the rock band of Roger Lock, brother of TaikOz member Anton Lock, for Sydney’s popular-music den The Basement. There TaikOz’s classically-trained taiko warped with electro, urban music and was presented in a pub alongside a grungy band “renowned for its intricately powerful synthesis of rock, jazz and classical elements.”91 Anton Lock told Alt Media in 2013, well before The Basement gig, “We are always looking for new connections… TaikoDeck is about respecting tradition but finding our own Australian voice and accent. At its simplest, this show is taiko combined with hip-hop music from a DJ deck.”92 General Manager of TaikOz and Synergy then, David Sidebottom, geared these versatile, smaller-ensemble, experimental productions towards “hipper type audiences.”93 Such gigs were never about generating varied income sources, they were always about ‘art’.94 However, offshoots from these projects were designed to be merchandisable. A TaikoDeck CD has been well-received.95

TaikoDeck was quintessentially what TaikOz do. They used taiko to explore their musical selves, through deep discipline and interesting collaboration. The partnerships that solidified in TaikoDeck were familial (Royce-Hampton brothers, and Lock brothers) and familiar (returning to the venue of Shifting Sand for a second extended season). TaikoDeck ran simultaneously with City Jungle, sibling Synergy’s equivalent mash-up project. In such, TaikOz were not blending a foreign Japanese artefact with local urban culture, but practising the art form they have devoted their careers to (taiko), in playful experimentation with genres to which they are not native (D’n’B, dubstep, EDM).

Origin of O: dance, image and a new bent

Origin of O for two dancers, two taiko-players and multimedia video-artist,96 was the brainchild of TaikOz member Tom Royce-Hampton and all-round Renaissance man, Mike Chin, who also goes by Tokyo Love-In and (confusingly plural) Digital Shamans. Video is

91 Promotional paragraph in gig list, TaikOz website. January 2014. 92 Anton Lock quoted in Cheryl Northey, “TaikoDeck.” 93 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013. 94 Ibid. 95 A happy customer told, “I was blown away. You should get a copy... It's really good.” Robert Jeremy, conversational interview, Glebe NSW, October 12, 2012. 96 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013.

viewable on TaikOz’s YouTube channel.97 TaikOz publicity told of, “Exploring meeting points between various opposing parameters: natural and synthetic, taiko and laptop, sound and movement, theatre and film. Origin of O played to a full-to-the-brim Leichhardt Forum and represents TaikOz at its cutting edge best.”98 The letter ‘O’: “A symbol meaning ‘Zen’… ‘O’ transcends culture, time and language.”99 The gig paired “the organic beauty of TaikOz Duo, [alongside] Tokyo Love-In’s electronic artistry”100 and promised to “challenge, delight and inspire.”101 Origin of O would “enlighten, challenge… rouse an inner awakening through harmonious collaboration [in] the world of digital shamans.”102 For just two taiko players, TaikOz could run several experimental programs simultaneously, diversifying audiences, fostering artistic and directorial growth of its members, and generating new Australian art.

Seven months after the premiere, Origin of O was repeated in a double-bill with Mahmood Khan at Sydney Opera House venue The Studio.103 In the lead-up to this second airing, Facebook activity increased on the Origin of O page, with prophetic offerings such as, “[With] changes in our inner processes, we begin to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.”104 These posts lent spiritual guidance alongside gig information. Publicity for the September 2015 performance of Origin of O in Burnie, Tasmania described:

Incarnations of spirituality [fitting] in the digital realm of our times. Incorporating resonant cymatic frequencies and shades of colours attuned to trigger specific chakras… An immersive experience with electronic body triggers, ECG heart

97 ‘Origin of O’, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViVPUCF 5 o, accessed March 18, 2017. 98 TaikOz 2015 self-promotion, Issue.com, accessed March 20, 2017, https://issuu.com/synergyandtaikoz/docs/synergytaikoz 2015. 99 TaikOz performance archive, Origin of O, accessed July 11, 2015, www.taikoz.com. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 ‘Origin of O’, Bookings via City Recital Hall, accessed March 18, 2017, https://tickets.cityrecitalhall.com/single/psDetail.aspx?psn=1652. 103 Sydney Opera House bookings archive, accessed March 16, 2017, www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/mahmood khan 13.aspx. 104 Origin of O publicity, Origin of O Facebook Event Page, posted October 26, 2013, accessed March 16, 2017, www.facebook.com.

monitors, and integrated visuals, taking the audience on a digital ayahuasca journey for the mind, body & soul... Warning: show contains [brief] suggestive mild nudity.105

Burnie Arts & Function Centre pushed Origin of O by exploiting older advertising tropes:

World renown (sic.) TaikOz… is responsible for introducing the art of Japanese drumming to Australia [and Chin,] award-winning transmedia artist, received accolades from Festival de Cannes and New York Independent Film Festival… Origin of O [explores] mapping atoms and molecules [up] to grand notions of orbits, galaxies and the universe.”106

In line with concurrent wellness discourse, pseudo-science, out-of-context space research, drug-fuelled enlightenment, bio-arts and performance trends, Origin of O ‘did it all’ for the imagination. But it divided audiences. Cleworth recounted “Afterwards I thanked the critical audience members [for] supporting our young guys because this is their time. It’s their language. It’s their interest and we have to encourage that [musical expression].”107 TaikOz were not ‘going through a phase’ with these collaborators – this project ran parallel with traditional staged, highly-engineered, classically conceived, taiko music. But the discourses TaikOz and their publicity partners used to market and justify these projects radically departed from the language and cultural themes they used to sell simultaneous projects like Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky. TaikOz were not duplicitous or deceptive by appealing to different tastes in discourse, but rather expressing multiple aspects of themselves.

Appraisals of Origin of O

A high level of engagement with spiritual themes, science, immersion and hybridity is present in Origin of O reviews. Alt Media commented on waves, feelings and play:

Origins remain important to many transplanted musical traditions. TaikOz continues to develop a reorientation of [wadaiko], with [Australian and] global influences…

105 Origin of O publicity, Origin of O Facebook Event Page, reproduction of Burnie Arts & Function Centre publicity, posted September 25, 2015, accessed March 16, 2017, www.facebook.com. 106 Janine Phillips, “Origin of O takes you on a digital journey,” Burnie Arts and Function Centre Press Release, September 9, 2015, accessed January 29, 2017, www.burniearts.net/About-Us/Media-Releases/Origin-of-O-takes-you-on-a-digital-journey. 107 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, Ultimo, NSW, July 2013.

Origin of O [places] the holistic performance as spiritual first and origin later. [Projections] enhanced feelings of suburban life… memories of youth and earlier freedoms were mixed with dance and samples of synthesised beats and basslines… [They played] a bicycle as an instrument. Once set in motion, [performers] pulsated the air with waves that took up the altered atmosphere we breathed. The air itself is a vast library with the latest polyrhythmic beats.108

Academic and reviewer, Amanda Card, mentioned Origin of O in her insightful 2014 dissection of TaikOz project Chi Udaka.109 She wrote: “TaikOz’s [2013] Origin of O [exemplified how] intercultural exchange can offer contemporary models that mark out, at least in the safe space of [performance, room for cultures to] come ‘together in difference’.”110 Card connected TaikOz’s underpinning aesthetic values between those two projects that on the surface, due to genre, appear to be divergent mash-ups of taiko plus urban culture, and taiko plus classical Indian dance. In these two mentions, we see greater conceptual commitment and cultural awareness from reviewers than typical of concert hall taiko reviews.

Future Directions

Another project that consolidated TaikOz’s self-identity but drastically failed in the box office and reception-sphere was Future Directions staged at City Recital Hall in June 2014. Guest Artistic Director and past member of Kodo, Kaoru Watanabe of New York City, said “My approach to creating music, first and foremost, is finding the right people… who share a deep respect of tradition while not being bound by it; people who are both disciplined in their practice and also creative with their art.”111 Cleworth invited Watanabe in to “really challenge us in new ways and his response was to literally make the music from the ground up through exploring the individual and collective talents of TaikOz.”112 This method was “a somewhat subtle and organic process of gathering and pooling everyone’s ideas, experimenting with

108 Angela Stretch, “Review – TaikOz presents ‘ORIGIN OF O’,” Alt Media, April 21, 2013, www.altmedia net.au/review-taikoz-presents-origin-of-o/74171, accessed March 12, 2017. 109 Chi Udaka mixed taiko with Indian dance. 110 Amanda Card, “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka,” The Conversation, www.theconversation.com, accessed April 5, 2017. 111 Synergy and TaikOz, “Synergy Percussion & TaikOz: 2012-2014 (p19),” published March 3, 2015, https://issuu.com, accessed April 6, 2017. 112 Ibid.

different ways of playing our instruments, increasing the amount of improvisation and generally just seeing/feeling where we might take each other. Fun and challenging stuff!”113 This project, like TaikoDeck and Origin of O, was a space deliberately created by Cleworth for TaikOz to ‘become themselves’ by doing what they naturally do – creating, composing classically, improvising, innovating – in the company of others known for the same.

The most thorough review of Future Directions can be found on the blog Captain Fez.114 Triple the length of most music reviews, an abridged version follows. It is included to document this reviewer’s fandom, familiarity with TaikOz’s oeuvre, and concerns about the types of experimentation permissible to certain venues’ stage cultures:

Future Directions was one of [TaikOz’s] poorest shows. The performers’ mostly- mufti (typified by Hilgendorf’s hairdo) was a break with their own tradition, though it heralded a sort of ‘it’ll do’ approach – something underscored by a kitchen-sink level of instrumentation, and a casual ‘there is no offstage’ vibe.115

Captain Fez contextualised TaikOz’s contemporaries, competitors, and audience’s expectations, then tackled repertory:

Billed as interpreters of Japanese music, TaikOz have more in common with the mod- classical composition crew – and perhaps it’s this nexus that led to the jazz-flavoured, improv-heavy bill tonight. [TaikOz have explored] electronica, renewed collaboration with dance groups and videographers. [Innovation] makes sense in those contexts – but it also takes away from the TaikOz I think their core audience has come to appreciate… [Watanabe’s piece] Chakuto really sang because it wasn’t trying to Ornette Coleman up the joint: it worked without attempting to shoehorn things into the form that didn’t belong. Likewise, TaikOz’s rip through In the Fields, a Cleworth- penned piece featuring lithe unison and interlocking playing, played to the group’s strengths… Misra sounded like an apocalyptic 70s work.116

113 Ian Cleworth quoted in Synergy and TaikOz, “Synergy Percussion & TaikOz: 2012-2014.” 114 Captain Fez aka Luke Martin, “TaikOz Future Directions,” published June 14, 2014, http://captainfez.com/2014/07/31/taikoz-future-directions-1462014, accessed August 1, 2014. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid.

Of ‘traditional’ taiko material – content continually repurposed by taiko groups worldwide – which TaikOz adapt in nearly every performance setting, he noted their discernible emotions:

Most disappointing [was] Tribute to Miyake. [TaikOz have] refined Miyake extensively in the past, studying with masters… [Here they] performed in the ‘older’ style the group used [Kodo’s appropriation] prior to their most recent training with the Tsumura family – so Watanabe [former Kodo member] could play along, [and it ran] out of puff. Marked mostly by a sort of forced jolliness... It must be difficult to manage the level of uncertainty which accompanies [liberal] improv, but it seemed the [players showed their worry]. The performers, to their credit, seemed aware of the tension.117

Regarding reception, expectations, and aftermath of experimentation, Captain Fez remarked:

When taiko performances work, the audience – and not just us otaku [nerd] types – is transformed. If this is the future direction of TaikOz, it certainly runs against their previous path of excellence. I look forward to TaikOz’s upcoming Sydney run of Crimson Sky shows and admit that my harsh criticism here should be considered in the light of their successes, too.118

By contextualising his heartfelt criticisms of this project in TaikOz’s broader artistic trajectory, Captain Fez legitimised his concerns with context and fairness. Conspicuously, he commented on ‘the music’, not just its look or assumed history. Criticism of long-standing collaboration between TaikOz and Synergy Percussion did not receive such thoughtful criticism usually. After assessing City Jungle, TaikoDeck and Origin of O, I return to pulse:heart:beat in which both groups played alongside other percussionists and traditional drum cultures. Here reviewers tended to equate difference with authenticity.

pulse:heart:beat

117 Ibid. 118 Ibid.

Decades-long collaboration between TaikOz and Synergy Percussion, pulse:heart:beat, ran previously by name ‘Beat It!’. Sister ensembles combined, and often invited additional collaborators into these programs. During my field study in 2013, I interviewed several participants about pulse:heart:beat and collated media reports identifying ways TaikOz thought about their art, and how media reportage missed the subtlety of underlying philosophies. Themes that arose regarded augmentation of visual-music by film; the differences between the physicality of each group’s percussion and thus attributed merit (words ‘visceral’ and ‘cerebral’ appeared frequently in opposition); as well as versatility; experimentation; and appropriation.

What crept through the cracks of these discussable topics again was the racially-tinged rhetoric of acceptable difference: that some exotic performances are just so, while others pretend (enact difference). Some commentary treated international guest artists as ‘more authentic’ than local performers.119 This segment evidences how TaikOz communicated their mission accurately, and tailored each subsequent production with lessons gleaned from previous collaboration, however media did not recognise this interactive evolution.

TaikOz and Synergy each argue for more accurate generic terms for their artistry (the siblings are the same), while TaikOz also conversely argue for their preferred specificity and difference (but TaikOz’s difference is special). TaikOz attempt a liminal middle-ground, an unobtainable perfect definition which evades location. This has posed problems for me in pinpointing where the transmission error is occurring between their ideas of themselves as a group and those generated about them by others. It seems TaikOz must exist in the margins of every genre tagged to them and only in this non-belonging do their self-definitions become valuable. TaikOz dodge categorisation to differentiate themselves. When TaikOz are reviewed – by music-critics, experts in moving images, drama-folk or cultural theorists – sites of cultural work emerge from self-serving discourses. Each project’s aesthetics and ethics gains traction only in relation to the social aesthetics of its mediators. pulse:heart:beat projects mark TaikOz as visual relative to Synergy Percussion. This has seemed important to several concert-goers. Juxtaposition here defines the terms of difference and resultant meaning, demonstrating that value-attribution to TaikOz’s work is always

119 Jessica Nicholas, “Musicians strike a persuasive note of accord,” The Age, July 25, 2006.

relative to that around them and not dependant on what they do. By extension, TaikOz cannot change their reception by ‘doing anything’, only by ‘placing’ themselves somewhere else (by altering that which they are juxtaposed against). This contributing factor impacts their choice to collaborate broadly, to both grow artistically and generate wide-ranging audience bases. Former General Manager David Sidebottom in 2013 said, “Synergy and TaikOz do pulse:heart:beat every 2-3 years. It’s the only concert where the two groups specifically play in the same program on stage. It really underpins the collaborative spirit of the company as a whole, rather than the two ensembles. It also underpins their artistic commonality of creating new music [based around] percussion.”120

Where at first TaikOz relied upon audiences already accustomed to Synergy’s brand of modernist percussion and creative collaborations, TaikOz gradually attracted a discreet audience of sensualists who like the physical and visual excitement that TaikOz brings to classical music spaces. Synergy continued to delight cerebral appreciators of challenging new music while TaikOz appealed more to those who believed they were witnessing ‘foreign’ and ‘traditional’ cultural artefacts from Japan, transplanted and reimagined by Australian percussionists. Both siblings see their current missions as similar – performing sounds here and now that draw on transmissions of varying cultures – and yet audiences and reviewers treat each differently, not only on aesthetic terms but due to perceived philosophies that buttress both genres.

Beat It!

In the mid-1990s Synergy pioneered concert series Beat It! to celebrate diverse percussion traditions and to regularly invite guest performers into collaboration. This series rebranded as pulse:heart:beat, “a musical celebration of drums and percussion, rhythm and sound: a revival.”121 Touting a “fabulous roll call of guest musicians,”122 Synergy welcomed such international luminaries as Glen Velez from the United States, Aly N’Diaye Rose and family from Senegal, and Kim Duk Soo and his ensemble direct from Korea, as well as esteemed Australian artists, friends and colleagues Greg Sheehan, Nova Ensemble, B’tutta and Graeme

120 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 14, 2013. 121 TaikOz pulse:heart:beat concert program, 2010, www.taikoz.com/Programs/pulseheartbeat programme.pdf, accessed July 9, 2014. 122 Ibid.

Leak. In 2001 pulse:heart:beat, a highlight at Melbourne International Arts Festival (MIAF), was a “celebration of world drumming traditions”123 that created a vivid musical portrait of Egypt and the Middle East. Turkish multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy and Synergy brought together ancient and modern sounds. In 2006, these three collaborators re-joined. Again Egyptian tabla met pop, rock and jazz inspired by Peter Gabriel, Chick Corea and Jimmy Page. Some of these collaborators had also worked together on a Sydney Dance Company production of Salome so included that composition, reinterpreted. For the occasion, Melbourne’s Hamer Hall was “transformed into a Middle Eastern bazaar, with free music, belly dancing performances and food.”124 Festive fair at 2006 MIAF matched in spirit with Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games which ran parallel. This context explains media discourse (next) attributing meaning to the project.

A reviewer of 2006 pulse:heart:beat accentuated idealism: “The rhythm of life, connecting cultures and people. Music, not politics, was the focus... a potent reminder of what we have in common.”125 Playing off teamwork and “joyous harmony [against] the situation in Israel and Lebanon,”126 reporter Jessica Nicholas praised virtuosity, friendship and mutual learning. She cast Synergy’s guests, Ramzy and Tekbilek, as giants of “the international music world,”127 famous superstars, purveyors of tradition and keepers of precious cultural artefacts, and saw Synergy in a supporting role, saying “the Australian musicians fully integrated into each deftly woven arrangement… [they] played a vital role, skilfully building the rhythmic and dynamic foundations for each piece.”128 Nicholas implied Synergy were not performing ‘music’ or ‘tradition’ or ‘virtuosity’ like their guests, and that Synergy’s only art was in framing others’ difference. Difference was ‘bricks’, while Synergy brought ‘mortar’: indistinct but structurally imperative. When she identified the music as “undulating… seductive, highly expressive”129 it was because she saw something non-indigenous. She attributed to this greater metaphysical significance, for example: “Salome's Entrance – for me, the night's highlight – became a spiritual invocation.”130 By her description, things are

123 Jessica Nicholas, “World Music – Pulse:Heart:Beat,” The Age, July 22, 2006. 124 Ibid. 125 Jessica Nicholas, “Musicians strike a persuasive note of accord,” The Age, July 25, 2006. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid.

not spiritual when they are music alone, but they become spiritual when communicative, and “transcendental power”131 defies familiar description especially when linked to visual stimulus. This type of perception regularly shapes discourse about TaikOz, and is discussed further regarding the dance Onikenbai.132 By this inference, TaikOz are spiritual because they are visual.

The 2010 pulse:heart:beat was low-key. Patrons sat on the floor of Sydney’s Town Hall (on their own cushions) for “precision beats and kaleidoscopic colour.”133 Guest artists included solo saxophonist Sandy Evans, percussionists River Guerguerian and Circle of Rhythm: Greg Sheehan, Bobby Singh and Deva Permana. Both Synergy and TaikOz had collaborated with River Guerguerian along with Turkish musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek in previous years, so their rapport predated this project. Familiarly, Cleworth’s program notes introduced Sandy Evans as “one of Australia’s greatest musicians. She possesses a unique voice.”134 These two rhetorical devices for celebrating local music – Australianness and individuality – are exactly those Cleworth had striven for during that period, but felt he rarely received. Cleworth’s language told witnesses how he wanted to be valued.

A LiveGuide gig-listing described 2010 pulse:heart:beat as a TaikOz show with “supporting artist: Synergy Percussion… [in] Category: Music & Clubs, Style Tags: Indie/Alternative.”135 None of these designations are apt. LiveGuide invited guests to “revel in pulsating grooves, killer rhythms… ‘A Percussion Symphony’, a trance-inducing ecstatic new work.”136 It quoted Timothy Constable: “Raw and natural brilliance… [that] is primal, spiritual, celebratory and all-encompassing… culminat[ing] in an uplifting tribal party.”137 Constable spoke of music not simply as sound but as “sonic energy”138 – something beyond patterns and

131 Ibid. 132 See Chapter 7 Onikenbai, Dancing with Philosophical Demons. 133 “This Week, MUSIC,” Metro, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 2010, 2. 134 Ibid. 135 LiveGuide, 2010 Pulse:Heart:Beat listing, www.liveguide.com.au/Arts and Theatres/669058/Taikoz, accessed June 16, 2017 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid.

vibrations. Despite using spiritual language, ostensibly no one assumed Constable to be Zen or Buddhist, as often happens to TaikOz.

2013 pulse:heart:beat focused on screens: Synergy and TaikOz collaborated with filmmakers rather than percussionists of other traditions. Constable reflected on 2010 pulse:heart:beat, saying “We opened up lots of sonic landscapes together – massive clockwork beat machines, pop-infused melodies, duelling ensembles and wild solos,”139 which audiences heard as ‘filmic’. Constable said “People constantly use words like evocative or cinematic to describe Synergy’s music.”140 The 2013 pulse:heart:beat responded to this public perception, but also provided a performance interface to an older, deeply entwined relationship between Synergy and fledgling filmmakers. Constable explained, “Our creative partnership with AFTRS141 extends beyond pulse:heart:beat. Later this year we’ll host their composition candidates… inspiring them to orchestrate wildly, think creatively [and] visualise [our] instruments.”142

Publicity for the 2013 pulse:heart:beat emphasised TaikOz’s compositional prowess and fluid generic limits: “[TaikOz] create new music which transcends cultural boundaries. They have created over two dozen original works.” 143 It rehashed: “Movement is sound, and sound is movement… Visual arts and taiko drumming associate well because the taiko has an intrinsic visual aspect, which lends itself to theatrically and drama,”144 echoing philosophy of Eitetsu Hayashi discussed in previous chapters. LiveGuide puffed about original scores and audience/musician co-production: “All-new music will be set against a cinematic backdrop as emerging local film-makers represent how love and other emotional connections can smash through urban barriers [with] infectious rhythms and whimsical melodies.”145 We see from these few instances that discourses for each recent pulse:heart:beat mentioned TaikOz’s

139 “Sounds Trigger Vision – Pulse:heart:beat – From TaikOz And Synergy,” Sounds Like Sydney, published May 20, 2013, http://soundslikesydney.com.au/shows/pulseheartbeat-synergy-percussion-and-taikoz-in- sync-for-a-special-offer/12420.html, accessed November 2, 2017. 140 Ibid. 141 Australian Film Television & Radio School 142 “Sounds Trigger Vision,” Sounds Like Sydney, May 20, 2013. 142 Ibid. 143 Shamistha de Soysa, “Pulse:Heart:Beat 2013” Sounds Like Sydney, published June 20, 2013, http://soundslikesydney.com.au/news/pulseheartbeats-a-kaleidoscope-of-sounds-and-imagery-from-taikoz- and-synergy-percussion/13289 html, accessed December 22, 2014. 144 Ian Cleworth quoted in “Sounds Trigger Vision,” Sounds Like Sydney. 145 LiveGuide, “2013 Pulse:Heart:Beat,” www.liveguide.com.au/Events/847895.

relationships with their collaborators, and themes unrelated to Japaneseness. In 2001 and 2006, TaikOz and Synergy were mortar to the foreignness of collaborators; in 2010 their electronic adventures were called filmic but criticised for altering their usual balance of visuality; in 2013 TaikOz paired with filmmakers to consciously address criticisms of their visual culture, while emphasising the ‘new music’ aspect of their compositions.

Visuality: beating assumptions head-on

On the occasions TaikOz provide a soundtrack to theatre or other art forms (Pericles; Kaidan, a ghost story), directorial choices come from outside TaikOz. As demonstrated, soundtracks tend to mark taiko as exotic.146 TaikOz’s two in-house video-recorded projects Live at Angel Place and Shifting Sand captured their activities on film independently, but are used more as merchandise than art. Each TaikOz collaborative project featuring film (pulse:heart:beat, Origin of O147) has raised questions whether screens add surplus stimulation.148

TaikOz collaborated with filmmakers in 2013 pulse:heart:beat to respond to their emotional sense that they are misinterpreted by media who see foreign, physical spectacle. 2013 pulse:heart:beat extended their scope: by positioning TaikOz’s physical bodies alongside moving images, they altered the field-for-perception by comparison. Reporter Shamistha de Soysa described their “sheer physicality and raw energy of playing [as] leviathans of percussion.”149 Cleworth told de Soysa, “We’re not combining it like a soundtrack to film. Rather, the sound of the instruments will trigger visual imagery so there is a closer connect between sound and image – it’s more interactive. What we’re doing is more of an equal marriage… a dialogue between the visual and the aural.”150 Cleworth’s technical explanation

146 Paul Yoon, “Asian Masculinities and Parodic Possibilities in Odaiko Solos and Filmic Representations.” Asian Music 40:1 (2009): 100-163; and Deborah Wong, “Taiko and the Asian/American Body: Drums, Rising Sun, and the Question of Gender.” Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, edited by Jennifer C. Post, 87-96. New York: Routledge, 2006. 147 Excerpts of Origin of O viewable on TaikOz’s website, https://www.taikoz.com/productions/origin-of-o, accessed March 11, 2020. 148 Ian Cleworth, Interview with the author, September 8, 2010. 149 de Soysa, “Pulse:Heart:Beat 2013.” 150 Ibid.

of process reveals philosophy, demonstrating the TaikOz engage in several relational aesthetics.

For Limelight Magazine, Cleworth explained how Synergy and TaikOz avoided functioning as a soundtrack: “[Rather,] all manner of abstract, animated and natural images [were] made and edited with the aim of maintaining a dialogue with the sound… There are some extremely seductive and beautiful [images], others angular and complex – and [our] terrific music sometimes matches and compliments, and sometimes works in opposition to the visuals.”151 In these cases, Cleworth told potential witnesses what to see. He did not invite them to ‘interpret freely’, but instructed witnesses to see TaikOz’s solutions to problems of engineered image.

Both TaikOz and Synergy Percussion regularly engage with visual artists using contemporary technology to create images that interact with sound. These are collaborative, multi- directional, social, narrative and non-narrative musical engagements that co-produce contemporary artistic artefacts. When Cleworth emphasised for de Soysa, the artists’ juxtaposition of old “hand-crafted instruments from Japan made from natural materials [against] sophisticated technology,”152 de Soysa saw it as “the contradiction intrinsic in this partnership.”153 She conjectured a risk that projected images detract from musicians. Cleworth acknowledged:

Visual and aural stimuli can be so great that they’re too much to take in at once… but it is also one of the most exciting things about live performance… At a more traditional concert we’re not primarily thinking about the visual elements but [they] are incredibly potent, even if processed at a sub-conscious level – otherwise, we would listen to fabulous music on a sound system at home and we wouldn’t go to a concert hall. The engagement of the musicians on stage amongst themselves, as well as with the music itself, translates very powerfully into images.154

Cleworth did not suggest that every concert should have a filmic element but that “[in context, film rightly] challenges the notions of live music performance.”155 He also

151 Ian Cleworth quoted in Hallam Fulcher, “Directing TaikOz,” Limelight Magazine, June 27, 2013, www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Article/348194%2Cdirecting-taikoz.aspx, accessed June 16, 2017. 152 Ian Cleworth quoted in de Soysa, “pulse:heart:beat 2013.” 153 de Soysa, “pulse:heart:beat 2013.” 154 Ibid. 155 Ibid.

emphasised their use of musical improvisation: “Performers express their individual musical personality [through improvisation, though] it shouldn’t draw attention to itself too much.”156 Guiding readers and audiences into more nuanced views of what TaikOz deliver, Cleworth tried to “dispel preconceptions that pulse:heart:beat [music] is exclusively about percussion… For some people the idea of full-on drumming is scary and off-putting.”157 Cleworth saw accessibility as fundamental to audience retention.

Cleworth explained, regardless of what TaikOz and Synergy present, perceptions vary: “We’re challenging convention, so some people may not like everything. [Audiences will translate it] into their individual experiences… and that’s exciting!”158 On the program, Cleworth’s Awakening for ōdaiko mirrored witnesses’ perception: it would be “mesmerizing and calming [and should] rouse something of an awakening of the mind and the spirit in the listener [by performance of] focused centeredness and emotional inexorability.”159 In a sense both performer and audience would enter meditation by engaging in this piece together.

Both Synergy and TaikOz were responding to a changing arts-market by experimenting in visuality during pulse:heart:beat. In conversation with The Daily Telegraph, Cleworth accentuated skill over brawn, and emphasised duality of ground-breaking yet responsive content to audience whims. He said, “For expert percussionists, there's more to performance than banging a drum, and we’ve become – in recent times – really visually oriented… When it comes to the music side it’s almost like audiences just expect to be stimulated visually as much as they are aurally. We’re now tapping into that, creating something fresh.”160 To this, Synergy Director, Timothy Constable added, “The integration between the music and the film is a process. It’s a bit more like music videos – the music and the film are coming at the same story from different angles.”161 Constable also used the physical metaphors of “getting inside what we’re doing”162 and “pulling it apart visually… so people can penetrate the set-up.”163 Constable implied their music requires explanation, or rather, goes better with a bit of

156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 158 Ibid. 159 Ian Cleworth quoted in Fulcher, Limelight Magazine, June 27, 2013. 160 Ian Cleworth quoted in Victoria Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat: drum and short film show can't be beat,” Daily Telegraph, June 19, 2013, 56. 161 Timothy Constable quoted in Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat.” 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid.

deconstruction. Thus the article explained TaikOz and Synergy hired the VJ to “create a visual experience that [would] take the audience right into the heart of the action,”164 and to make this art relatable and relevant.

Cleworth deconstructed the concert title: “On the one hand it's obvious: drums and beats. But there is that other, deeper element that as humans we tap into – of pulse that comes from heartbeats.”165 He and Constable, both symphonic percussionists bantered, “Everyone loves the drummer in a band… There's a certain dramatic theatricality... Everyone looks across [the orchestra] at the big cymbal crash.”166 Constable attested, “It's like you're having too much fun [in the orchestra]; everyone else is so serious!”167 They revealed themselves, their careers, their engagement with their visual lives. Interviewer Victoria Hannaford interpolated, “TaikOz draws on Japanese drumming styles,”168 a distinction acknowledging TaikOz’s process of individuation amid appropriation, rare among media voices. Perhaps her subtlety came by speaking with the artists rather than interpreting their ‘sonic energy’.

Hallam Fulcher previewed pulse:heart:beat for Limelight Magazine. His sensitive interview allowed Cleworth to explain complexities of programing and style. Unlike the LiveGuide designation of Indie/Alternative Club music,169 Limelight filed pulse:heart:beat under “classical music/film/stage.”170 Fulcher’s article explained ‘things audiences can expect’171 by querying what kind of impact a program with so many varied styles could have, and asking “what makes the taiko so versatile?”172 Cleworth explained how Asano Taiko Company celebrated 400 years in business in 2009; about taiko’s “earthy tone”173 and “the bewildering variety of styles of playing,”174 then clarified “although the roots of taiko lie in Japanese culture – aspects of which can be traced back centuries – taiko performance today is

164 Victoria Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat,” Daily Telegraph, June 19, 2013, 56. 165 Ian Cleworth quoted in Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat.” 166 Ian Cleworth quoted in Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat.” 167 Timothy Constable quoted in Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat.” 168 Victoria Hannaford, “pulse:heart:beat,” Daily Telegraph, June 19, 2013, 56. 169 “2010 Pulse:Heart:Beat listing,” LiveGuide, www.liveguide.com.au/Arts and Theatres/669058/Taikoz, accessed June 16, 2017. 170 Hallam Fulcher, “Directing TaikOz,” Limelight Magazine, Jun 27, 2013, www.limelightmagazine.com.au/Article/348194%2Cdirecting-taikoz.aspx, accessed June 16, 2017. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid.

very much a contemporary [international] mode.”175 To substantiate this Cleworth added, “All TaikOz members are well versed in traditional aspects of taiko playing, but we also have a wide combination of other musical, dance and cultural backgrounds that informs our music and performance. TaikOz adds drama and energy – not to mention a huge dynamic range – to Synergy's amazing palette… so [it’s] synergistic!”176 He positioned value in tradition and innovation and stressed how the two ensembles ‘fused’ together in their individuality.

Reactions to 2013 pulse:heart:beat

Most media responses to 2013 pulse:heart:beat rehashed commentary on difference and physicality, present in reviews of previous projects. As a music journalist, I reviewed this event too, to draw public attention towards aspects obscured in popular discourse.177 I traced how intimacy was cultivated through repetition and evolution of repertory:

During Resounding Bell, frequently recurring TaikOz repertoire, [on film] an organic mass, ambiguously animal and vegetable, morphed in relationships with water and air as the meditative modal harmonies of two metalophones interwove under a shakuhachi melody. Composed by Kevin Man and Kerryn Joyce aka Karak Percussion around 2003, Resounding Bell gained an improvised shakuhachi solo by grandmaster Riley Lee and, later, a marimba solo, presumably when Timothy Constable joined TaikOz on a regional tour in 2010. Composer Man played Lee’s shakuhachi solo verbatim because it was integral to the piece’s sound world. This highlights an important aspect of the way both TaikOz and Synergy approach innovation, consolidation and the time-frames in which these processes come to pass. They demonstrate with their practice that intimacy is achieved by continual

175 Ibid. 176 Ian Cleworth quoted in Fulcher, “Directing TaikOz.” 177 “With more than 20 artists, four premieres, three films and the promise of “gorilla cinematography and animation,” (program notes) I was thrilled to witness this collaborative hotpot if disappointed by the marked absence of anthropoid apes. A celebration of rhythmic colour [featuring] Austrian waltzes, Japanese Hachijo-style drumming, French-Senegalese artillery, Sydney’s urban beauties, Punjabi bhangra and dirty universal dance beats. Knowing that this sort of musical smorgasbord could divide an audience, the groups were careful to frame their smashing of cultural and geographic barriers with the question, ‘How on earth do we find intimacy in the maelstrom of modern life?’ …The groups had memorised vast amounts of highly technical music, a cerebral feat not to be ignored or eclipsed by their fantastic displays of physicality… guerrilla scintillation.” Excerpt from Felicity Clark, “Hybrid Beats,” RealTime Arts 116, August 19, 2013.

application and adaptation to produce recognisable cultural objects in a lived tradition. In this sense, while experimental and challenging thematically, this program was homogeneous and representative of the ideals and nature of both groups.178

This RealTime Arts review addressed how audiences responded to films and athleticism:

I overheard chit-chat, “TaikOz makes Synergy look like the poor cousin.” I couldn’t disagree more. Are athletes better than academics? Sure, TaikOz flash their muscles and sweat true to the cultural signifiers that mark taiko, but they play with the same sensitivity and astounding precision as their relatively restrained, concert hall suited Synergy colleagues. If the visual aspect of TaikOz’s performance trumps Synergy’s, then one could conjecture that those pieces featuring excellent quality films would have met the most positive response, but this did not seem the case.179

TaikOz’s artistic process mirrors dance companies more than their chamber music colleagues:

While Synergy shone as a flexible percussion ensemble, this concert was a strange blend of TaikOz’s multiple musical personalities. A group specialising in traditional Japanese drumming, that operates a bit more like a dance ensemble, TaikOz simultaneously inhabits the realms of the classical concert hall, pop festival stage, community drum workshop and corporate entertainment. In a brazenly honest offering, the groups presented their vulnerable and raw musical selves to the City Recital Hall audience.180

I connected how TaikOz’s innovation fit into a career trajectory of Synergy too, and how their attitudes defined their art practice:

The bravest element [was] young Anton Lock’s throbbing Rhythm River. This work featured [rap and] a dub-steppy pulse. [Sincere and without obscenity, it seemed vulgar by attendees.] There was no empty bravado or rhetoric in place to hide a divide between philosophy and life lived. Lock stood rehearsed, dedicated, genuine, to deliver his vision for ‘freedom of expression’. To Lock, and both Synergy and TaikOz, genre is but a site in which musical expression can emerge. This concept of

178 Felicity Clark, “Hybrid Beats,” RealTime Arts 116, August 19, 2013. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid.

incompletion, of fluidity, is what frees them to experiment with sometimes surprising collaborators, ideas and sounds.181

I engaged readers using humour and relatability by playing on Synergy’s misuse of gorilla/guerrilla in program notes. Chiefly I connected ‘what TaikOz were trying to do’ with ‘what they did’ to determine success amid strange or kaleidoscopic content. By explaining their practical processes I proved that intimacy, their main theme, was achieved through reiteration.182 In discussing the rap in Rhythm River I indigenised this genre of performance to these artists, again stressing that it belongs to them because they do it, and whole- heartedly. My interpretations were not universally shared, as Cleworth explained, “We took risks, and I don’t think it was entirely successful.”183 The primary complaint: films offered ‘competing images’ with TaikOz’s liveness, a criticism TaikOz receive collaborating with dancers too. Cleworth relayed fan feedback: “A self-professed ‘sometimes cantankerous senior citizen’ said ‘[Rhythm River] looked like Kevin Rudd trying to be cool.’ It wasn't befitting... [The program’s yin/yang balance was also off.]184

Both Cleworth and critic considered TaikOz’s musical energy required balance. In the wake of huge commercial success with Kodo in 2012, TaikOz expected good attendance at pulse:heart:beat 2013 but did not receive it. They lost money, but did collect their biggest survey response wherein most criticism was directed at the film component. Cleworth said “Our audience was divided. Some saw ‘a whole new way forward for TaikOz’. I feel like we’re doing something right [to prod ambivalent tastes].”185 For Cleworth a platform to air new ideas is essential, as is a forgiving home crowd.186

181 Ibid. 182 Judith Butler writes, “The subject is that which must be constituted again and again, and this implies it is open to formations that are not fully constrained in advance. Hence, the insistence of finding agency as resignification.” The performative is therefore a social ritual where the modalities of practice are powerful, precisely because they are so insistent and insinuating. They happen through time and therefore cannot stably exist in stasis. See Judith Butler, “For a Careful Reading,” Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, edited by Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser. New York: Routledge, 1995: 135. 183 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, July 17, 2013. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid.

Cultivating a reliable self and indicative repertory

Cleworth touched on the expectations of separate audience-bases with divergent listening- cultures. He compared TaikOz’s output to Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO), revealing alternative methods. When ACO roll-out fresh repertoire, it comes from a convention, a notated text, with an established listening-culture, “So it's easy to go ‘snap, new material’, but for TaikOz [who] generate new repertoire, [they] invent a genre as they compose, this is a very different creative process.”187 Cleworth specified, “We do repeat [pieces] and we think up new repertoire all the time, but we have our stayers, particularly those pieces that lend themselves to reworking, rearrangement. It is very much about [the] individuals performing them.”188 TaikOz write new music for every project, and draw on multiple sources and inspirations for these, sometimes without precedent.

When Synergy joined TaikOz in a rearrangement of Resounding Bell, Synergy added “a whole new dimension to it… colours… [and] it had more of that classical music overlay.”189 Lee was credited as co-composer, though he was not present, because his solo had become native. Cleworth mused:

It's a continual challenge... How much are we a repertoire ensemble because we do repeat repertoire? Are we a new music ensemble because we do create a lot of new music… original? We have elements of classical music in the sense that some members/composers including me use a lot of techniques and processes [from] our classical backgrounds. At the other end of the spectrum is Anton [Lock] who comes from a pop music background. TaikOz is a mixture of all these things. It comes down to how much we're a gigging group – we do corporate gigs, smaller functions, schools performances and so on. Our mainstage projects are carefully crafted and rehearsed for many months. We cover a lot of ground. It gives us breadth that's important for survival, and for forward development. But it can also confuse people, audiences, and public perception of who we are and what we do. Sometimes we can fall trap to trying to be many things to many people. This interesting question occupies me daily.190

187 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, July 17, 2013. 188 Ibid. 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid.

Despite meditation and integration of failures and feedback, TaikOz’s experimental identity hits commercial speed-humps. Staged on two consecutive nights, 2013 pulse:heart:beat only half-sold each. This would affect future projects. Cleworth told: “[Our] two groups won’t perform together again [in pulse:heart:beat]. It's a real sadness… Chi Udaka might fall into the hole this has created.”191 Chi Udaka did eventuate and go on to be a “five-star”192 success. After initial funding was sourced by collaborator Anandavalli Lingalayam of Lingalayam Dance Company, future concerts and tours were lucrative. In Chi Udaka TaikOz materialised again their hybrid identity in dialogue with a seemingly incongruous collaborator.193

Conclusions on contemporary collaborations

By talking with TaikOz members, associates and inner-echelon fans, I have collated an account of how TaikOz’s contemporary projects involving non-musical media have evolved conceptually, physically and reflectively. Individual members of TaikOz have held differing responses to projects and have expressed their philosophies that permit their choices and aesthetic interpretations. By pairing these accounts with media voices I have presented how appropriately these artistic gestures have been construed in the public sphere.

The language and focus of reviews about ‘percussion plus moving-image’ tended to focus on sound and named the performers who contributed, whereas reviews of ‘taiko plus moving- image’ were more inclined to speak generally about muscularity, loudness, and how the fusion unexpected ‘worked’. This has proven that TaikOz attract dissimilar reviews for equitable content. And further, the discourses about TaikOz that ‘get it wrong’, misconstrue (history), omit (race), spin (cultural motives) or interpret liberally (atoms and space travel), effect TaikOz’s self-identification, which in turn leads TaikOz in directions that might realign future interpretations or assert their selfhood more directly.

191 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, July 17, 2013. 192 “Chi Udaka is evocative, moving, memorable... quite simply stunning… a privilege to see artists of this calibre perform together.” ***** 5 stars Dr Katie Lavers, Arts Hub; and “Contemporary collaboration charged with vitality and immediacy... matching integrity with entertainment… ***** 5 stars Jill Sykes, Sydney Morning Herald, announced on TaikOz website, accessed April 4, 2017, www.taikoz.com. 193 Claudia Wherry, “Chi Udaka: an act of cosmopolitanism.” Unpublished Honours Thesis, University of New South Wales, April 2019.

While TaikOz consistently change, with continuity, in response to their critics’ feedback, those agents performing criticism are often seeing TaikOz for the first time and hence cannot see the nuance of choices resulting in TaikOz present artistry. The tokenistic aspects are noticeable to these reviewers: noise, size, athleticism. When reviewers with past experience of TaikOz and their Synergy colleagues comment, they bring depth, comparison, and speak more of themselves and their own experiences (Syke of genre blunders, and Captain Fez through saxophonist metaphors). Again this demonstrates that reviews typically tell less about a TaikOz production than its reviewer, and do not offer reliable information on which to base critical discourse. Their words produce noise around taiko, and this does not serve the complex fields of representation, narratology, genre theory, identity, performativity or cultivation that TaikOz perform in their embodied practice. While convention would hold that a review’s contents relate to, or match, its subject (that is, tell some sort of truth about an event), in TaikOz’s case media engagements only bring forward so much.

TaikOz’s eclectic self-identification and experimental forays mean they are doing many things in many ways simultaneously. To their credit as exceptional technicians and artists, TaikOz exert themselves this way to be compulsively free. They are unmatched in the taiko community in Japan and worldwide in this regard. Problems with perception then pertain to the scales at which meaning is attributed, and the justifications for the limits of each narrative.

2. Australian Taiko

TaikOz operate at the pinnacle of Australian taiko, having professionalised the medium in ways that other community groups have not attempted. As such, TaikOz are respected as educators and supporters of local taiko, while at the same time, other taiko teams’ stories justify their brands and outputs as ‘more real’ than TaikOz’s. The mythology each uses to promote the authenticity of their music and pastime often resembles that of other groups, though few refer to the same sources or original cultural artefacts. A trend exists to reference Japan, but as taiko culture in Japan is diverse and regional, Australian homages and versions compete innocently to prove worthiness and appropriateness. Such claims relate to specific Japanese traditions, and often these pieces do not resemble the types of Japanese taiko other Australian teams emulate. A multiplicity of truths about taiko present themselves in Australia, and these sometimes strengthen a national taiko culture, and sometimes create polite rifts. Each team creates its own realness and substantiating stories, yet most stories appear more fictional than factual. Thus the thing to unite Australian taiko is not an instrument, a form, a style, a repertory or an established tradition, but instead a habit for story- telling and assigning value to actions through associated traditions from Japan. It is not so much mimicry as semblance. Australian processes of playing taiko tend to bring joy to practitioners, who form tight local communities that bond beyond their community-music container.

Given that in Australian taiko, a singular national scene does not seem standardised; and that taiko practitioners do not render a copied performative behaviour from one another (instead each finding Japanese versions to aspire to); that there is more to their ‘semblance’ than just exoticism; and players’ investment is more involved than other community-music phenomena; I ask, why taiko? Could this culmination have occurred on djembes or snare drums? Taiko’s Australian appeal may play to mateship and teamwork, to the physicality we collectively worship through sport and outdoor explorations, it may involve fascination with far-away spiritual mysticism of our Asian neighbours, or even a reflexive embrace of our former adversaries from the Second World War. It could be taiko’s strong aesthetic, the elective discipline players engage in, or the cleanliness and systematic simplicity of taiko’s accessible basic rhythms. Though above all, my research suggests Australian taiko players choose it over djembe or snare drums because of the way stories may be applied and imbued with meaning surrounding taiko, in a political climate where probing about veracity might mar the questioner as racist, ignorant or politically incorrect. Stories about taiko go unchecked, and historic evidence seems not to matter to practitioners who create discrete culture by their actions and beliefs. This is the way contemporary taiko has evolved in Japan also, where 64

independent communities express themselves as they please, borrowing and making their own the musical material that excites them, reinvented.1 Much also comes down to technical mastery. A point of distinction though for Australian taiko players is a sort of keen humility, one that is cautious not to misappropriate.

This chapter explores ways Australian taiko teams make music, teach, share, and publicise their projects. I dive into the ideas behind their actions. A few Australian teams, TaikOz included, have featured digeridoo, both to indigenise their music with another borrowed tradition and to create compelling sonic effects. I open with a short discussion on how these groups choose to incorporate digeridoo and then navigate its application. Next I use promotional material alongside biographies of Australian taiko players and groups to present a non-exhaustive chronology that reinforces the themes and myths discussed in every thesis chapter. This segment begins with educational principles of TaikOz as compared with Queensland artist Motoyuki Niwa. Then comes other Australian taiko teams’ stories, and here all data is sourced from fieldwork, their websites or through journalism. This is because no academic literature exists, to my knowledge, and because each team is best equipped to describe what they do and why.

Didgeridoo Those who love taiko in Australia tend to also be enthusiasts for diverse traditions, for exotic sounds and engaging performance arts, and they often admire music of Indigenous Australians. Didgeridoo has long been used as a sonic marker by non-Indigenous musicians and composers to ‘Australianise’ output.2 Worldwide, new wave spiritual musicians and practitioners have appropriated didgeridoo without discrimination.3 In Japan, didgeridoo has gained enormous popularity as an amateur instrument, and Japanese artist Hiroki Morimoto, known as Goma, is famed as a “master of the didgeridoo.”4 Psychedelic taiko Tokyo Tribal Groove Orchestra, Gocoo, includes Japanese didgeridoo star GoRo,5 and internationally touring Scottish taiko drummers

1 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 48-141. 2 For example, in works by Peter Sculthorpe, Philip Bracanin, Ross Edwards, Graeme Koehne and many others. 3 “Use of Didgeridoo by outsiders has drawn attention to the potential for international exploitation and appropriation of traditional music and other Aboriginal cultural property. Perhaps the Didgeridoo [functions] as a false front, standing in for other truly sacred and restricted [practices] according to Aboriginal ceremonial life that cannot be named in public. In this way, the spiritualising of the Didgeridoo not only panders to the commercial New Age niche, but also serves as a means of warning non-Aboriginal people to be wary of inquiring too closely into sacred matters.” Quote from Linda Barwick, “Myths About the Didgeridoo,” Aboriginal Art, www.aboriginalart.com.au/didgeridoo/myths.html, accessed August 21, 2020. 4 Amelia Zhou, “Why you need to hear Japanese didgeridoo master Goma,” Sydney Morning Herald. February 9, 2017. 5 GoCoo, www.gocoo.de/gocoo discobio.html, accessed August 21, 2020. 65

Mygenkyo have built an instrument they call Belenos that merges didgeridoo with shakuhachi and bagpipes.6 Californian Shasta Taiko mixes Japanese taiko rhythms with world music, jazz and sounds inspired from nature: “Besides their ‘orchestra’ of drums… their compositions often utilise Japanese bamboo flutes, Mexican clay flutes, saxophone, conch shells, and Australian didgeridoo.”7 Israeli duo Savanna, consisting Nitay Zelniker on taiko and Noa Zulu on didgeridoo, is a doof- loving trance outfit.8

In Australia many taiko groups have dabbled with didgeridoo, including Taiko On in Perth, Rhythm Hunters in Gosford, TaikOz and Synergy Percussion nationally. Interestingly, TaikOz were reluctant to tokenistically reference Indigenous music in the context of taiko (to put the Oz in TaikOz) and did not work with didgeridoo until their superstar guest Eitetsu Hayashi requested an Indigenous collaborator.9 Thereafter TaikOz routinely collaborated with William Barton and Matthew Doyle. 10 TaikOz members had worked alongside didgeridoo players with Symphony Orchestras and in chamber music projects prior, but chose a sort of cultural purity for TaikOz, fearing a reflexive multiculturalist twinge from critics and any unintended disrespect to their Japanese mentors or teachers. “Multicultural music ensemble”11 Con Spirit Oz formed at Musica Viva’s request in 1998 and pioneered combinations of shakuhachi (Riley Lee), guitar (Guy Strazzullo), didgeridoo (Matthew Doyle or Mark Atkins), and percussion (Ian Cleworth, and/or David Hewitt, Greg Andresen, Graham Hilgendorf).12 Con Spirit Oz toured primarily overseas, but played Sydney Opera House to great reviews in 1999. This project lost momentum and ceased around 2005.

A 2009 newspaper article distinguished two instrumental innovations made by TaikOz within the world taiko scene: “In Australia, taiko has had the freedom to move a long way away from its traditional role at folk festivals in Japan. There, you would be unlikely to hear the high-brow Japanese Zen instrument, the shakuhachi, played alongside the sharp cut rhythms and spectacle of taiko drumming… [This combination was innovated by Riley Lee then others.] Ironically, it took [TaikOz] a visit by master taiko drummer Eitetsu Hayashi to bring didgeridoo into the mix.”13

6 Mal Byrne “Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers (Adelaide Fringe),” Limelight Magazine, February 18, 2020. www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/mugenkyo-taiko-drummers-adelaide-fringe, accessed August 21, 2020. 7 Shasta Taiko, www.shastataiko.org/Public/About-Shasta-Taiko, accessed June 24, 2020. 8 Taiko Life Collaborations, https://www.taikolife.org/copy-of-collaborations-1, accessed August 21, 2020. 9 Harriet Cunningham, “Sweet purity: Eitetsu Hayashi with TaikOz,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 2006: 19. 10 Deborah Jones, “Swingalong raises standards: TaikOz Live at Angel Place” The Australian, October 25, 2003. 11 Excerpt from Riley Lee “Shakuhachi in Australia: ‘Multicultural Performances’, in Australian Shakuhachi Society newsletter, March 2004, www.shakuhachi.org.au/newsletters/ASS Newsletter 016 March 2004.pdf, accessed August 21, 2020. 12 Ibid. 13 Tim Lloyd, “The sounds of thunder Australia and Japan in melting pot of styles,” The Advertiser, October 1, 2009. 66

Hayashi jammed with Matthew Doyle and the musical language they found between them has filtered into TaikOz’s music.14 Ian Cleworth told this journalist, “Our big [ōdaiko] has a drone-like quality [so] didgeridoo gives the drum a tonal centre.”15 TaikOz’s 2009 program The Peals of Thunder [featured] Riley Lee on shakuhachi and William Barton on didgeridoo, pairing both TaikOz’s innovations together.16

TaikOz’s caution regarding unethical borrowing of Indigenous musical sounds or symbols speaks to their fear of offending any party. When they have felt safe or authorised to combine elements, they have sought guidance from custodians and tried their best to acknowledge what they have incorporated. In such they educate their audience while entertaining, and form cross-cultural bonds with artists of other traditions. This process they see as Australian.

Ethnographic work on TaikOz throws up questions about ‘Australianness’ and how national identities play out. TaikOz members have described the delicate balance of what their witnesses see – that taiko is Japanese and TaikOz are non-Japanese. Ian Cleworth summed in 2013:

I think people are not really sure where to fit us here in Australia because we're never included in the World Music camp, but we're not really a part of the classical music scene. We don't really fit into the contemporary classical music scene. Our languages are so diverse, that's where we get some sense of breadth and variety in terms of composition and 17 musical output. That's confusing for people.

TaikOz make art that marks their bodies as not-belonging. Representation, appropriation and adaptation then become topics of interest. And while TaikOz do not fit the World Music bandwagon, many other Australian taiko teams might, and they may even express their Australianness by looking Japanese.

TaikOz and the Australian taiko scene TaikOz are the primary professional taiko group in Australia, delivering main-stage performances and workshops to diverse participants, though several other taiko teams operate across the country. Each group learns, trains and performs, and defines their version of taiko as real or reverential in some sense, though each has its own flavour. Every team draws on mythology and methods of

14 Ibid. 15 Ian Cleworth quoted in Tim Lloyd, “The sounds of thunder Australia and Japan,” The Advertiser, October 1, 2009. 16 Ibid. 17 Ian Cleworth, Interview with the author, November 5, 2013. 67

legitimation, including relationships to Japan, but few make art that looks like TaikOz’s. As a community-music phenomenon, taiko is engaging to Australians, and for nearly all an authentic experience is considered desirable. Those who engage with taiko here want it to be Japanese, ancient, modern, fun, spirited, sacred, aesthetically predictable, entertaining and also uniquely Australian. Hugh de Ferranti’s 2006 academic article attributed TaikOz’s Australian success to their manipulation of images of Japanese traditional arts for this island audience, and de Ferranti suggested various sectors of Australian society see in TaikOz “the public‘s preference for stereotypes [while engaging] a more complex range of representations of past and present-day Japanese performance cultures.”18 Today TaikOz present aspects of Japanese performance to Australians who might not otherwise have interest or means to find it, especially by regional touring. TaikOz achieves this through a ‘selective traditionalism’, measured claims to authenticity and by “actively marketing to an audience beyond musicologists, contemporary music enthusiasts and Japanophiles.”19 De Ferranti suggested: [Australians] find in TaikOz’s music elements that speak to their own identities, including the sheer physicality of presentation (tremendously fit bodies creating a huge sound); a perceived egalitarian ‘team sport’ approach to training and performance; and [an] ‘Asian’ aesthetic and philosophy that connect strongly with their interests in spiritual experience and personal development. I expect that all these elements will continue to be important in shaping the hybrid identity of an emergent Australian wadaiko tradition.20

An Australian taiko scene has emerged since roughly 1995 that is active and warmly supportive. Enthusiasts often travel interstate to collaborate, learn and share their delight in taiko. My overview introduces more than thirty groups. I compare discourses these Australian taiko players create around their music. These discourses reveal little consensus for a universal definition of taiko, accordingly everyone who purports to do taiko meets success by inventing a definition. Every party draws on mythology, anecdotal evidence, story-telling, partial histories and personal embodied experiences to confirm their beliefs about this ever-changing culture. While each group claims to be authentic in their way, they do not antagonise adjacent groups who have alternate definitions of history or myth.

In Australia, competing claims to multiple similar authenticities fuel participants’ beliefs in their practices. This has been the case internationally too, as Shawn Bender identified: “During ensemble

18 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating,” 90. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 68

taiko’s relatively short history in Japan, few taiko drummers have seen much in common between their activities and those of other taiko groups... many even question the degree to which ensemble taiko could be considered a cohesive ‘genre’.”21 In Australia, taiko players tip their hats to Japanese progenitors – original artists sometimes organised vertically in lineages – to legitimise Australian renditions, even though such hierarchies are more fictional than fact when investigated, or at best have far briefer recorded histories than is purported.22 This linear authentication has been important in Australia, but does not match the discourses of localism that accompany much Japanese taiko in practice.23

TaikOz plays many roles within the Australian scene. They produce new musical work, pushing the boundaries of traditional renderings and contemporary classical composition. This is their unique selling point, not only in Australia but worldwide. TaikOz provide regular training and education to students in Sydney and Brisbane, and public workshops that invite nation-wide and international taiko players. Frequently international students of TaikOz come to Sydney from Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Germany and the United States. Though TaikOz perform music internationally with the best taiko artists, their educational reach does not seem a priority to the organisation. Their student cohort are majority local, or highly self-motivated individuals from abroad.

Australian taiko groups Most Australian taiko groups consist of amateurs who perform semi-professionally. Many performance groups are formed from taiko training collectives. In these groups, communal drumming is the goal, so performance is a perk and not always their purpose. However, Australian taiko students often cite opportunities to perform as key motivators to practise.24 Within this ‘semi- professional scene’ subcategories emerge: 1) Performing artists 2) Groups that operate like Japanese kumi-daiko troupes, particularly including Japanese migrant members who bring repertory and styles from their pasts 3) Groups that operate like American kumi-daiko troupes: melting pots where more serious

21 Jennifer Milioto Matsue, “Drumming to One’s Own Beat: Japanese Taiko and the Challenge to Genre,” Ethnomusicology 60:1 (2016): 22-52. 22 Miyake style, for example, formalised in the 1970s and is now widely adopted, but the Tsumura family who have made it famous did not sell to the world a form that has long existed, it is their personal stylisation. While Miyake Island had a long drumming tradition, the Tsumura’s iconic rhythms, familiar to all taiko players, are not old. 23 Bender, Taiko Boom, 170. 24 Various ethics approved interviewees suggested this. 69

players who have trained with taiko stars in various guises play alongside community members and Japanese expatriates 4) Small-town, community-feel, musical-activity participants ‘having a go’

Groups in each of these four categories justify their taiko-brands using myth, current and ‘ancient’, but these stories are not necessarily readable in their performances, which tend to be determined by skills or abilities rather than artistry. I assess ways groups present themselves and market their products, then pair this with data about the types of gigs they perform, in order to determine the degree to which taiko phenomena interrelates with taiko discourse. This highlights differences between mythical self-constructions and the ways taiko actually materialises in Australia. Additionally I review ways journalists talk about Australian taiko to assess whether a national taiko culture is conceived by local media. Journalists describe TaikOz and other Australian taiko groups similarly, despite the differences in their practices. These media voices have not consistently matured (become more nuanced or culturally aware) about taiko despite long-term exposure to this practice over the three decades taiko has been exercised in Australia.

Popularising taiko in Australia Tasmanian group, Taiko Drum, brought taiko to common Australians by competing in reality television show Australia's Got Talent in 2011. This mainstream media avenue may have reached more viewers than TaikOz’s performance career combined. Similarly, Melbourne-based Wadaiko Rindo performed on the same show in 2009, though they were not so successful as Taiko Drum. Australia's Got Talent 2011 marketed taiko as an “ancient Japanese Musical Artform (sic.),”25 and invited Taiko Drum into the Semi-Finals. At their second appearance, judges said their show had not developed, was ‘too niche’, not commercially viable, and one judge called a performer “the big unit doing interpretive dance with the mystic death-clown face,”26 in reference to body-norms, vamped up costumes, stagecraft (with smoke effects), face-paint, and dance. Australia's Got Talent 2011 described Taiko Drum as strong and passionate Tasmanian Drummers “schooling us with a little history and culture from an ancient Buddhist and Shinto tradition where the sound of the drum is meant to reach the gods.”27 The show’s publicists received this information from Taiko Drum and sensationalised it, as is customary marketing spin. It misrepresents what taiko is, was and can be, in order to validate existing understandings of exoticism in popular culture. This Anglo-Saxon

25 Caption to YouTube video, Australia’s Got Talent 2011, “Taiko Drum (Ancient Japanese Musical Artform),” published July 5, 2011, accessed September 3, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkdKN-Wljo. 26 See Kyle Sandiland’s interpretation at 4:20, Ibid. 27 Australia’s Got Talent 2011, “Taiko Drum (Ancient Japanese Musical Artform),” published July 5, 2011, accessed September 3, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkdKN-Wljo. 70

Australian taiko on prime-time television, while not the first of its kind, consolidated taiko’s foreignness and ripeness for appropriation. While Taiko Drum’s 2011 performances highlighted Australian mateship, teamwork and Asian-inspired, martial-arts-like choreography with a community feel, Wadaiko Rindo’s 2009 appearance28 presented a disciplined drum-line showing off something tricky. Wadaiko Rindo ‘revealed less of themselves’ in their rendition of taiko, in the pursuit of purity and respect for certain ways of taiko. I speculate Wadaiko Rindo were less successful on Australia’s Got Talent 2009 because they wore markedly Japanese taiko outfits and demonstrated more rigidity than musical communication. Talent shows thrive from punters at home thinking, ‘that's amazing’ and at the same time ‘I could do that’. Those markers of otherness – costuming and etiquette – may have been a barrier to that process, which would render their performance an unworthy winner at the reality television genre. Both Taiko Drum and Wadaiko Rindo gave excellent performances that adhere to popular definitions of taiko, yet they looked and felt like different art forms. This theme re-emerges in discussion of Taiko no Wa (TaikOz’s student offshoot group) preparing for their Japanese debut in 2011, later this chapter.

While the value of ‘firsts’ as ultimate legitimisers of narratives is widely accepted, accounts of Australian-taiko-firsts take on meaning from their storytellers whose definitions of taiko vary. My list below is incomplete, with apologies to unmentioned players. School children’s and young people’s groups are not listed here, though many programs exist in schools in Australia, often run by members of groups in the below table. The listed proponents are included because publicity exists to evidence how these Australians talk about their taiko, their milestones, their values. In presenting taiko groups’ self-publicity, I demonstrate how messages each group puts out are mirrored back to them and serve an emerging national definition of the genre. This supports the thesis goal – to place TaikOz – by compiling multiple stories, then finding synergies between these accounts. Broadly there are two waves of taiko in Australia. The first wave has a multiculturalist flavour and is headed by majority non-Japanese players. The second wave is ‘more Japanese’ with expatriates delivering memories of matsuri and community engagement, placing value on ‘doing’ over reproducing, and on entertainment overall.

A list of Australian taiko players and teams follows in chronological order, though when I detail each, I theme by state to better relate important figures and their influences. Some teams receive extra attention because of my fieldwork, due to available written content, and to draw out themes.

28 Viewable on YouTube, “Wadaiko Rindo on Australia's got Talent,” published February 20, 2009, accessed June 14, 2017, http://youtu.be/1sOeVgtlk34. 71

c.1972 Riley Lee is founding member of Sado no Kuni Ondekoza Sado, Japan 1983 Ian Cleworth studies wadaiko with Sen Amano, (Adelaide) performs in Japan with ensemble Arahan. 1984 Harold Gent joins Katari Taiko in Vancouver, Canada (Adelaide) 1986 Riley Lee moves to Australia for shakuhachi doctorate Sydney 1987 Ian Cleworth joins Synergy Percussion, introduces taiko Sydney 1994 Synergy Percussion releases Matsuri CD (of 1991 project) Sydney 1994 Murasaki Taiko (all-female group) Melbourne 1994 Motoyuki Niwa and duo Batari Wolvi, QLD 1995 Ataru Taru Taiko (Harold Gent and friends) Adelaide 1997 TaikOz (splits from Synergy Percussion) Sydney 1997 Anne Norman shakuhachi and taiko in schools shows Melbourne 1998 Wadaiko Rindo [和太鼓竜胆] Melbourne 2002 Taiko Drum (University of Tasmania Union Taiko Society) Hobart [太鼓虎夢] (Tiger Dream) 2003 Matsuri Taiko (formerly Atsui no Taiko)29 Adelaide 2004 Rhythm Hunters (evolved in Rhythm Hut since 2001) Gosford, NSW c.2004 Taiko Oni Jima and Launceston PCYC Taiko Launceston, TAS c.2004 Burnie Taiko (Hikaru) Burnie, TAS c.2005 New England Taiko Armidale, NSW c.2005 Tatsuo Sekiguchi, Osuwa-daiko Australia Sydney 2005 YuNiOn (Masae Ikegawa and Graham Hilgendorf) Sydney 2007 Taiko no Wa (TaikOz’s student off-shoot) Sydney 2007 Kaze no Ko [風の子太鼓] (Children of the Wind) Perth 2008 Kizuna, Gold Coast Taiko Team Gold Coast, QLD 2011 Cairns Taiko Cairns, QLD 2012 Toko-ton Taiko Brisbane 2012 Taiko On Perth 2013 Stonewave Taiko Bega, NSW 2013 A.Ya (Ayako Tsunazawa and Ayako Fujii) Melbourne 2014 Australia Miyake Kai (Melbourne, Sydney, Cairns) National 2014 UQ Taiko Brisbane 2016 Taiko Do Golden Bay, WA 2016 Mugendai (Drum ∞ Infinity) Cairns, QLD 2017 TaikoDrumWorks, design and manufacturing company Tathra, NSW c.2018 TaikoBeato [太鼓人] (DrumBeat, or Taiko People) Gold Coast, QLD c.2018 Kanade [奏] (Playing) Townsville, QLD 2018 Tower Taiko Inc Charters Towers 2019 Taikokoro Inc30 Melbourne Figure 1 - Partial History of Australian Taiko

29 Matsuri Taiko, accessed May 13, 2020, http://www matsuritaiko.com.au. 29 Taiko Koro, accessed May 13, 2020, https://taikokoro.org/home/about.

Australian Trends Trends have emerged from analysing Australian taiko teams’ discourses. The majority of taiko groups in Australia have formed since 2005. Many groups have developed relationships with other Australian taiko teams and communities internationally, including Japan. Several groups build their own taiko and describe their drum-making processes as traditional despite employing power tools and materials like PVC piping. Most groups make claims to authenticity and tradition, with varying degrees of reference to certifiable sources. This indicates the endeavour of starting and continuing a taiko ensemble acquires meaning though myth-creation that later founds future claims to an established, objective tradition. It is the circular act of constructing mythology that is universal, and not the content or verifiability of any such myths, that matters to proponents of taiko in Australia (and around the world). Understandably, newcomers to taiko performance-attendance or practice could be confused by mixed messages about the age, cultural significance and possible forms that meaningful taiko execution takes.

A recurring theme in the stories told about taiko, particularly in the marketing of experiential participation – whether in concert, workshops or classes – is a spiritual dimension. An intangible, ancient, mystical, ultimately-unknowable Eastern philosophy is touted by some to underlie ‘real taiko’. All the organisations I have observed speak about taiko in relation to myths and spirituality, none more explicitly than Motoyuki Niwa of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast who claims he “introduced Taiko music to Australia in 1994.”31

Motoyuki Niwa, Queensland Motoyuki Niwa’s ongoing intention has been “to explore the future of Australian music using traditional Japanese arts principals (sic) as a template, rather than staying in Japanese traditional context and styles.”32 In this way, his mission mirrors TaikOz's – to stage contemporary music based on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience and appreciation of what has come before. Motoyuki’s approach is internationalist in flavour. Over 35 years he has initiated and participated in interdisciplinary projects with diverse artists and cultural pursuits, including the wellness industry. He has worked with Gudo Jikko Kai Mikkyo Yoga, Meiso Shiatsu and Oki Do International. One sabbatical he designed to “share knowledge between taiko music, Zen meditation, Shiatsu and Yoga practice, to explore the interrelationship between mind, heart and body.”33 By popular demand, he

31 Motoyuki Niwa website, Mufarm, accessed 12 November 2014, http://mufarm mond.jp/cv/index.html. 32 “ArtCord”, Motoyuki Niwa website, Mufarm, accessed 12 November 2014, http://mufarm.mond.jp/communityarts/index html. 33 Ibid. 73

established a taiko group in Italy. Motoyuki proffers an irreligious spiritual perspective: Ecstasy, awe, benevolence, intransigence - each has its own rhythm and energy. Inside you the undulating energy wells up. Breath is directly related to mind and there is a Ki stream inside your body... These are the most immediate, physical manifestations of the mind. Music provides us with a means for their direct impression; it is possible to communicate with others in real time, without symbols, using sound [to exchange energy].34

In his theory of 'Artcord', Motoyuki explains how phenomena are rendered into art. All stages in the cyclic progression are equal. He says, “Sense = Awareness = Ceremony = Documentation = Art.”35 This model alludes to influence through the passage of time, but also to a ubiquitous unity. Motoyuki continues to vacillate between universality and derivation: Art is coded knowledge. If we could unlock this code we might explain the structure of our memory system and spiritual consciousness… Elements of nature [point to] a meta- language… for example, Earth – yellow… Air - white, Wood - green.36 It demonstrates confused causality, a trait common in taiko discourses, because while the knowledge in art can be un-coded, the code of his element:colour example is arbitrary and culturally conditioned. Although those elements and colours are observable in nature, their links to one another are not so direct. TaikOz exhibit this linking behaviour too, and they perform ready-made cultural material that draws on this logic. For example, TaikOz’s 2007 program “The Five Elements” with Synergy Percussion in association with the New Music Network, was themed on Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space.37 They joined with Daniel Yeadon, baroque cello; James Coates, spoken word and Bob Scott on live computer generated sound in a program which featured “Yamasachi: Blessings of the Mountain” by Eitetsu Hayashi, a Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Suite, and Synergy member Timothy Constable’s “Om Haum Jum Saha” along with improvised diversions. Poetry and prose of Arthur Rimbaud, Fyodor Tyuchev, Rumi, DH Lawrence and Italo Calvino peppered the program. A lot of coded knowledge was imparted, but not in the spiritually conscious pursuit Motoyuki has described. Synergy and TaikOz had not aimed for a homogeneous palette. They had not defined a ‘unit of universality’ by which to transmit spirit, though their promotional material claimed meaningful presence of “essence.”38 Synergy instead staged a smorgasbord of musical material for a paying crowd, through a thematic template. This contrasts

34 Ibid, 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 “Five Elements media kit,” accessed September 17, 2014, http://www.synergypercussion.com/Downloads/Media/5ElementsMediaKit.pdf 38 Ibid. 74

Motoyuki’s omnipresent mysticism: A song line… this cosmic debris is expression of the great conflicting forces of the universe… Ancestors living with this dynamic vibration… to keep touching spiritual world. Life is filled with a sea of riddle[s]… Culture works as a map for survival. Each artform (sic) functions as a container of wisdom. It is [a] very rational system.39 The coded knowledge Motoyuki received as a youngster (through other mediums) expresses through his taiko now. Core-knowledges are transferable and interdisciplinary: The colour, sign, symbol, sound, ornament, pattern, and texture have meaning. I studied these messages in my childhood through textiles and dance and music, but I didn't realise that a universe of meaning and its harmony surrounded me… Cosmology [is] where our mind gets wings.40 I include Motoyuki's ideology to communicate the depth of his belief about his practice and the richness of his epistemology. This is significant when allotting value to his claims to authenticity. TaikOz, as a collection of individuals, have studied numerous cultural practices (like acting, Zen philosophy, painting, cake-decorating, symphonic music, dance), many in common with Motoyuki. However TaikOz members, when describing their processes of learning and transmitting these things, do not speak about ‘forces of the universe’ or of ‘touching a spiritual world’. This is not to say these aspects are absent from TaikOz members’ experiences, only that they are unspoken. Discourse surrounding TaikOz's work prioritises sound.

While relating the two parties, members of TaikOz performed taiko music with Synergy Percussion since the late 1980s, well before 1994 when Motoyuki claimed to introduce taiko to this continent. In the absence of spiritual philosophy like Motoyuki’s, were Synergy ‘playing taiko’ or were they simply enacting percussive sounds upon taiko objects? What type of belief is essential to distinguish taiko? Numerous studies in English about taiko concur that taiko is not so much a body of music, a cultural artefact or historically rooted community pursuit, as a wide assortment of unrelated drumming cultures that ‘look Japanese’ and associate with various Eastern belief systems and entrainment philosophies.41 This thesis demonstrates how contemporary taiko takes many forms, and how each proponent supports their claims about spirituality and antiquity with self-referential narratives. Taiko is not a generic set of practices or ideologies agreed upon by a contemporaneous cohort of sea-separated drummers. In this sense, many versions of taiko are real, while performing

39 Motoyuki Niwa, “ArtCord,” accessed 12 November 2014, http://mufarm.mond.jp/communityarts/index html. 40 Ibid. 41 Eddy Y L Chang, Wadaiko from East to West: Contemporary Japanese Drumming in the World Today, paper in progress. Published at www.academia.edu/14568091, accessed August 22, 2020. 75

different social, cultural and artistic work.

Batari – Motoyuki Niwa’s taiko duo Motoyuki's Brisbane-based duo with Francis Gilfedder exemplifies a holistic approach to music- making and living.42 Batari's music is “purely”43 improvisational and spontaneous, because, Motoyuki says, “Australia is now a very multicultural society with a kaleidoscope of musical influences… [Our role] is to take on different philosophical and cultural perceptions, respond to these and create music with its own identity.”44 TaikOz make the same claims, though express them differently artistically. Liner notes to Batari’s live CD Plate Tectonics predict: A process of endless circular movement [will cause Earth’s] plates in the future [to] mix into one continent again… scientists [envisage] that in 150 million years Australia will physically crash into Japan.45 Motoyuki's music pre-empts the physical union of Australia and Japan and translates this distant inevitability into the metaphor of performed sounds. While TaikOz look at their inspirations and collaborators to produce meaning in their music, their narratives do not take such huge-scale perception into account.

Motoyuki Niwa's website verges of self-aggrandisement, but his message is clear. Meanwhile TaikOz offer sterile and concise statements about what they do, without liberal expositions of philosophy. Motoyuki claims to be “highly sensitive with keen awareness of aesthetic sensibilities, [and that] the sound of the Taiko is like… a lightning brother shouting fury.”46 Batari's “unique method of composition arise[s] from experiences of the landscape, or from our knowledge of tradition, or from creating sounds in the present moment [to produce] fascinating fusion.”47 Relative to other taiko groups worldwide, these compositional techniques do not sound unique, they are common within the repertory and discourse, but Motoyuki’s belief that his process is unique contributes to the tone of his affirmational discourse which has potential to lopsidedly shape public perception of taiko’s universal meaning.

Comparing TaikOz and Batari: notable performances between 2000-2002

42 Previously named Bachi Atari which has the double meaning of ‘hitting sticks’ but also ‘damned, cursed’, the portmanteau points to misunderstandings of the role of Japanese ghost-stories in a global virtual age. However, the adverb ‘batari’ translates (onomatopoeically rather than interpretively) as ‘with a flop’. 43 “ArtCord,” Motoyuki Niwa, accessed 12 November 2014, http://mufarm mond.jp/communityarts/index html. 44 “New Direction,” Motoyuki Niwa, accessed September 28, 2017, http://mufarm mond.jp/taiko/index html. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 76

Batari have assumed many stages, public and corporate. Between 2000-2002, the mentioned selection of Batari gigs demonstrates a variety of demographics to whom their music appealed commercially: Buddha's Birthday Celebrations Brisbane; Federation Fiesta Viva; Starwood (Sheraton) Group Asia-Pacific Division International Conference; Hewlett Packard Asia-Pacific Conference; Japanese Performing Arts for Consulate General of Japan, Auckland, NZ; Brisbane Gala Olympic Games Football; Brisbane Goodwill Games 2001; Opening for Global Arts Link; Indigenous First Contact Inc; 4ZZZ Radio Station Market Day; The Year of the Dragon Cerebration and YAG'UBI Multicultural Festival.

In the same period TaikOz performed with taiko star Eitetsu Hayashi in Australia and Japan. TaikOz played at The Studio at Sydney Opera House and were in their own words “consolidating the beginnings of Go shu no taiko – Australian taiko.”48 TaikOz returned to Lismore City Hall in 2001 after a successful debut in 1999. They played at Brisbane’s Powerhouse with special guests Austral- Asian Performance Ensemble and Frank Productions, in a joint rendition of Maki Ishii's Dyu-Ha. They collaborated in Melbourne with Synergy Percussion, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Hassam Ramszy and Ali and Adama N'Dye Rose in outdoor performances for Melbourne International Arts Festival.49 For the National Gallery of Australia, TaikOz ran taiko workshops and three evening performances and also in Canberra, TaikOz performed at the National Folk Festival. On tour in Japan, TaikOz went to Ota-cho in Fukui-ken for a fortnight of intensive work with Eitetsu Hayashi that was sponsored by Asano Taiko (illustrious instrument manufacturing company).50 Without distractions there (inaka - “out bush”) TaikOz could concentrate for several hours per day on practising form and technique, and learning new music and styles with Eitetsu for their Japan debut performances in Kanazawa and Kobe.51 In both these centres, TaikOz wowed audiences with ‘authentic’ renditions of taiko classics, Maki Ishii’s Monochrome, as well as performing original Australian compositions including Ian Cleworth's Small Forest.

Unlike Motoyuki Niwa who told readers exactly what he was doing and what it meant for him, TaikOz cast doubt on their success by proclaiming they were misunderstood. Despite their local and international success in this period, TaikOz director Ian Cleworth told readers of TaikOz’s newsletter about hiccoughs the group faced, variously with theatre-lighting, tummy-bugs, cancelled shows, and misinterpretation by the media. Cleworth complained:

48 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1:1, March 2001. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 77

While we always appreciate the opportunity to speak to television, radio and newspapers, one always feels as though the things that really matter just don't get through. Unfortunately the actual music seems to become relegated to mere background diversion while the size of the drums seems to garner most of the attention. Imagine my chagrin when the ōdaiko was casually referred to as the ‘big barbecue’!52

In 2001 while Motoyuki Niwa professed cosmic platitudes and could be taken seriously, TaikOz felt they attracted public attention to irrelevant aspects of taiko; their witnesses were more interested in hyperbole and exoticism than musicality, ensemble, history, story or culture. TaikOz directed their witnesses to technical, artistic and emotional underpinnings of their taiko, often using the word ‘feeling’. For example, after TaikOz recovered from gastro in Japan, Cleworth described “The feeling of rejuvenation and newfound well-being contributed to a shared energy that was very powerful in performance. I like to think of it as a tangible expression of kokoro (the Spirit of wadaiko).”53 TaikOz’s collective experience of relief was described as distinctly Japanese in spirit, and this emotional experience belonged to the ‘culture of taiko’ over a medical circumstance or Australian performance art.

That a ‘Spirit of wadaiko’ could govern their emotional realities implies that TaikOz do not simply act as taiko drummers, but attach whole-hearted belief and embodied philosophy to their practice, as Motoyuki Niwa does. Yet when TaikOz do this, they are seen to be doing something imitative or false. TaikOz use terms like kokoro in their community communications where a baseline of cultural awareness exists, but not with reporters because such concepts require too much explanation. By flippantly inserting such terms into journalism encounters, either TaikOz risk appearing presumptuous (when terms are unfamiliar to witnesses) or these foreign designation are simply ignored because witnesses have no framework through which to incorporate them. Thus, the traces TaikOz leave in the discourse that surrounds them are mediated and abstracted.

Elsewhere in newsletters from 2001, Ian Cleworth noted how TaikOz’s exciting new Australian tour-program: “reflected many new ideas and techniques acquired on [their] visit to Japan. OTA I KO – a recent composition by Ian [Cleworth] - was premiered; Kelly [Staines] and Masae [Ikegawa] presented a stunning hachijo (after months of hard training); Ian and Graham [Hilgendorf] sweated hours over a new version of O-Daiko; Miyake underwent a major rethink; and

52 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1:3, September 2001. 53 Ibid. 78

a radical reworking of Maki Ishii's Dyu-Ha was presented [theatrically].”54 This excerpt demonstrates how TaikOz revisited repertory and reworked tradition to ‘be themselves’, and how they report on these processes to foster cultural awareness within their community. In doing so they enact an Australianness divergent from Motoyuki’s or other Australian taiko teams.

In mid 2002 TaikOz welcomed Eitetsu Hayashi back for another Australian tour performing in elite venues as well as at grungier popular music venues like Enmore Theatre in Sydney.55 TaikOz also presented concerts with Takumi Takano, “one of Japan's finest players of the yokobue (a bamboo transverse flute) [and taiko],”56 who had been an original member of Ondekoza alongside Riley Lee. TaikOz reverentially called Takumi-san “a most effervescent and gregarious personality [who] exudes an enviable and inspirational healthiness of mind and body that is reflected in the liveliness and humanity of his music-making.”57 Together TaikOz and Takumi Takano performed twenty times: in Adelaide’s Fringe Festival and at Sydney Opera House.

These two Japanese collaborations demonstrate TaikOz’s reputation among top taiko stars – a status not shared by other professional taiko groups in Japan or the United States. To my knowledge these two stars did not reach out to characters like Motoyuki Niwa, or to Australian groups discusses next, for collaboration in Australia or Japan. Those relationships were not solely business-oriented: Japanese stars collaborated with TaikOz because TaikOz demonstrate skill and appropriate enthusiasm while doing taiko. However, TaikOz’s professional familiarity with elite musical spheres stemming from their history with Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Synergy Percussion and other classical music institutions benefitted, and hence attracted, those touring artists.

Four years after inception, TaikOz shared stages with the world’s best and most famous taiko stage artists, placing TaikOz in the upper echelon of understanding, cultural sensitivity and execution.

54 Ibid. 55 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1:4, December 2001. 56 Ibid. 57 Riley Lee relayed: “I have many fond memories of living with Takumi Takano in the 1970s on Sado Island... Takumi is special by anyone’s definition. One very hot and very humid summer’s day, we ran a 53km race around Sado. [Our] leader Den-san had decided that running 53kms without drinking any water along the way, would be good training [for] our next marathon, a mere 42kms… Takumi was first to finish [and] barefoot. No blisters. And his feet weren’t callused to begin with. Years later I asked him how he did it. He replied all he knew was that ‘he couldn’t do such a thing now, as he had come to think that such things are supposed to be impossible’. In the winter, Takumi slept with only one sheet [in conditions…] minus five or less at night. [When asked why] he just laughed his unforgettably infectious laugh and said something like ‘just to tease everyone’. I asked Takumi how he did it. He laughed again and said, ‘I sleep very lightly!’ …Takumi has strong ideas about his art, his teaching and about life. The three, for him, are all the same. The strength of his convictions is easily seen in his playing.” TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1:4, December 2001. 79

This points to their professionalism as musical-technicians, but also their ‘appropriate attitude’ towards taiko – that ill-defined, relatively-new art form that requires belief in and reverence towards those older traditions and adjacent traditions which culminated in, and inspired, taiko’s current forms. In conjunction with this, TaikOz’s winning attitude has involved a whimsical relationship to the impossible, improbable and to the power of convictions, inspired by the likes of their collaborator and friend Takumi-san.

When TaikOz collaborate with genres like dance, videography, classical music and more, TaikOz become ‘taiko players’ relative to their collaborators. While these collaborators could have chosen any other art form to mix with, their explorations with taiko seem deliberate, so why taiko? And whose mythology about taiko excites these collaborators? TaikOz’s merits alone attract wide- ranging artistic partners, but taiko hype generated outside TaikOz also contributes. TaikOz’s collaborations mark TaikOz as experts in something (taiko, but also a hybrid of taiko and contemporary percussion), and as non-racially marked (because taiko is a world phenomenon with only partial histories to Japan) though strikingly non-Japanese bodied. This tension never abates.

Through these collaborations TaikOz learn skills across genres that later inform their taiko practice. On this topic I interviewed TaikOz members. When asked which other taiko groups create comparable work, they named none. On one hand this indicates their version of taiko is unlike others in the global taiko market, and that TaikOz do not look for inspiration within the scene because they are self-made artists striving for independent excellence. On the other hand, it demonstrates humility and their care not to equate TaikOz’s drumming with that of real Japanese traditions and stage arts. When asked which other musical groups in Australia have similar artistic goals or face similar funding constraints, TaikOz members told they do not have the time or will to observe sideways. TaikOz focus on their plight alone, and this indentificatory approach reinforces their isolation and independence; they find no comfort in perspectives that allow for institutional or cultural rationalisations for their local reality. TaikOz feel personal responsibility when their auditoria are half-filled, rather than contextualising the greater forces in Australia’s performance- arts market that affect not only musicians, but theatre, dance and other arts too. By comparing TaikOz and Motoyuki Niwa’s music and collaborations, we see distinct philosophies and art forms under the umbrella term ‘taiko’ that each respond to local commercial constraints.

TaikOz’s Educative Role in Australia TaikOz’s school in Sydney runs daily classes that cater to beginners, intermediates and kids. An auditioned extension program called IDP, ambiguously standing for Independent/Individual 80

Development Program, offers a six-month opportunity for 3-5 committed players. I participated in IDP in 2011 and enjoyed the challenge of memorising more advanced repertory, honing technique, practising long hours and bonding with two other women in the course. We practiced ōdaiko, katsugi-okedo, shimedaiko, hachijo-daiko, shinobue and singing. A TaikOz student ensemble, Taiko no Wa (circle of drums), requested to form in 2007 within TaikOz’s school community. I was a member of Taiko no Wa between 2008 and 2014 so discuss the group’s quirks and unique selling points. Many long-standing members of Taiko no Wa trained in the IDP program, as have interstate taiko leaders like Queenslander, Yukiko Nihei.

Since 2008, TaikOz have run internationally attractive Intensive Training Camps during Australian summers. Originally proposed in a 2001 newsletter as a “5-day intensive [public taiko workshop] at the Powerhouse in Brisbane,”58 the first materialised seven years later as a residential camp in Sydney. I attended the first and many more, enjoying long days of vigorous physical training, friendships, but also bleeding, blistered hands and aching muscles. The inaugural event introduced me to members of Tasmania’s Taiko Drum, international taiko friends from Asia, drummers from Victoria and Queensland and helped me to piece together varying ideas of what taiko meant to these players and what they considered to be traditional or ‘good’ taiko. Divergent definitions emerged, particularly about levels of exuberance and relationships to Japanese traditions.

Each TaikOz Summer Intensive Camp welcomes an esteemed taiko elite as guest instructor. TaikOz also invite taiko leaders, traditional custodians and guest artists to lead public workshops and trainings, mostly in their Sydney dojo at other times of year. Past guests have included Kenny Endo, Tsubasa Hori, Ryutaro Kaneko, Kaoru Watanabe, Chieko Kojima, Yoshikazu Fujimoto, Yosuke Oda, other Kodo members including, Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai, Marco Lienhard, Akio Tsumura and Sons, Tiffany Tamaribuchi, and Hase Mikita. Each star leaves a trace on TaikOz’s school and the wider Australian taiko community who have attended.

To a lesser extent, osmosis from TaikOz’s artistic collaborations influence broader Australian taiko. For example, when TaikOz collaborated with Bell Shakespeare in 2009 on Pericles,59 they brought proprioception-development and bonding exercises into their school. Student Martin Lee reported: Every time TaikOz collaborate with another, they come back a little bit different. This time it’s drama warm-ups. After Tsumura-san it was all about [Miyake principles]. After Kodo 2009 [it was their style tips]... After coming back from Iwasaki [Onikenbai immersion trip] –

58 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1:3, September 2001. 59 Discussed in Chapter 6. 81

you always notice they're different. At first it’s really pronounced and then after a while it melds into them. It's absorbed. When Hase, Eitetsu's protégé, came to Intensive a few years ago, Ian [Cleworth] became obsessed with ‘the whip', 'belly-button bachi', ‘the five points’... yeah, he assimilates.60 This interview excerpt demonstrates how TaikOz students invest substantially in education with international taiko visionaries, through facilitation by TaikOz. TaikOz engineers a learning culture that fosters roots, context and innovation. And TaikOz’s students intently watch their teachers, noticing the influences that stick and that fade.

In TaikOz’s school and at their Intensives, small rituals and traditions frame the space for learning.61 For example, during stretches and warm-ups participants count in Japanese, students participate barefoot or in specialist tabi (soled socks), and the classroom is referred to as dojo, a term that sits uncomfortably for the two TaikOz members who have lived longest in Japan, Masae Ikegawa and Riley Lee. For Lee, dojo means not just a ‘place of practice’ but a host of cultural and disciplinary attitudes, actions and proclivities that are enacted in and on a space, but cannot be assumed to exist just because a space has been delineated. Ikegawa shared Lee’s reservations, explaining: “When I was a kid, our taiko rehearsal space was called dojo. But when I joined a local group when I was 20, it was called o-fis because it was at an office.”62 She continued, “[However,] counting in Japanese and those things, they're important.”63 Ikegawa clarified that while calling the space dojo felt inappropriate, it is important for Australian students to enact some Japanese customs within the space, for example using Japanese phrases of respect like o-negaishimasu for the beginning of class and otsukarasama-deshita in gratitude for hard work at the end. Such rituals situated local students in a differentiated, purposeful space, and this facilitated focus and respectful behaviour. Ikegawa described divisions between Japaneseness and ‘Us’ness, because Australianness defied definition for her: Now lots of groups in Japan don't all play on taiko either. They play on a drum kit. It's really changed from early taiko... We're trying [too hard] to be Japanese… I feel it's a bit forced [when we] ‘take a bow’... We're getting further into Japanese culture as our Japanese contemporaries try to get more Western in their approach.64 That TaikOz, as convertees, overdo cultural markers in their space, to both show respect for Japan

60 Martin Lee, interview with the author, October 29, 2012. 61 The following information stems from my research period 2008-2013 and may not align with TaikOz school’s philosophy in 2020 and beyond. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Masae Ikegawa, interview with the author, November 14, 2012. 82

and to create an extraordinary experience for their customers, echoes how differently originators and those who are ‘later to the party’ can express themselves within parameters of acceptability. As discussed later in this chapter regarding Tokyo International Taiko Contest, the ways Japanese professional taiko culture leads cross-cultural or transcultural influence – like the merging of Western classical music conventions with taiko tropes – operate under separate, unrelated standards to Australian taiko cultures.

Australian Taiko Schools Australian taiko schools recruit and maintain interest using hooks about teamwork, spiritual practice, fitness, meditation, mind-training, discipline and occasionally music. Queenslander Motoyuki Niwa is a pedagogue whose school philosophy provides “enjoyment of drumming and spontaneous harmony with others.”65 He claims “Without any special technique or any special training, you can progress [by] enjoying the sound textures you produce and attuning yourself to other’s (sic) rhythms. His method ‘Taiko Do-zen’66 develops dialogue with body, ‘spiritual ergonomics’ and physical stability, coexistence, and daily practices designed to maintain a balanced life.67 As a business, Taiko Do-zen provides practitioners short- or long-term trainings, presentations and workshops. Motoyuki's live-in workshops involve communion through meal preparation, bush walks, bonfires and physical work, as well as Japanese traditional arts pursuits. Since 1996, Motoyuki’s showcases in schools have helped students to “develop a taste for multicultural performance, which will enrich their lives when they are adults.”68 His philosophy is communicated, and its relationship with his practice is well explained.

While TaikOz’s school and training programs are of high quality, it is unclear how the school reflects the group's performance philosophy. The musical content taught in TaikOz’s school does not resemble their performance material, as amateurs may not derive the same enjoyment from deciphering complex TaikOz repertory practically in the way they enjoy it as audience. TaikOz cater to the community-music and adult education aspects of their customers’ development. TaikOz stream their classes by child age-group and by adult experience level, though in my experience studying for seven years in their school, class objectives and standards varied enormously depending upon the personality of each teacher. No syllabus or obvious progression was offered, and admission in the highest ranked intermediate ‘Elements’ classes depended only on the length of

65 Ibid. 66 Do-zen is one of three phases of Zen meditation: za-zen (sitting), do-zen (moving) and ritsu-zen (standing). 67 “Dozen school,” Motoyuki Niwa website, accessed September 28, 2017, http://mufarm.mond.jp/taiko/taikodozen/index.html. 68 Ibid. 83

time studying and not on skill acquisition. Standards of the classes did not correlate with their labelled levels, but this matched TaikOz’s objective to bring taiko to the masses.

Other Australian taiko teams run schools and perform semi-professionally, just like TaikOz and Motoyuki Niwa, though with individual flavours. Next I introduce discourses each presents to their audiences and prospective students, to make discrete points about recurrent themes. As most taiko groups in Australia practice taiko (rather than perform), training, teaching and learning are integral to explaining their operations. Most sustain themselves financially by offering classes and workshops and supplement this income with performance fees. To a degree, TaikOz fit this category. In presenting Australian taiko teams’ publicity, some material might seem prefaced or repetitive, but it contextualises the volume of taiko discourse publicly available, and how this information leads witnesses away from truths through over-simplification.

I distinguish TaikOz’s art from other Australian taiko practice by assessing their stories. Popular evidence cited in literature points to a perceived ‘Japaneseness outside Japan’ which contrasts with practitioners’ apparent Australianness. All the mentioned parties are engaged in representation, and it is important to conceive ways each navigate dubious concepts of authenticity and exoticism. While TaikOz deal in both foreignness and refinement, their exoticism relates mostly to the institution of classical music TaikOz left behind. Their refinement appears to reflect a dominant way of being, the culture TaikOz members internalised while practicing classical music, and by which they continue to approach taiko. Especially for Ian Cleworth, TaikOz’s Artistic Director, orchestral percussion was his ‘day job’ for more than twenty years. This circumstance influences the way Cleworth learns taiko himself, teaches, composes and supports emerging taiko players. It sets TaikOz’s school apart from other Australian teams’ training methods, and not always positively.

If Motoyuki Niwa typifies the self-made artist channelling real and spiritual artistic practice, the Tasmanian taiko crowd – Taiko Drum, Taiko Oni Jima and PCYC groups from Launceston, and Hikaru Burnie Taiko – epitomise community-groups presenting old and new mythology as though it were continuous and linked. They share Motoyuki's enthusiasm for energy, but refer more commonly to the boisterous variety than an ancient, Zen, liminal sub-force. Hobart team Taiko Drum publicise: “Around the world, taiko is fast becoming synonymous with powerful performance and the tremendous energy it exudes,” confusing what taiko is and how it represents itself.69 Across the Bass Strait, the Melbourne taiko community headed by Toshi Sakamoto of Wadaiko Rindo, is

69 Taiko Drum, www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12, 2017. 84

one of the earliest and steadiest in the Australian scene. It has supported the second wave of emergent teams and growing national taiko culture. Hence, I will begin my overview in Victoria, then circle around Australia’s states and territories, finishing again in Victoria. This allows for an intuitive flow of people and institutions while maintaining a broad chronology. The chapter closes on a discussion about TaikOz’s student offshoot Taiko no Wa, an anomaly in Australia and in world taiko.

Wadaiko Rindo – Melbourne Wadaiko Rindo formed by Toshi Sakamoto in Melbourne one year after TaikOz split from Synergy. Toshi (as his community calls him) began teaching Australians in 1996 and with wife Junko nurtured a performing group beginning 1998.70 Toshi’s school teaches over 100 students per week. The name Wadaiko Rindo, honours his ‘taiko conservation group’ in hometown Kumamoto, Kyushi, he co-founded in 1987. Toshi trained with Takashi Fukuda, a percussionist with the Kumamoto Philharmonic Orchestra, and took intensive lessons from Ondekoza's Yuu Imafuku, and various well-known taiko teams in his area.

Toshi's Melbourne Wadaiko Rindo have performed across Australia and internationally. They are praised for energetic performances, stamina and exuberant humour. Their practice venue is a church hall near the city, a public venue that serves multiple cultural functions, unlike TaikOz's dojo. Their community classes are significantly less expensive than TaikOz’s by 4:1. Wadaiko Rindo publicity celebrates their people’s differing backgrounds: Greek, Chinese, Italian, Jewish Australian, Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, and more. From youth to retirees, “It's an interchange of people from all walks of life.”71 With a strong student base and vibrant community, Wadaiko Rindo are a hub for Australian taiko enthusiasts, often hosting workshops and wadaiko festivals. Rindo’s annual Taiko camp in November and showcase concert in December sell out fast.

Wadaiko Rindo perform to diverse audiences. Between 1998 and 2000, performance highlights included: Sydney Olympic Torch Ceremony Melbourne (VIC), Queensland University Cultural Fiesta in Rockhampton (QLD), Melbourne International Festival (VIC) and F1 Grand Prix Melbourne (VIC). From 2001 to 2007 Wadaiko Rindo toured internationally several times and established regular visits to other Australian cities.72 In December 2013 Toshi's students, Koji

70 Wadaiko Rindo, “Our People,” http://wadaikorindo.com/, accessed August 22, 2020. 71 Wadaiko Rindo, www.wadaikorindo.com/E classes html, accessed August 22, 2020. 72 Wadaiko Rindo wowed Japan Culture Festival (Fiji), Tour of Chinese Dance (China); Japan Concert (Tonga) Japan Festival (New Caledonia), Japanese Drum Recital in Hobart (TAS) and Nara Grove Opening Ceremony (ACT). In Victoria they have featured in Ararat Multicultural Festival, international sports matches, Greek Multicultural 85

Hiraki and Akiko Yura, established a Sydney branch of Wadaiko Rindo.73

Wadaiko Rindo have hosted All Australian Wadaiko Festivals since 2008 where interstate groups converge to share content, style tips, meals and good times. I travelled to Melbourne with Taiko no Wa to participate in the inaugural event. We drummed, sang, played shinobue and danced te-odori (hand dances). Taiko teams present, excluding school groups, were Taiko Drum (TAS), Hikaru (TAS), Murasaki Daiko (VIC),74 Ayako Sato (VIC),75 Taiko no Wa (NSW) and Osuwa-daiko (NSW) a faction of an intangible cultural heritage drum tradition believed to originate from kagura of Shinano Ichinomiya Suwa Shrine around 450 years ago.76 Non-taiko participants in 2008 included Noriko Tadano who shared folk songs and Tsugaru shamisen originals (VIC) and Yokai Nakajima, a Queensland shakuhachi instructor certified by Kotoryu Bamboo Company of the late national master treasure, Goro Yamaguchi.77

Ten years later, Wadaiko Rindo’s All Australian Taiko Festival 2018 saw many new groups participating. The finale concert starred Australia Miyake Kai (national), Taiko Oni Jima (TAS), Matsuri Taiko (SA), Taiko On (WA), Taiko Do (WA), Hung Gar Yau Shu Martial Arts School (VIC), Kanade (QLD), Drum Infinity Mugendai (QLD), UQ Taiko (QLD), Kizuna (QLD), Drumbeat (QLD), Wadaiko Rindo Sydney (NSW), and Taiko no Wa (NSW). Fourteen teams shared the stage with guest artist, renowned katsugi okedaiko player of former Kodo fame, Hiro Hayashida. Evidently interest in taiko in Queensland exploded during the interim decade, and participation in Western Australia also grew.

Festival at Federation Square, Sister City Festivities in Morwell and at a Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. They toured to Canberra, Port Hedland, Karatha, Rockhampton and Cairns, and frequently collaborate with Kizuna Gold Coast Taiko Team and others. In competition with TaikOz, Wadaiko Rindo has accepted gigs in greater Sydney and surrounds too, including Cowra Sakura Festival 2009 and Blue Mountain Music Festival 2010. 73 Wadaiko Rindo, www.wadaikorindo.com, accessed June, 15, 2020. 74 All women group, active 1994 until c.2009. 75 Ayako Sato (later Ayako Tsunazawa) began taiko in Melbourne in 1995, then returned to Japan to form women's drum group ‘WARAKADO’ in Tokyo, specialising in traditional, contemporary and Miyake style drumming. She also plays Korean drums and Brazilian samba with group ‘DAHAHA’. Translated quote from Go Go Melbourne, “All Australian Wadaiko Festival,” September 12, 2008. www.gogomelbourne.com.au/events/report/116.html, accessed July 22, 2020. 75 Go Go Melbourne, “All Australian Wadaiko Festival,” September 12, 2008. 76 Myth about Osuwa-daiko says “In 1561, Shingen Takeda beat this drum in the battle of Kawanakajima to inspire morale among the soldiers at the bottom and win the battle. The Misuwa Taiko is said to be one of Japan's three major taiko drums. In addition to the 600 regional groups throughout Japan, international chapters exist in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Singapore, France, and other countries that promote Japanese drums through international friendship activities.” Translated quote from Go Go Melbourne, “All Australian Wadaiko Festival,” September 12, 2008. https://www.gogomelbourne.com.au/events/report/116.html, accessed July 22, 2020. 77 Go Go Melbourne, “All Australian Wadaiko Festival,” September 12, 2008. https://www.gogomelbourne.com.au/events/report/116 html, accessed July 22, 2020. 86

Taiko Drum – Hobart The Tasmania University Union Taiko Society (TUUTS) formed in 2002 to create opportunities to train, perform and teach “the Japanese Art of the Drum.”78 The society's dynamic performance group, named ‘Taiko Drum’ performs at festivals, concerts, schools, private and corporate functions. Their name is homophonic: ‘drum’ pronounced ‘do-ra-mu’ in Japanese can be rendered in kanji to read ‘tiger dream’. These drummers say do-ra-mu represents their “unique story of losing a local icon,”79 the thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) and that “the presence of its spirit still holds a powerful place in our identity and respects the indigenous custodians of this land.”80

Artistic director 2002-2012, Simon Vanyai, studied taiko in Japan from 1999 where his primary taiko muse was African American Art Lee.81 TUUTS is reliant on university financial and administrative support. Australia Japan Society and the Japan Club of Hobart helped financially launch the Society and have maintained ties to help promote Japanese culture locally. Taiko Drum has evolved dramatically since 2002, as the demand for taiko has grown across Tasmania, with splinter groups forming in Burnie and Launceston. Taiko Drum “constantly create new opportunities for their affiliates.”82

The Tasmanians describe taiko as “a visually spectacular art form, which originated in the festivals and rituals of the agricultural society of ancient Japan. Unlike other ‘high-cultural’ art forms such as Kabuki, Noh, Dancing or Tea Ceremony, taiko culture is community-based, and the most widely practised ‘popular-cultural’ art form in contemporary Japanese society.”83 By explaining that taiko is ubiquitous as matsuri, they say “taiko masters have passed on techniques orally for many hundreds of years.”84 Resonant in this history is a village vibe: “Most performers at such festivals are non-professional, local residents, and many of them are school children. Taiko plays a strong

78 Taiko Resource, http://www.taiko.com/taiko resource/groups a html, accessed July 23, 2014. 79 Taiko Drum, http://www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12,2017. 80 Ibid. 81 Art Lee began taiko study in 1993 with Tiffany Tamaribuchi, who was a prodigy of American taiko forefather Seiichi Tanaka. Lee moved to Japan in 1998 to study with Daihachi Oguchi, who invented kumidaiko. Art Lee was a top performer in the Sacramento Taiko Dan, Za Ondekoza and with Daihachi Oguchi's elite performance group Osuwa Daiko Ashura Gumi. In 2001 Art Lee was awarded the first ever taiko artist visa from the Japanese government to teach in Japan. In 2003 Art Lee created his own professional taiko group, Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara. Tokara debuted throughout North America and Asia in 2004. See www.tokara net/ArtLee/Artprofile.html, accessed May 16, 2020. 82 Taiko Drum website, www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12,2017. 83 “What is taiko?” Taiko Drum website. www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12,2017. 84 Ibid. 87

role in promoting a sense of community, and cultivating teamwork skills among residents.”85

Taiko Drum, after claiming that taiko is an ancient art form passed through intimate teacher-student relations for centuries, turn focus to recent stage taiko: “Over the last fifty years, taiko has become internationally recognised as a form of performance art, and many contemporary drumming groups have formed both in Japan and in other countries… There are more than 8,000 taiko groups in Japan, and several of them conduct international tours.”86 Taiko Drum’s website acknowledges Tasmanian tours by ‘mainland’ Australian drummers,87 establishing Tasmania’s local taiko within a national scene of multiple professional ensembles.

Founder, Simon Vanyai, trained in Japan for four years with a former member of Za Ondekoza and Sacramento Taiko-Dan, Art Lee. Vanyai searched Japan for “the biggest, best, smallest, craziest, loudest, coldest, and generally most intriguing local festivals Japan has to offer, many of which incorporate in the celebrations rhythms passed on through generations.”88 Taiko Drum hence value fun, support, growth and festivity. Since 2012, senior students have run Taiko Drum by committee, as Vanyai moved to Perth and formed Taiko On.89 Taiko Drum invite diverse members: “Some are University students of Japanese or Asian Studies who are eager to learn more about Asian Culture through practical experience. Some have lived in Japan and have come into contact with, or played taiko before... Others are likely to travel and live in Japan in the future, and it is our hope that we can foster an interest in taiko which they can expand on later in Japan.”90 Members presume those fostered will return to “inject new techniques, styles and ideas into Tassie Taiko.”91 Some students are into martial arts, percussion and Eastern philosophy, while others “are simply interested in [taiko’s] potential to develop in Tasmania.”92

In Taiko Drum’s education program, a participant will “learn to move, beat, and shout like a Sumo Samurai Drummer!”93 These popular icons of Japan might incite pleasure and laughter, but do obscure origins and mythologies about taiko. This statement reflects assumptions made by a broader public, but is not intended to affiliate Samurai, Sumo or other drumming cultures with taiko

85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Taiko On, https://www.taiko-on.com/about-taiko-on, accessed May 16, 2020. 90 “What is taiko?” Taiko Drum website. www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12, 2017. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 “Training,” Taiko Drum website, www.taikodrum.com, accessed March 12, 2017. 88

necessarily. Yet to the uninitiated, these unrelated things could send a confusing message. Taiko Drum attract customers to ‘have a go’ with marketing using exoticist hyperbole. Taiko Drum also encourage enthusiasts to “experience the thrill of performing as an essential element of training [because] performing enables members to challenge themselves and their nerves [and thus] hone their mental and physical skills.”94 Around 50 of these Tasmanians train three nights a week, and many others participating in special workshops at taiko events. New trainees are always welcome at their Hobart Showgrounds dojo.95 Their training starts from basics, teaches “the fundamental rhythmic patterns from which Taiko is (sic) evolved [and looks at] all aspects of Wadaiko which distinguish it from other percussion.”96

Taiko Drum members build and maintain most of their instruments. However, in 2003 a Professor Miyamoto donated four shime-daiko on behalf of Mie University, Japan. The drums helped Taiko Drum extend repertoire and “add more colour to performances.”97 Using “Time Honoured Tradition [Taiko Drum make] simple instruments of timber, leather and steel tacks… but the craft of building a drum is a highly technical and refined art.”98 Taiko Drum publicity contextualises the physical and durational cost of building drums: “Traditional taiko start from a tree stump which is slowly and carefully hollowed out over a period of months, then carved by hand to achieve a sturdy, beautifully proportioned shell. Due the time and labour involved, the price of a taiko drum can be more than a family car.”99 Taiko Drum reduced their costs by making seven Tassie nagado-daiko (barrel drums) locally out of recycled wine barrels. These light-weight frames can “stand up to the heavy beating that taiko demands.”100 They host regular drum-making workshops for those interested in hands-on experience. “There are no costs associated, just good fun hard work.”101 In 2009 I joined Taiko Drum members in Launceston, Tasmania at a drum-making weekend held in conjunction with an i- aido (the way of harmonising oneself in action, by artfully drawing a sword) festival. At a private home workshop they stretched hides and canvas ‘skins’, cut PVC piping to shape, and intricately laced shime-daiko ropes to skins. Marcus Tatton of Log Drums taught the drum-skinning. Previously, John Murphy of the Tasmanian Cask Company built their ōdaiko, and lent Taiko Drum his workshop-space.

94 Ibid. 95 Taiko Resource, accessed March 12, 2017, http://www.taiko.com/taiko resource/groups a.html. 96 “Training,” Taiko Drum. Ibid. 97 “Our Shimedaiko Drums,” Ibid. 98 “Our drums,” Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 “Modern ingenuity,” Ibid. 101 “Our drums,” Ibid. 89

Taiko Drum reach out to and integrate the wider community by sourcing ideas, methods and skills locally. Thus they engage a broader demographic with the taiko culture they create. While TaikOz have commissioned drums to be built in Tasmania, their majority of instruments are imported from Japan and Asia and are made by distinguished taiko brands like Asano. TaikOz do not engage the community in drum building events though occasionally TaikOz invite their student body of doting fans to clean their dojo and drum skins in working bees. Helpers are not paid financially or by good-will exchanges of services, skills or discounted concert tickets. TaikOz students are expected to be grateful for the insider peak at TaikOz operations. As such, the community structure of Tasmanian taiko players is more cordial than in Sydney.

Hikaru (Burnie Taiko) – Burnie, TAS Burnie Taiko are an independent Tasmanian group, but appear like a regional subsidiary of Taiko Drum. Their alternate name Hikaru means 'to shine'.102 They use a mitsu-domoe symbol (three interlocking commas, tripartite variant of yin-yang) as their logo, considering it “the internationally recognised symbol for taiko.”103 Since 2004 they have built many of their drums, “using traditional methods” learnt from Hobart taiko players.104 Burnie Taiko has received sponsorship and support from Burnie City Council, Regional Arts Fund and Tasmanian Community Fund. Burnie Taiko provides taiko training and drumming workshops and is available for event bookings. The group trains once a week with graded levels proceeding from beginners to intermediate and performance- repertoire. Participation and fun are their central tenets.

Burnie Taiko's website shares a simplified taiko history: “[wadaiko] originated in ancient Japan as a means of communication within villages, and also during ceremonies to help bring about a good harvest. It was also used during wartime, as the sound carried well over long distances.”105 Hikaru explain taiko “has become a dynamic and spectacular art form which is heard on streets, in concert halls, and at a wide variety of events in Japan and throughout the world.”106 They casually cluster unrelated Japanese and non-Japanese drumming cultures here. While taiko does exist in matsuri, in classical theatre, on concert stages world-wide, with orchestras, in alternative iterations in North America fuelled by identity politics, and in remote Australian towns, these cultures do not share significant linear or lateral relationships, so Hikaru’s claim of coherence (and inter-relation) links unconnected doppelgängers.

102 Burnie Taiko, www.burnietaiko.com, accessed June 22, 2014. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 90

Burnie Taiko is an amateur group that capitalises on inclusion and participation. They too invite new-comers to act like “Sumo Samurai Drummers” borrowing verbatim from Taiko Drum.107 Drum training they provide focuses on stretching and flexibility; relaxation and breathing; energy release and improvisation; movement and form; endurance and control; coordination and balance; focus and awareness; and finally “rhythm and music.” 108 Despite the rigorous training they offer, they insist that taiko is “relatively simple [and that] no musical experience is necessary.”109 Hikaru suggest anyone can pick up bachi and play: “Not surprisingly, beating the living hell out of a drum with huge sticks is terrifically satisfying, and great stress relief. But more than that, most people find it really rewarding to work in a team, overcome trials and celebrate achievements together.”110 While they champion the social function of taiko, Hikaru contradict or obscure taiko cultures that are sensitive, subtle, sensual, refined, reflective, historically elite and culturally meaningful, in favour of inclusion and participation. Their violent suggestions are of the kind TaikOz continually strive to realign in public discourse. To thrash a drum is offensive to TaikOz members who believe, due to their rigorous study in Japan with traditionalists and contemporary stage proponents, that taiko instruments are sacred for their musical prospects, as beautiful objects, and as symbols of an ‘old Japan’. TaikOz’s taiko is no more Japanese than Hikaru’s, or necessarily traditional, but it places value on reverence, and a reverence that disdains brutality. Hikaru’s communication perpetuates unfavourable interpretations of ‘all taiko’. TaikOz’s efforts to present nuanced truths about taiko using language accessible to everyone are diluted and negated by discourses like Hikaru’s, even though their products and practices share few traits.

Taiko Oni Jima – Launceston, TAS In Launceston, Taiko Oni Jima (Drum Devil Island), is led by Mark Brown and Yyan Ng. They run classes at the PCYC gym and have a children's performance group called Show Taiks.111 Both men attended TaikOz's first January Intensive in 2008, and both have played with Taiko Drum. Ex-police Mark Brown now trains weight-lifters, especially women from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yyan Ng is an architect and chef who also plays shakuhachi, shinobue and various instruments in rock bands. They perform and teach taiko semi-professionally. In my experience training with Launceston players in 2009 and 2014, their classes were professionally taught, safe and friendly.

107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Launceston PCYC Taiko, https://www.pcyclaunceston.org.au/taiko-drumming, accessed October 23, 2020. 91

Kaze no Ko – Perth Kaze no Ko, ‘Children of the Wind’, ran Perth’s only taiko drumming classes from 2007 until 2012. Led by privacy-conscious ‘Helen’ who learnt in Yamaguchi, they love taiko because “it is rhythmic, athletic, non-competitive, social, and best of all, really noisy.”112 The Kaze no Ko style “incorporates some of the traditional aspects of taiko such as spirituality, Japanese terms, discipline and respect for the instruments and each other.”113 Kaze No Ko drumming is suitable for everybody, especially, they say, if you would like to improve your coordination, fitness and musicality.

Taiko On - Perth Taiko On formed in 2012, led by Simon Vanyai (formerly of Taiko Drum). In Perth they perform nearly every week at diverse events. In 2017 they played at: the Filipino Independence Day celebration in Newman, Brainchild Ball (fundraiser to cure paediatric brain cancer), Multicultural Eid Carnival, the HBF Run for a Reason (with two-hours of straight yatai-bayashi114), Boobilicious Ball, and the Freo Dockers Opening, Subiaco Street Party, Joondalup Festival, Perth Japan Festival 2017, Corymbia Multicultural Festival, Dunsborough Art Festival, Lunar New Year at Westfield Carousel, and amusing diversion “Taiko-On Meets Ramen Samurai.”115 Their immaculate website documents events and community engagement well in text and image. Taiko On regularly collaborate with Sanshi of ‘Didgeridoo Dojo’.116

Taiko Do – Secret Harbour, WA Taiko Do, see taiko as “communication of Ki energy between each of the performers, the performers with their instruments, and the performers with their audience.”117 Their website says: Imagine martial arts movement fused with rhythm making... Origins can be traced to the Silk Road route. Once arriving into Japan, drums were adapted [into] ceremony, festivals and village rituals, Japanese Imperial court music and traditional theatre, as well as in warfare to intimidate the enemy and to communicate commands… [Since 1950] Taiko evolved into a highly choreographed & dynamic [ensemble] style… for the world stage, a

112 Kaze no Ko website, www.kazenoko.com.au, accessed July 13, 2014. 113 Ibid. 114 A taiko piece, form, even genre, that is considered traditional by international taiko players, but that was made famous in Japan by non-local borrowers of the festival piece from Saitama. Discussed in Chapter 5, Shifting Sand. 115 Taiko On, https://www.taiko-on.com/what-s-on, accessed August 17, 2017. 116 Didgeridoo Dojo, https://www.didgeridoodojo.com/, accessed August 22, 2020. 117 Taiko Do, http://taikodo.com.au/, accessed February 15, 2020. 92

discipline and a cultural expression. Most importantly it’s about team and community.118 Taiko Do teaches weekly classes at the local Surf Club and offers workshops for 10-40 participants. They advertise: “[Research shows] taiko can improve your concentration, immune responses [and] increase your sense of belonging.”119 Taiko Do was founded by Treoen Phillips and wife Carole in 2016 after trips to Japan where they worked with Art Lee and his group Wadaiko Tokara. Their Perth school has around 30 members, from which an exclusive performance team was created in 2018. Taiko Do are keen to develop and share “their own unique Taiko voice.”120

Ataru Taru Taiko, SA Ataru Taru Taiko claims to be the first taiko group in Australia, founded in 1995 to promote “authentic traditional Japanese drumming and masked folk theatre.”121 In 1997 Ataru Taru Taiko was the first Australian group invited to tour Japan.122 Formed in South Australia by Kaori Kamei, Paulene Thomas and Harold Gent, Ataru Taru Taiko offers specialised programs for children, and has presented at government, corporate and sporting events, festivals, theatrical shows and television promotions.123 Gent spent eleven years training and performing with Katari Taiko of Vancouver, Canada; Thomas spent three years in Japan training at the Kyoto Taiko Centre and with Shachi Taiko of Himeji in the 1990s; and Kamei is formerly of Kobe, Japan.

Matsuri Taiko – Adelaide

Matsuri Taiko in South Australia (formerly Atsui no Taiko or Hot Taiko) formed in 2003 at Flinders Street School of Music. Their promotional images suggest this group consists of three women only. Like TaikOz, the group is made up of percussionists who have studied at higher learning institutions including The University of Adelaide's Elder Conservatorium. Members travelled to Japan in 2007 and 2008 to study with their sensei Masaaki Kurumaya. Matsuri Taiko offer workshops for schools, and their performance highlights include Adelaide Fringe Festival, OzAsia Festival, Moon Lantern Festival, events at wineries, JAFA children's festival, and the Multicultural South Australian Police Tattoo.124 Their brand of taiko is popular there, given the range of venues and client demographics: “Matsuri Taiko will come to you and provide a hands-on Japanese Drumming experience ideal for many situations, including: Business team building, School Music or Japanese programs, Youth

118 Taiko Do, “What is Taiko?” http://taikodo.com.au/what-is-taiko/, accessed February 15, 2020. 119 Taiko Do, “Classes,” http://taikodo.com.au/classes/, accessed February 15, 2020. 120 Ibid. 121 Gerry Bloustien, Musical Visions, Wakefield Press, 1999, 166. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. 124 Matsuri Taiko, www.matsuritaiko.com.au/about-us.php, accessed February 15, 2020. 93

groups.”125 Another all-female Australian taiko group was Murasaki Daiko, active 1994 to c.2009 in Victoria, that seems to have dissolved. Murasaki Daiko was inspired by the enthusiasm and energy of Japanese taiko, and when the three members collided in Melbourne, they discovered the mutual charm of taiko rhythms.126

Rhythm Hunters – Gosford, NSW Rhythm Hunters, formed 2004, are based in New South Wales’ Central Coast. They grew organically from drum and spiritual hub ‘Rhythm Hut’, opened in 2001.127 Not strictly a taiko group, they blend sounds from Indonesia, Japan, Africa and modern day Australia to “mesmerise and captivate [audiences with] cutting edge physical percussion, didgeridoo, Western horns, Asian flute, deep grooves and ethereal soundscapes.”128 Their edge, they claim, is in “delivering a visual fusion of new approaches to drumming, indigenous songs, sharp melodic breaks with strong influences from the shamanic traditions of Sumatra, Indonesia.”129 Rhythm Hunters have performed on main-stages at Woodford Folk Festival, National Folk Festival, The Dreaming Festival, Cygnet Folk Festival, and Island Vibe. They have also drummed at Parliament House Canberra, Sydney Town Hall, Crown Casino Melbourne, The Hilton, Luna Park and for Sydney’s annual Carols in the Domain.

Though performing at cosmopolitan spaces and popular music festivals as TaikOz do, Rhythm Hunters enact a different process of music making to TaikOz. Run by Central Coast hippies and hipsters, Rhythm Hunters claim to have “power, pizzaz (sic.), funk, innovation and hard old-school discipline which is being delicately channeled (sic.) into their irresistible sound and Sweet Indo- Pacific Grooves.”130 Rendra Freestone, of “Acehenese (sic.) heritage”131 leads the group in the style of taiko drumming he has developed alongside “shamanic Sufi-like traditions of Indonesia.”132 Their taiko is about self-expression through liberal World Music fusions. Rhythm Hunters unapologetically adopt and adapt cultural objects perceivable as ‘other’ yet freely available for appropriation, while TaikOz very cautiously study a handful of Japanese performance arts which they believe to be traditional or extremely professional, refined, contemporary re-imaginings of

125 Ibid. 126 Murasaki Daiko, www.jfp.org.au/archive/murasaki daiko.html, accessed May 1, 2009. 127 The Rhythm Hut, https://therhythmhut.com.au/our-story, accessed August 12, 2020. 128 Rhythm Hunters, www.therhythmhunters.com/about-us, accessed July 27, 2014. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 94

Japaneseness. When TaikOz include Tibetan temple bell, drum-kit or Ghanaian drum in their compositional mix, they do so as an homage to their Western percussive training and not as a free- for-all World Music mash-up. TaikOz justify their appropriation as specifically for the sound qualities available on these ‘foreign’ instruments, and not for any inherent foreignness signified.

Rhythm Hunters perform difference and politically-correct inclusion simultaneously through sensualism. For this they are highly praised, as evidenced in testimonials published on their website: “The seemingly esoteric music has tightness, flair and a love of traditions…I see Rhythm Hunters becoming a force in World music and indigenous Music genres.”133 Keith Preston - Manager Art Beat. “Drums combined with the poetics of martial arts was irresistible.”134 - Lisa- Maree Botticelli, Australian Stage Online. “A force of nature… it feels like you have slipped inside an ancient myth or otherworld.” Steve Gadd - Director Cygnet Folk Festival.135

New England Taiko – Armidale, NSW University of New England (UNE) Taiko is led by Associate Professor Hugh de Ferranti who trained in musicology and composition at the University of Sydney, before spending decades studying in Japan. In 2003, he returned to Australia to join the Asian languages and cultures division of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at UNE, until moving to the Music division in 2008.136 De Ferranti has always worked with Japanese poetic narratives and their musical vehicles, the singing and declaiming voice, and instrumental sound. He has published about biwa and other Japanese traditional musical cultures. De Ferranti has guided New England Taiko, a festival percussion group playing matsuri-bayashi on instruments donated by community musicians of Kanuma, Armidale's sister city in Japan. The group performs at university community functions where instrumental and vocal music is shared along with calligraphy, clothing, martial arts, games, animated film and food.

Stonewave Taiko – Bega, NSW Stonewave Taiko, formed 2013, is based in wilderness of New South Wales’ southeast coast. A “highly skilled group of community performers led by professional musician David Hewitt [that] boasts over 40 members from a diversity of ages and walks of life. Stonewave Taiko seeks to create a unique Australian expression of taiko with a rural heartbeat.”137 Their mission is to blend “ancient

133 All three testimonials cited on Rhythm Hunters website, Ibid., accessed July 27, 2014. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Hugh de Ferranti bio, https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/hass/hdeferra, accessed February 15, 2020. 137 Stonewave Taiko Bega, https://stonewavetaiko.com/, accessed May 15, 2020. 95

traditions with our contemporary Australian sensibility – creating a new chapter in the story of taiko in Australia. Stonewave Taiko has performed at regional festivals including Four Winds, Eden Whale Festival, Cobargo Folk Festival, Tathra Enduro, and their drumming opened the Bega Civic Centre on Australia Day 2016. Stonewave Taiko facilitated the setting up of TaikoDrumWorks, Australia’s only taiko drum design and manufacturing company, handcrafting from local materials, based in Tathra, NSW.138

Tatsuo Sekiguchi, Osuwa Daiko Australia – Sydney Rogue taiko player and karate enthusiast, Tatsuo Sekiguchi, was born and raised in Nagano, Japan. “He is from an ethnic Taiko group called the OSUWA DAIKO (御諏訪太鼓) in his hometown. To him, Osuwa Daiko has probably the richest ethic, cultural & traditional resources, richer than any country in the world.”139 Tats (preferred name) has performed taiko at Uluru, and in Cairns for dignitaries as part of the 2006 Australia Japan Year of Exchange.140 He does not appear to affiliate with other taiko groups in Australia.

YuNiOn – Sydney Formed in 2005 by Masae Ikegawa and Graham Hilgendorf, YuNiOn has increased its public presence since its members split from TaikOz in recent years.141 YuNiOn sounds like ‘union’ and means ‘blend two sounds’, implying a mix of Japanese and Australian elements. YuNiOn duo describes their musical journeys as “fun, open and soulful.”142 Members are seasoned performers having drummed in the most prestigious concert halls as well as for schools through Musica Viva since 1991. Their activities can be tailored to focus on music, Japanese culture, health and body awareness. YuNiOn travel Australia and New Zealand frequently, supporting fledgling taiko communities through workshops and family-fun trainings. They are among the most trained and accomplished taiko players in Australia, and have whole-heartedly supported Taiko no Wa both as members of TaikOz and afterwards.

Taiko no Wa – Sydney Taiko no Wa translates as ‘circle of taiko’, capturing the inclusive multiculturalist ideals of a drum circle, but it also alludes to circular gestures of taiko players, and imagery such as tomoe.143 In a

138 Ibid. 139 Tats Osuwa, www.tatsosuwa.com, accessed July 19, 2020. 140 Ibid. 141 YuNiOn, https://www.yunion.org, accessed March 11, 2017. 142 Ibid. 143 Taiko no Wa fee page, TaikOz website, accessed August 20, 2020, 96

rougher transliteration it hints ‘drums of Japan’. Their webpage, containing just two paragraphs, says “The circle image also serves as a reminder of the constant cycle of learning that is fundamental to the practice of wadaiko.”144 Taiko no Wa formed in 2007 when students from TaikOz’s school requested an opportunity for unsupervised group practice using TaikOz’s facilities. Taiko no Wa are an anomaly in Australian taiko because they are the off-shoot group of professional musicians. Membership is open to TaikOz students who have drummed for longer than a year and who are currently paying TaikOz for at least one taiko class per week. During my participation with the group between 2008-2014 many Taiko no Wa members attended more than four TaikOz group classes per week, each costing around $40. Then, Taiko no Wa’s policy claimed to be inclusive but was unsupportive of growth, as ‘senior members’ of the student body ran the group by committee to ensure they retained power. The committee liaised with TaikOz to source repertory, unwanted TaikOz gigs (those that did not pay enough for TaikOz to accept) and occasional musical guidance, but the committee were not superior drummers or musicians. TaikOz tightly curated Taiko no Wa’s internet presence, permitting only one page of information on a subset of TaikOz’s website, containing no images and no videos. Between 2007-2014, only one snippet of footage of Taiko no Wa existed online, their version of Yatai-bayashi at a Sydney suburban festival.145

In 2011 Taiko no Wa won Tokyo International Taiko Competition, the final year the contest ran. I detail this at the end of this chapter. Taiko no Wa described themselves, on a Pozible campaign to fund their 2012 return performance in Tokyo, as “a group of individuals of all backgrounds who come together to play taiko... We're all amateur percussionists – our teachers are TaikOz, the internationally-renowned Australian taiko group, and they generously provide the space, instruments and training that has seen us rise from strength to strength.”146 This publicity hints at the group’s troubled dynamics where individuals, without cohesion, clawed at recognition in an activity they saw as non-indigenous to themselves, in parasitic relationship with TaikOz’s resources and acclaim. Between 2014-2019 culture in Taiko no Wa may have improved, particularly in relation to TaikOz who have included some performing members in TaikOz shows147 to boost outreach, and to incentivise these long-term TaikOz school investors to continue.

https://www.taikoz.com/courses/taiko-no-wa-annual-membership-2020-full-year-2020. 144 Ibid. 145 Illawarra Folk Club, “Taiko no Wa at Illawarra Folk Festival 2014,” published Jan 19, 2014, accessed August 28, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D86jLVqFG4. 146 Taiko no Wa, Pozible, www.pozible.com/index.php/archive/index/7131/description/0/0, accessed July 17, 2014. 147 Taiko no Wa fee page, TaikOz website, accessed August 20, 2020. 97

During my fieldwork Taiko no Wa had no autonomous mission or self-constructed identity, and this set them apart from every other taiko troupe worldwide. As doting minions of TaikOz they dared not contradict TaikOz’s community-music vision for them, which differed from TaikOz’s stage brand dramatically. For example, when Taiko no Wa competed in Tokyo International Taiko Contest, they played a composition by TaikOz’s Ian Cleworth, not by them. In fieldwork, I observed this as an interactional dynamic co-created with their mentors. TaikOz encouraged students to attend TaikOz’s school indefinitely and did not endow students with skills that could compromise TaikOz’s market dominance. During my research period TaikOz classes serviced adult community- musicians, while TaikOz sourced new performing members from classical music spheres, not their own school. Taiko no Wa reflected this directionlessness while simultaneously pursuing ambitious international recognition.

My seven-year participation in, and fieldwork about, Taiko no Wa illustrated that their understanding of taiko culture at large came from TaikOz’s school and not from an interest in international taiko. Like most taiko groups, their lived tradition was known and transmitted internally. Yet Taiko no Wa members constructed a place and purpose in which to practice taiko that was law-abiding and artless. They mimicked, they absorbed, they regurgitated, though fun was largely absent and in this way their drumming was unlike taiko in Australia or abroad. They were neither creators nor participants in their own creations, but rather slaves to a tradition they believed was not their own. I found Taiko no Wa rehearsals tense, accusatory, dysfunctional, and unmusical, but without a redeeming glow of shared delight of some professional, semi-professional and amateur musical ensembles across genres. Culture in Taiko no Wa began to change for the better when TaikOz opened their Onikenbai Club, discussed in Chapter 7. I conclude this chapter discussing Taiko no Wa in comparison to Tasmania’s Taiko Drum, as critiqued by senior Kodo member Yoshikazu Fujimoto in 2011, before closing on Taiko no Wa’s two appearances in Tokyo, in 2011 then 2012, and what their successes there could mean about the future of taiko internationally.

Kizuna: Gold Coast Taiko Team – Gold Coast, QLD Kizuna was established in 2008 by former TaikOz student, Yukiko Nihei. Kizuna represents the thread between family, friends, cultures and even countries, so Kizuna members believe themselves to be a powerful medium to create “a positive bond between the people of Australia and Japan.”148 The group has roughly fifteen members, not all of whom perform at each event. Their group

148 Kizuna, www.kizuna.com.au/about us html, accessed August 22, 2020. 98

receives ongoing training from professional taiko players from Australia and Japan. In 2014 Yukiko Nihei undertook TaikOz's IDP scholarship, and she shares these skills now with her community.149

Toko-Ton Taiko – Brisbane

Three Brisbane taiko players form Toko-Ton Taiko. Members Chie Mason and Shinobu Takebata from Japan and Australian Steve Mason seek to entertain and inspire audiences with a combination of movement, rhythm and “sensitivity delivery through the traditional Japanese energetic art form called wadaiko.”150 Since 2012 they have performed and offered workshops and festivals, but do not teach. Their name mimics vocables used to teach basic taiko rhythms but also means ‘thoroughly, 100%’ describing their commitment to entertainment.

UQ Taiko – Brisbane University of Queensland Japanese Taiko Drumming Team, UQ Taiko, is a not-for-profit, community team based in Brisbane, established March 2014. Within two years they had 150 members from 19 different countries. Their website explains “[Taiko is] traditional Japanese music and art that combines powerful beats with dynamic movements. Although intimately a part of Japanese culture for over 1,000 years, [taiko is now popular worldwide]... We are spreading the ‘Taiko Love’!!!”151 From humble beginnings striking upturned laundry baskets, UQ Taiko drummers now play okedo funded by an online Kickstarter fundraiser. They hold weekly practice sessions at University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus, where they develop drumming skills and learn songs to perform for schools and corporate events. Their repertory consists of traditional Japanese festival taiko, pieces inspired by North American taiko style, and original compositions. They exclaim “We express using our whole bodies - from the tips of our toes to the tips of our fingers (including our voices!)”152 and they share TaikOz’s concept of minna no taiko (taiko is for anyone and everyone).

Cairns Taiko – Cairns, QLD

Cairns Taiko operate as a kumi-daiko group, with classes for and performances by adults and kids. All about inclusion, they recruit business via social media and word-of-mouth, saying: “Join us!

149 Ibid. 150 Toko-ton Taiko, www.tokotontaiko.com, accessed July 7, 2014. 151 UQ Taiko, https://iml.uq.edu.au/current-students/clubs-societies/uq-japanese-taiko-drumming-team, accessed August 23, 2020. 152 Ibid. 99

Even if you have never drummed before or know little about Japanese culture, we will make you very welcome… Players pay only $10 (for venue hire and drum maintenance) per session.”153 In only their Japanese version website, they recruited new members with a different tone, “If you want to hit the drums, you want to learn, regardless of nationality, age, gender, history of music, contact us.”154 In 2014 Cairns Taiko built new drums out of wine-barrels. This process is documented on their website with tips to others.155 Founding members built their first set of five nagado and two shime-daiko from cow-hide stretched over industrial-sized PVC pipes.156 Their two smaller ‘rope- shime drums’ were shipped from Japan thanks to a $1000 grant from the Brothers Leagues Club, Cairns.157 In 2013, new katsugi-okedo from Japan could not be shipped, so group members had friends carry them back to Australia as personal hand luggage; the wider community is engaged in menial tasks that validate and facilitate this group’s art. Cairns Taiko repertory includes taiko ‘anthems’ on high rotation: Matsuri, Miyake, Yatai-bayashi and Buchi-awase. Other pieces include Noboriuchi, Isami-Goma about brave galloping horses; and Taiza with audience participation and cries of ‘Yoisa Yoisa!’.158 Cairns Taiko perform at community events like Chinese New Year Celebrations; Roller Derby; charity events, school fetes, Japan Expo; Sister Cities National Day; James Cook University O-Week, for martial arts events and at Tropical Wave Festival.

Drum ∞ (Mugendai) – Cairns, QLD

Cairns taiko collective ‘Drum ∞ (Infinity Mugendai Inc)’ founded in 2016 with seven members and have grown to 25 strong in 2020. Players gain fitness, teamwork and confidence through regular and personal taiko and shinobue practice. They have performed at TEDx JCU Cairns, National Basketball League games and many festival and school events. Drum ∞ uses “holistic methodology to promote, enhance and improve the performances… stage craft, costume making, graphic artistry, management, and networking.”159 Drum ∞ proposed ‘Fanta-Stick Taiko Beat Project 2019’ for Australian Cultural Fund’s Community Arts & Cultural Development program, an Australian Government support through the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. The concert’s main attraction would be their joint performance with Taiko Master Hiro Hayashida and his team ZI-PANG. It is unclear whether they made their financial

153 Cairns Taiko English Site, www.cairnstaiko.com/about/join-us, accessed May 5, 2017. 154 Cairns Taiko Japanese Site, http://www.cairnstaiko.com/japanese, accessed May 5, 2017. 155 Cairns Taiko, “Our Drums,” http://www.cairnstaiko.com, accessed May 5, 2017. 156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 158 Ibid. 159 Cairns Arts and Culture Map, “Drum Mugendai listing,” https://cairnsartsandculturemap.com.au/drum-mugendai, accessed August 22, 2020. 100

target, but Hiro Hayashida did appear at the All Australian Wadaiko Festival in Melbourne that year, where Mugendai attended. On their fundraising page they declaimed:

We [aim] at exposing the wider community to this ancient Japanese form of percussion music. During the 1900’s, Taiko drumming became a musical art form that involved a music ensemble and tightly choreographed movements. Taiko playing is loud, hard, and fast, and involves a lot of choreograph[y] which many identify with Japanese martial arts. [We want to] achieve ‘the ultimate expression of taiko’, when the art becomes a part of the player’s personality, a way of being and life expression.160

Mugendai seeks to learn from ‘real taiko’ masters and their members believe “There are no Taiko masters in Australia.”161 They add, “We need to invite these masters from Japan, but funding for these opportunities is extremely difficult.”162 Mugendai supports nearby teams too.

Three other Queensland groups have formed in recent years. Tower Taiko Inc in Charters Towers, QLD, inland of Townsville, started a Facebook page in late 2018.163 They are a non-profit organisation who bring taiko to their local community. They have shared in workshops with Mugendai members since 2018.164 The same year TaikoBeato (太鼓人) formed on the Gold Coast. Their name plays on the homophone of Japanese ‘taiko playing people’ and English ‘drum beat’. These players “explore rhythms from diverse cultures that carry their own stories and [we] pass them on through our Taikobeat.”165 Townsville held a Taiko Festival in October 2018 that brought together Mugendai Drum ∞, Towers Taiko and new group Kanade (奏 Play) who have yet to build an online presence.166 This was sponsored by Townsville City Council and Australia Japan Society North Queensland.167

Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Northern Territory (NT) My searches have yielded no taiko teams in Australia’s Territories, though players may practice privately without media interfaces. Canberra is serviced by professional performances from TaikOz, and groups including YuNiOn, and Wadaiko Rindo Sydney routinely travel south to offer

160 Ibid. 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 Presumably, this aligns with operations beginning. Towers Taiko Inc, Facebook. 164 Towers Taiko Inc, Facebook 165 TaikoBeato, Facebook. 166 Townsville Taiko Festival, Facebook, www facebook.com/events/the-strand-townsville-city-qld-4810- australia/townsville-taiko-festival/158368744838402, accessed August 20, 2020. 167 Ibid. 101

workshops. In Darwin ‘Australian Japanese Association of the NT Inc’ (AJANT) hosts cultural events featuring kendo, soran bushi dance and taiko.168 Footage of the 2016 Japan festival day includes an arrangement from Nebuta matsuri played by three drummers, one who sounds to be whistling a melody.169 In Darwin Kiyomi Calwell, a primary teacher, leads taiko teams in schools.170 Students hit upturned outdoor rubbish bins with tomoe symbols taped to their plastic bin- base ‘skins’ as they learn about “the dynamism and spirits of the taiko.” 171

Anne Norman – Melbourne Anne Norman, shakuhachi player and taiko enthusiast, has since 1997 delivered Japanese music demonstrations and story-telling in schools throughout Australia as a soloist and in combination with Toshi Sakamoto. Together they offer “highly energetic, visually exciting and entertaining Japanese music performance incorporat[ing] performance and audience participation to give students a greater understanding of Japan, both culturally and historically.”172 She presents on shakuhachi and yokobue (flutes), taiko and other percussion instruments. Students join in the drumming, songs and festival dancing. Demonstration are offered also in Japanese language. Norman has performed through Nexus Arts in every Australian state and territory.

A.Ya – Melbourne A.Ya: Japanese Instruments & Taiko Explosion is the duo of Ayako Tsunazawa (drums) and Ayako Fujii (drums and flutes). A crossover between modern original compositions and traditional styles with unique Japanese instruments, they have performed at festivals, schools, universities and ‘cooperation events’ across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.173 Fujii graduated Osaka College of Music in 1990 but began playing Japanese traditional instruments (taiko, sanshin and shinobue) only after graduating. She composes and arranges original music for these traditional instruments, and regularly travels to Japan for additional tuition. Fujii also completed a Diploma of Music from Monash University in 2014. Ayako Tsunasawa began taiko in 1996, and formed women’s taiko group Warakado in Japan in 1999. She has studied Brazilian Samba percussion under Ryo Watanabe, and has trained in famous traditional Miyake-daiko under Mr Tsumura who

168 AJANT Events, https://www.ajant.org/events html, accessed August 31, 2020. 169 YouTube, “Rearranged NEBUTA Festival,” AJANT Japanese Cultural Day (Bunka no hi) 2016 in Darwin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time continue=122&v=uEtUG ARSOw&feature=emb logo, accessed August 24, 2020. 170 Darwin High School, Online Newsletter, https://darwinhigh.nt.edu.au/news/drumming-up-a-stor, accessed August 31, 2020. 171 Ibid. 172 Anne Norman, http://annenorman.com, accessed September 2, 2020. 173 A.Ya, https://ayayamusica.wixsite.com/a-ya, accessed April 13, 2020. 102

also taught his style to Kodo.174 Since 2012 Tsunazawa has organised national renshu group ‘Australia Miyake Kai’, recognised by traditional Japanese custodians, Miyake-Jima Geino Doshi- Kai.175

Australia Miyake Kai – Melbourne, Sydney and Cairns Australia Miyake Kai started in 2012 to provide taiko workshops, performances and demonstrations at festivals and events in Melbourne of specific miyake style. Australia Miyake Kai, Melbourne faction, regularly runs practice sessions in Collingwood. Australia Miyake Kai is officially recognized by Miyake-jima Geino Doshi-kai in Japan, along with sister practice groups in Singapore and the United States. The contextualise their tradition: “‘Miyake Taiko’, formally known as Miyake-jima Kamitsuki Mikoshi Daiko, is known throughout the world thanks to international concert tours by taiko performing arts ensemble Kodo.”176 Their website offers history of the form: “Miyake-jima, an island located about 180km south of Tokyo, where the [taiko preservation] group Miyake-jima Geino Doshi-Kai was formed by Akio Tsumura... This group taught Kodo to play... Tsumura played in Gozu Tenno Sai - a traditional festival held in July on Miyake-jima since 1820. At this festival, Miyake Taiko is played continuously from 11am to 8pm to lead their mikoshi (portable shrines).”177 In 2000, the volcanic eruption on Miyake-jima forced residents to evacuate, so Akio Tsumura moved to Tokyo where he arranged the original festival music to be staged for audiences. Now, his sons have joined his work to share miyake drumming around the world. TaikOz facilitated a Tsumura family workshop in Australia in 2010. Outside Melbourne, YuNiOn facilitate Sydney Miyake Renshu Kai, and in March 2020 Cairns Miyake Renshu Kai, boasting ten members, gave their first performance.

Two concluding anecdotes Australian taiko is thriving, with diverse communities each producing versions that resonate with their players and audiences. Most groups link to Japanese images, teams, myths and histories to legitimise their Australian taiko. Some Australian teams reproduce Japanese matsuri drumming, while others emulate Japanese professionalised stage taiko artists, and yet others innovate in directions of classical music or popular music, thus their goals are not comparable, nor is the genre homogenous. In 2011, a meeting of Australian enthusiasts saw competing taiko authenticities share space.

174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. 176 Australia Miyake Kai, www.miyake.org.au/about/a index.html, accessed February 15, 2020. 177 Ibid. 103

At the TaikOz January Intensive camp in 2011 Yoshikazu Fujimoto, senior Kodo member, was guest instructor. He led workshops and critiqued performers in the informal finale concert in which both Taiko no Wa and Taiko Drum played. That year Taiko no Wa were preparing to perform at Tokyo International Taiko Contest and had honed a piece through sheer repetition. They performed with stern concentration, furrowed brows, stilted breath and rigid stances, an ideal version of taiko they believed to express discipline and cog-like group relations. Tasmanian Taiko Drum chose another definition of taiko: a raucous, stomping, flailing, shouting, grooving romp. They excited the crowd with kakegoe (vocal encouragements), clapping, with fine musicality and precision. Afterwards Yoshikazu (as he was referred at the camp) commented to Taiko Drum: “That was very energetic. Well done. But why are you playing taiko? You may as well play drum-kit. That is not taiko. The way you moved your feet, that is not taiko.”178 The crowd were flabbergasted by this comment because they had seen taiko players in similar low stances, dancing while drumming, joyful and with exuberant bodily display, and none had seen a drum-kit played anything like this. At the same performance Taiko no Wa were strongly praised by Yoshikazu, but failed to ‘play taiko’ for the opposite reason, they were too stiff. Camp participants felt their definitions of taiko were challenged by the feedback of this esteemed taiko expert, who had ‘put taiko on the map’ and is known for his lightness and fun side. Several questioned when and how taiko had become military- like and lost its festive heritage, given Yoshikazu’s formulation at this performance.

That same year, a twelve-member ‘Tokyo team’ of Taiko no Wa entered the prestigious Tokyo International Taiko Contest, run by Nippon Taiko Foundation.179 They were the first Australian group to successfully audition or win. The multi-event competition began in 2001 and mainly accommodated Japanese taiko teams and soloist categories. The first American group to win was TAIKOPROJECT in 2005.180 In 2011 entrants were judged on a set work, Yamanari, composed in Western score by Kimihiko Matsumura (of Matsumura-gumi, TaikOz’s 2004-2005 tour collaborators), and an ‘own choice’ piece. Taiko no Wa performed Namaru by Ian Cleworth, a camp etude written by TaikOz’s artistic director for the inaugural 2008 January Intensive. Other contestants’ pieces were unlikely to have been composed by a symphonic percussionist or professional taiko player. Had Taiko no Wa performed a piece they composed themselves, their aesthetic would have been markedly different. Cleworth wrote into Namaru themes, interplay, climaxes, solos, which is to say structural support, musical direction and development. These are

178 Yoshikazu Fujimoto paraphrased, public comments at TaikOz Intensive, January 2011. 179 Nippon Taiko Foundation, www.nippon-taiko.or.jp/english/, accessed August 20, 2020. 180 TAIKOPROJECT, http://taikoproject.org/home, accessed August 24, 2020. 104

traits common to Western composition, which clearly weighed into the ethos of the competition, but not ordinarily to traditional matsuri-bayashi or taiko composed by amateur kumi-daiko players.

Most Taiko no Wa members had no musical literacy and learnt to read Western rhythmic notation for the competition. They rehearsed together for eighteen months in preparation, playing the same two pieces (less than ten minutes of material) from start to finish over and over, ingraining mistakes. Hockets were especially troublesome. In my experience rehearsing with the group throughout this period, taking field notes, I noticed few members could conceive rhythmic ratios mathematically. Many rehearsed only by muscle memory, blaming everybody else when the same mistakes occurred. This foreign cognitive system of beats and subdivisions was incomprehensible to some, who even after the contest struggled to connect two identical rhythms played at different tempi. The group would take no advice from skilled Western-trained percussionists (musicians other than me) on how to read scores or correct tricky passages. They only accepted advice from TaikOz members, typically after they had ‘rehearsed-in’ mistakes hundreds of times and were unable to then correct these.

Members would insist angrily, when gently urged to figure out a passage slowly with a metronome, ‘No. That doesn't work for us!’ without trying.181 This resistance conveyed that a metronome provided a totally foreign concept of rhythm to these drummers. As aural and kinaesthetic learners, they had only previously thought of rhythm as sequences of durations. Without a conception of sonic ratios, a metronome provided a distraction to a haphazard melody of percussive sounds. Similarly, slowing down to correct inaccuracies introduced ‘entirely new rhythms’ into limited allotted rehearsal.

These drummers were placed in a difficult situation involving teamwork, foreign material (Western scores and musical conventions), a shared goal but not the skills to implement change. Throughout they took themselves very seriously. Crucially, their approach revealed they did not want to, or know how to, undertake this project as an expression of themselves rather than as the ever- shadowed gimp-child of TaikOz. Several non-committee participants questioned whether, in these moments, they were ‘playing taiko’. Membership of Taiko no Wa, usually around forty, dwindled in this period to just fifteen squabblers and hangers-on. My criticisms of Taiko No Wa are emotionally fuelled, as I chose not to participate in Tokyo because the way the group interacted minute-to- minute did not align with my life values. It saddened me to relinquish my love of playing taiko, for

181 Personal experience, participating in Taiko no Wa, 2011. 105

my ideals of what taiko was or could be, and my values for harmonious relating.

Towards the end of the rehearsal process, Riley Lee attended sessions to give pep-talks. The essence of his message was ‘Why would you compete in a competition you do not intend to win?’ He told Taiko no Wa that if they could accept not winning, they should consider why they were going to Japan at all. This did not perturb them, it contributed further to their inflated sense of talent. So deep was their belief, and so enmeshed with Western classical music was the competition’s reinvention of the ‘essence of taiko’, that they won. It baffled many and challenged the values on which ‘real taiko’ may be judged in future.

As TaikOz past-member Masae Ikegawa described, regarding the term dojo, Japanese taiko has for decades been interested in innovation, modernisation, fusion, osmosis, and adaptation: where new things come to meet a morphable taiko. Meanwhile, to generalise, taiko outside Japan has either innovated by defiance and juxtaposition, or has tried to reproduce catalogued, ideal versions of taiko. Outside Japan taiko has generally been treated as a discrete entity that can be wielded and merged consciously, while inside Japan processes of assimilation have seemed more fluid. TaikOz as desperate enthusiasts and devoted artists have been able to see these currents and have obeyed their laws of motion.

TaikOz member Kerryn Joyce explained how TaikOz had been encouraged by many Japanese mentors to find their own voice, to make their own music (using taiko). She also detailed TaikOz’s relationship with Tokyo International Taiko Competition’s set-work composer Matsumura. TaikOz brought his group, Matsumura-gumi, to Brisbane in 2004 and together they toured Japan in 2005. Joyce told: Matsumura studied classical music. He married his skills and eventually formed a taiko group… He’s of that age where they were trying to do more Western stuff. But you'll never lose those thousands of festivals [engrained in him culturally since childhood]. Matsumura studied with Eitetsu [Hayashi, Ian Cleworth’s revered mentor]. Maybe he was one of the original Fu-un no Kai members.182 Joyce asked me if Taiko no Wa knew this history, but I could not answer on their behalf. My impression was that Taiko no Wa struggled and bickered as an ensemble of non-musicians, who did not seem interested in taiko generally, only in perfecting a token of their learning with TaikOz (a product completely unrelated to TaikOz’s staged music). Their caution to be respectful of their

182 Kerryn Joyce, Interview with the author, April 13, 2013. 106

teachers and the tradition they appropriated eclipsed any space for expression. Perhaps a symptom of “antipodean self-doubt,”183 Taiko no Wa were ‘bad appropriators’ because they borrowed for personal gain while bringing nothing of themselves to an extant tradition. They built nothing, they only borrowed. In this sense, their taiko was without kokoro Japanese spirit and lacked Australianness. This may have evolved since 2014.

At the Tokyo contest, Taiko no Wa beat nine teams in the 2011 group-category finals, and the competition ceased to exist thereafter. One could speculate this was a token win, directed to TaikOz for their excellence in studying and performing taiko, their professionalism and commercial relationships with Japanese taiko folk and professional musicians. My conjecture cannot extend to intricate social hierarchies of Japanese cronyism because this is a field in which I am inexperienced and unknowledgeable. The competition was sponsored by Asano, a taiko manufacturing company from whom TaikOz purchase drums. TaikOz advocates for Asano’s instruments, touring globally using their products. Symbiotically, the two companies promote future taiko tradition.

In 2012, in place of a competition, an ‘All Star’ performance showcased winners from the previous ten years. Taiko no Wa were the only international participants, possibly due to their relative economic freedom as hard-working Sydney professionals who drum in their free time.184 Their all- Japanese co-stars had won vastly different events including ōdaiko solo prizes and youth group awards.185 Perhaps hosts Nippon Taiko Foundation saw in Taiko no Wa's brand a future for the taiko genre. Taiko no Wa showed that converts take tradition seriously, adhering fastidiously to the values of old, those invisibly codified standards. Also likely, Nippon Taiko Foundation’s gesture of encouragement acknowledged TaikOz’s long-term work perpetuating ‘respectable’ taiko, commercially, outside Japan.

183 Shirley Apthorp, “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo - Multiculturalism is alive and well in Australia,” Financial Times, March 1, 2000: 9. 184 Member Samantha Newton celebrated in her workplace newsletter Taiko no Wa’s Tokyo success. She told colleagues “Not that many non-Japanese groups compete so it was a major achievement for us.” Staff News, “Play it again Sam,” Macquarie University, March 14, 2012. 185 Performers in the 2012 All Star show had won quite different competitions during the preceding decade: Wadaiko Festival (Hachioji, Tokyo) 2nd and 3rd year Kumidaiko Youth; Japanese Music Academy Wadaiko Omotogumi Junior (Ota-ku, Tokyo) 6th year Kumidaiko Youth; Koyu (Inagi City, Tokyo) 10th year Kumidaiko Youth; Creative Drums Beauty (Tomigusuku, Okinawa) 10th year Kumidaiko Youth; Mayumi Hashimoto (Hakusan, Ishikawa) 1st year winner of ōdaiko; Art Lee (Iida, Nagano) 4th year winner of ōdaiko; Takuzo Kato (Ena, Gifu) 7th year winner of ōdaiko; Yoichi Drum (Nasushiobara, Tochigi) 3rd year Kumidaiko; Sasuke (Hakusan City, Ishikawa Prefecture) 7th year Kumidaiko; TAIKO NO WA (Australia) 10th year Kumidaiko. List translated and sorted for clarity, from archived Japanese version of Nippon Taiko Foundation site, accessed April 7, 2020.

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To conclude this chapter on Australian taiko players, I suggest TaikOz’s product is shinier, but no more ‘taiko’ than their countryfolk. That TaikOz have chosen to emulate a professionalised version of Japanese taiko only tells of their aesthetic values as classically trained musicians, whose group emerged in the peak multiculturalist era. The majority of Australian taiko groups were founded since 2006 and they say ‘community vibes’ and do-it-yourself culture are important, as are spirituality and energetic awareness. Levels of autonomy and purpose differ across group missions.

I have presented Australian groups’ press releases and website content, to demonstrate how they construct self-definitions and mythology. I used this information to express the volume of misleading literature available for consumption. I examined where these ideologies stemmed from and proposed Australian groups’ ways of ‘reframing tradition’ have allowed for various expressions of contemporary taiko. This history of Australian taiko is significant because it situates this scene as reflective of, yet distinct from, taiko elsewhere. My national comparison has elucidated how TaikOz operate in a market of their own making, one that differs from taiko locally and worldwide. Long may each Australian version continue its own trajectory.

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3. Staging Japan internationally: rhetoric, symbolism, aesthetics

As taiko is frequently interpreted as Japanese and ancient, stories about Japanese aesthetics, Buddhist and Shinto myths, symbols of Japanese heritage, and philosophies from famous interpreters of Japanese thought are used to justify artistic and commercial choices of taiko players. To illustrate popular discourses attached to taiko, this chapter extensively quotes taiko star Eitetsu Hayashi, who epitomises both innovation and traditional values. His founding principles formed coterminously with other luminaries Kodo and San Francisco Taiko Dojo. These three (of many) lineages each explain contemporary taiko’s relationships to older Japanese drum and dance traditions, but I pinpoint rhetorical ambiguities and inaccuracies they share or denounce. The purpose of this exploration is to highlight how TaikOz enact almost identical processes to these established contemporary taiko figures, but TaikOz receive different interpretations. I hypothesise that the cultures of interpretation of appropriation in today’s Australia apply stringent accountability to TaikOz’s engagement with taiko that is not imposed on taiko figures elsewhere.

While this thesis is about TaikOz, their existence is contextualised by the histories of traditional taiko – drumming situated in matsuri and Japanese community expression – also by contemporary taiko stars’ professionalised versions, and taiko as international community music everywhere today. To provide this context while emphasising TaikOz, I begin with brief TaikOz members’ biographies connecting how their skills and approaches honour ‘taiko cultures’ of learning, transmission, co-mingling, practice and appreciation, and applying the conventions of respected taiko artists. Then by detailing TaikOz’s relationship to taiko forerunners like Ondekoza, Kodo and Eitetsu Hayashi, and processes that propelled those two groups and one star to international fame, I argue for taiko’s cosmopolitanism, particularly through orchestral avenues.

Issues of race, racialised beauty, bodily disparities, icons, and the costumes that accentuate these, bring discussion back to the familiar topic of visuality central to taiko’s perceived difference from other staged musics. There is no ancient or foundational dogma for taiko. Its tradition is the interpretation and expression of other artistic forms including other taiko performances. Veneration of the simple and austere becomes important in discussion of alternative compositional processes between TaikOz and taiko greats like Kodo and Eitetsu

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Hayashi. For example, where TaikOz’s artistic director Ian Cleworth composed 2019 work Seven Flowers themed on theatre treatise Fushikaden by Zeami Motokiyo, Eitetsu Hayashi has drawn compositional inspiration from static ink painting because he views temporal art works as too complex to transmute. Despite contemporary taiko having virtually no link to traditional Japanese court musics or theatre, troupe Kodo hired an ex-kabuki actor for his mastery of aesthetics in action as their artistic director.

Current personnel of TaikOz

TaikOz’s personnel as of June 2017 were Ian Cleworth, Riley Lee, Kerry Joyce, Kevin Man, Anton Lock, Tom Royce-Hampton, Sophia Ang and Ryuji Hamada. During my main research period 2008-2014, Masae Ikegawa and Graham Hilgendorf were key members, but left to pursue family taiko business, YuNiOn, in response to TaikOz’s funding and administrative restructures. Between 1997 and 2017, additional TaikOz members have included Kenichi Koizumi, Kelly Staines, Ben Walsh.1 Members joining post 2018 include Claudia Wherry, Sophie Unsen and associate Joe Small. The following short bios demonstrate the various skills and influences of TaikOz’s members. The synergistic contributions of their different skills and experiences brings diversity to TaikOz’s collective identity.

Ian Cleworth: TaikOz co-founder, Ian Cleworth became full-time Artistic Director in 2005 after twenty years as Principal Percussionist at Sydney Symphony Orchestra and sixteen years with Synergy Percussion. In the 1980s his taiko study in Yamanashi, Japan received grants.2 Two decades into his taiko passion, he won tutorship from Eitetsu Hayashi and other taiko greats including Kodo, and traditional factions. In 2007 Cleworth received the APRA- AMC Classical Music Award for Long-term Contribution for the Advancement of Australian Music, and in 2016, the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation for his contribution towards promoting friendship and goodwill between Australia and Japan. Cleworth is also a keen marathoner, for its physical and mental benefits, and enjoys Pilates.3 He leads TaikOz with foci on collaboration and fostering leadership talents of his co-artists.

1 In the early days, personnel came also from Synergy and prominent Sydney percussionists, who mostly went their own ways after experiencing intense training in Japan with Eitetsu Hayashi. 2 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating,” 78. 3 TaikOz website, About: Ian Cleworth, www.taikoz.com, accessed May 29, 2017.

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Riley Lee: Co-founder, Riley Lee, studied shakuhachi under Chikuho Sakai from 1971-1980, and with Katsuya Yokoyama since 1984. In 1980, he became the first non-Japanese dai shihan (Grand Master) of shakuhachi, and from 1973 was the first non-Japanese person to play taiko professionally by touring full-time with Ondekoza. Lee completed Bachelor and Master’s degrees in music at the University of Hawai’i. He earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology from University of Sydney with his thesis on transmission of shakuhachi repertories. He was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2003, 2009 and 2011. As of 2016 Lee is ‘TaikOz Artistic Administrator’, making him the newest member of TaikOz on paper.4

Kerryn Joyce: Joyce is a respected symphonic percussionist and chamber musician who joined in 2001. She specialises in Japanese traditional transverse-flutes, and Japanese folk dances which she has studied with Chieko Kojima and Yoko Fujimoto of Kodo, and others. Kerryn composes for TaikOz and often shares lullabies and Ainu songs learned on her travels. She co-ordinates Taikoz’s education program.

Kevin Man: Man is a symphonic percussionist who joined TaikOz in 2002. He regularly performs taiko, shakuhachi, shinobue, and dance. Man has trained in Miyake-daiko intensively with Akio Tsumura; O-edo-bayashi (wadaiko and shinobue) with Kyosuke Suzuki; Onikenbai dance and fue (flute). Man annually travels to Japan to train with Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai and perform in the Kitakami Michinoku Geinou Matsuri (local festival).5

Anton Lock: A TaikOz Associate Player in 2003, Lock became a full-time member 2006- 2017. His skills as a dancer, acrobat and martial artist have contributed to TaikOz’s fame through his performances on concert hall stages, in Pericles,6 in Kaidan: A Ghost Story,7 and Onikenbai. Lock now lives in Colombia with his wife, starring online as a pop musician and fashion influencer.8

Tom Royce-Hampton: Tom Royce-Hampton joined in 2007 after a short internship. His music degree in percussion from Victorian College of the Arts, School of Music founds his

4 TaikOz website, About: Riley Lee, www.taikoz.com, accessed May 29, 2017. 5 TaikOz website, About: Kevin Man, www.taikoz.com, accessed May 29, 2017. 6 Co-production with Bell Shakespeare in 2009. Discussed in Chapter 6 on Pericles and Chi Udaka. 7 Collaboration with choreographer Merryl Tankard in 2007. Discussed in Chapter 8 on war themes. 8 See Anton Lock’s channel: “That's what I like - Bruno Mars: Drum Cover by Anton Lock,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icCCbPRoDs, accessed May 23, 2017.

111 compositional success. He directed two multi-arts works TaikoDeck and Origin of O.9 He holds an Advanced Diploma of Performing Arts (Acting) and is pursuing a film and theatre career. Royce-Hampton contributed to TaikOz through having “developed a strong ‘physical language’ and a fascination with the ability for story-telling to reside in the body.”10

Sophia Ang: After completing TaikOz’s IDP (Individual Development Program) in 2011, Sophia Ang joined in 2014. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Melbourne University and teaches children in TaikOz’s school.

Ryuji Hamada: A native of Yokohama, Ryuji Hamada, joined TaikOz in 2016. He specialises in Yoko-uchi (side-on) styles of taiko: Hachijo and Miyake. He brings explosive energy and joy to TaikOz’s stages.

TaikOz’s mentors and guides

TaikOz’s music does not look like most taiko. A history of key taiko figures is required to contextualise TaikOz’s adherences and departures from other contemporary versions. While taiko exists in Japanese festivals, as court music and as a community-music phenomenon in Japan and separately in the United States, the history that relates best to TaikOz is that of the musicians who popularised taiko by appropriation and professionalisation within Japan through their performative staging processes late last century.

I include the following material, in what seems like more detail than the history I have written of TaikOz, because this content exists in taiko discourse, while data on TaikOz are limited, and hence these stories serve as an additional literature review or thematic introduction. Using Eitetsu Hayashi as an exemplar, some taiko trends have concluded, but others have become neo-tradition. In these stories stages of development appear discrete, given hindsight. The history of TaikOz continues to evolve, though perhaps their golden era has passed. My thesis includes vignettes of TaikOz through case studies, but does not attempt a comprehensive chronology. Instead an impression of TaikOz forms by comparison to existing taiko discourse and through compilation of media reviews. Thus, my study is about ‘TaikOz in text’ more than it is about TaikOz. This reveals how TaikOz do taiko like others,

9 Origin of O was discussed in Chapter 1. 10 TaikOz website, About: Tom Royce-Hampton, www.taikoz.com, accessed May 29, 2017.

112 but are differentiated by race, location and timeline.

In the first chapter I explained TaikOz’s evolution from modernist percussion ensemble Synergy. The two groups were formed by forward-thinking classical musicians who devoted themselves entirely to professional musical pursuits, following in a tradition of innovation by their forebears and simultaneously counter to some prevalent Australian cultural norms.11 In what follows, histories of Ondekoza, Kodo and Eitetsu Hayashi demonstrate the same attitudes and commitment to excellence, by musicians who attempted unfamiliar but wholly pertinent material. These pioneers, like TaikOz, have made it up as they went along, forging with respect and strong aesthetic goals. This is also true of American taiko but fundamental distinctions of attitude mark American output as ‘culture’, while TaikOz and their Japanese mentors prioritise staged products of ‘art’. Ondekoza, Kodo, and soloist Eitetsu Hayashi each have overlapping histories which will resurface throughout this thesis. Both Eitetsu Hayashi and Kodo have toured in Australia several times, primarily in conjunction with TaikOz.

Ondekoza, Kodo, Eitetsu Hayashi and taiko on international stages

The history of early Ondekoza and Kodo which follows has been selected to emphasise aspects of TaikOz’s adherence to taiko culture, and readers can find additional information in English in Taiko Boom by Shawn Bender.12 These bodies’ histories overlap, so this paragraph unravels confusing leads. Nearly three decades before he co-founded TaikOz with Ian Cleworth, Riley Lee was a member of Ondekoza between 1972-1977. One of Lee’s Ondekoza colleagues was Eitetsu Hayashi who is now the world’s most famous taiko artist. Hayashi is one of Cleworth’s most influential teachers and collaborators. Hayashi has toured with TaikOz in Japan and Australia. Ondekoza became Kodo following a rift soon after inception, while original director Den Tagayasu retained the brand name Ondekoza and reformed elsewhere. Kodo, the world’s most famous taiko troupe, routinely collaborates with musicians and artists of many genres but rarely with other contemporary-taiko players, though they do have abiding relationships with custodians of traditional taiko genres like Miyake-daiko, Hachijo-daiko and dancers of Onikenbai. Kodo’s initial Australian performance in 1988 involved a floating stage in Sydney Harbour, but was not in association

11 Louise Devenish, “Forty Years of Synergy Percussion.” Percussive Notes (March 2016): 28-33. 12 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom: Drumming in Place and Motion. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012.

113 with future TaikOz members. At that time Cleworth was studying taiko in Japan with Sen Amano. Despite a 3000-performance tradition of not playing alongside another contemporary taiko group, Kodo did combine with TaikOz in 2009 and 2012 during their two further Australian tours.

Ondekoza into Kodo

Sado no Kuni Ondekoza, the Demon Drummers of Japan (for short, Ondekoza), emerged in 1969, on the small island of Sado which was once a place of exile for political prisoners. Eccentric musicologist Tagayasu Den sought to establish a university of Japanese folk arts and crafts. Den wished to fund the university exclusively through taiko concerts, so he collected a group of enthusiastic youths from rural and urban areas to manifest his dream. In the early 1970s Den's recruits settled into this new community. The recruits lived an austere existence involving marathon running and other rigorous physical activity. This regimen was designed to produce excellent wadaiko players who embodied a certain Japanese spirit via this ‘art of living’. One recruit was a university drop-out from Tokyo, the now famed Eitetsu Hayashi.

Since the recruits did not necessarily have musical training upon arrival, finding appropriate repertory and expert teachers was essential to their success. These privileged students were immersed in the company of exciting visitors including composer Maki Ishii, who after a stay on Sado composed Mono-Prism, a concerto for wadaiko ensemble and symphony orchestra, based on Chichibu Yatai-bayashi rhythms.13 Ultimately it was Ondekoza’s international marathon-running fame, rather than music, that initially attracted the attention which later garnered musical relationships. Further discussion of Ishii’s Mono-Prism (and chamber arrangement Monochrome) follows next chapter regarding orchestral tropes.

Ondekoza's approach was to search the countryside for folk performances – drumming, dance, song – that they could adapt for concert stages. Ondekoza accomplished fame by this method in Japan and overseas. In 1975 Ondekoza made waves in the United States by

13 Keith Howard, “Promoting and Preserving the Chichibu Night Festival: The Impact of Cultural Policy on the Transmission of Japanese Folk Performing Arts,” Music as intangible cultural heritage: policy, ideology, and practice in the preservation of East Asian traditions, 2012, 211; Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion, University of California Press. 2012, 76.

114 performing a vigorous recital at the finish line of the Boston marathon after each member had run the race. A subsequent relationship with conductor Seiji Ozawa facilitated Mono-Prism’s 1976 debut at Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ozawa had previously premiered Maki Ishii’s first composition for orchestra and traditional Japanese gagaku instruments, Sō-Gū II, in 1971 with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.14 After premiering Mono-Prism in the United States, Ondekoza were invited to perform in Japan by Hiroyuki Iwaki of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo,15 and by Takashi Asahina of Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. These partnerships launched Ondekoza in classical music spaces locally only after international success,16 propelling their fame faster than their Japanese folk outlets. Hybridised traditional materials, already refracted through elite orchestral cultures, permitted Ondekoza to acquire and modify further Japanese traditional artefacts for stages.

By the early 1980s in-fighting led Ondekoza to disband. Den left Sado, taking the Ondekoza brand,17 while his drummers remained on Sado and renamed as Kodo. Today Kodo is the world’s best known taiko group, performing internationally and boasting a great many players, apprentices, and administrative staff.18 Kodo, like the original Ondekoza, explore a musical form that is highly visual and uniquely physical. The group is “dedicated to the re- creation of tradition Japanese performing arts”19 and from their mission statement, Kodo’s philosophy is about “One Earth… [with three tenets] ‘Living, Learning, and Creating’… [to cultivate with] sensitivity, reaching out toward a new world culture rooted in the rich possibilities of a peaceful coexistence between humanity and nature.”20 They are not custodians of tradition, but innovators who repurpose Japanese musical and dance artefacts as staged entertainment.

A defining 1985 statement from Kodo villager Toshio Kawauchi, explained the modern

14 Taiko Source, “Monochrome,” accessed May 18, 2020, https://taikosource.com/articles/monochrome. 15 NHK Symphony Orchestra website, accessed January 5, 2017, www.nhkso.or.jp/en. 16 Kajimoto Music, “Artist profile: Eitetsu Hayashi, taiko,” http://www.kajimotomusic.com/en/artists/k=256. 17 Ondekoza continues with new personnel. Ondekoza website, accessed January 13, 2020, http://ondekoza.com/aboutus.html. 18 Kodo website, accessed January 13, 2020, https://www.kodo.or.jp/en/about en/member. 19 Kodo website, quoted in Ian Cleworth, “An Overview of Wadaiko Practice.” Unpublished article, (2010): 8. 20 Kodo mission, accessed January 13, 2020, https://www kodo.or.jp/en/about en/mission.

115 migrant community’s connection to their land on Sado:

Heartbeat of the universe… The ‘three [tenets]’ are an expression of the internal energy of a life lived ‘humanistically’… We want to create a self-supporting and unique culture. A place where people of all cultures can interact surrounded by nature’s beauty and bounty, [where] something is always being born [publicly]… It will be a magnetic field which embraces contradictions, where opposites attract; romance/reality… Permanent energy born from the internal struggle… Reaching over the walls of nationhood. A world like this would be so much more fun.21

This idealistic statement speaks of the universality of human desire to make art, to unite without conflict, and to respond to nature’s gifts interactively. It does not mention a nationalistic Japanese essence, nor preservation of cultural artefacts, but instead the growing of living expressions that belong to all who participate whole-heartedly. This claim is distinctly different to those made by most American taiko proponents whose definitions of taiko construct and bolster migrant identities, and dramatically shape world taiko definitions.

Kodo star, Yosuke Oda, in 2012 responded to my email questionnaire: “I spent a month with TaikOz [and] I feel something Australian, like a freedom they have from living in that big natural country, or the Aussie ‘she’ll be right’ attitude. I haven’t seen any other taiko groups in Australia perform, so I don’t know [how TaikOz compare, but relative to] American or European taiko groups I know… TaikOz are more natural. They seem really focused on real sound, true sound.”22 Oda reiterated how taiko as genre encourages ‘acting’: “[Some USA groups] are trying to ‘be Japanese’ or do something Japanese. Anywhere you go, it’s the same… handcuffed to Japan.... It’s like a religion, they follow verbatim… Too many rules… Actually, Japan has a lot of taiko groups that ‘act Japanese’ and dress up like Japanese.”23 But Oda prioritised performative identity creation, dependent on reminiscence,24 saying:

I saw the video of 2009 collaboration between TaikOz and Kodo. TaikOz’s songs a couple of years ago, honestly, I thought they were contrived. [They used] a lot of changes of rhythm, and [were] really complicated. I didn’t feel anything from them.

21 Toshio Kawauchi, quoted in Kodo mission, accessed January 13, 2020, https://www kodo.or.jp/en/about en/mission. 22 Yosuke Oda, “Email Questionnaire,” Interpreted and translated by Melanie Taylor, November 6, 2012. 23 Ibid. 24 Sandra Garrido and Jane W. Davidson, Music, Nostalgia and Memory Historical and Psychological Perspectives. Melbourne: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.

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The songs TaikOz played in 2012, I could feel Japan naturally in their music. This time, their songs felt like taking a trip around Japan. Listening to their music, I could see Japanese scenery, temples, gardens, the landscape, but through their eyes. It was natural and felt good.25

Oda loved Anton Lock’s blend, as told by interpreter Melanie Taylor: “Anton’s new piece Exploration was [quintessentially] Australian taiko. (Yosuke vocalised some of those rhythms with a smile.) I can feel TaikOz in their music.”26 He continued, “TaikOz are completely different. They can play with Kodo. Personally, I think no other taiko group can play with Kodo on stage... Their tenacity is rare… TaikOz are not classical... TaikOz is TaikOz… unique.”27 Of 2012 Kodo tour with TaikOz, Oda said “I didn’t feel anything superficial about TaikOz’s relationship to taiko music… It was good. I learned a lot from them. It was a ‘huge harvest’.” He suggested though, “Personally, I think they need to make a program that is less ‘Japanese’.”28 TaikOz followed this advice in subsequent years.

An American taiko

American taiko forefather, Seiichi Tanaka, founded San Francisco Taiko Dojo in 1968 and defines taiko differently from his Japanese contemporaries in one key way. Tanaka suggested his participants should use spirit to express drumming. Conversely, Kodo performers use a drum to express spirit. While Kodo use taiko as a medium to live a spirited life connected with community and nature, Tanaka’s players (and their legacy) instead promote that participants channel spirit into taiko playing.29 These opposite flows of objectives produce distinct outcomes, that take shape as either art or culture, marking Kodo as elite musical professionals and the Californians as enactors of community music on professional stages.

25 Yosuke Oda, “Email Questionnaire,” Interpreted by Melanie Taylor, November 6, 2012. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Tanaka taught on the philosophy of unity of mind, body and spirit. Influenced by Confucianism and his training in Chinese martial arts, he emphasises the importance of rigorous physical, mental and spiritual training. Using concepts like kokoro (heart/spirit/feeling), ki (energy), i (mindfulness/consciousness), Tanaka teaches awareness and connectedness. He promotes also waza (transmitting the spirit of rhythms vocally), karada (bodily power, stamina and strength), and rei (demonstrating respect and discipline via polite communication). See “The Essence of San Francisco Taiko Dojo,” San Francisco Taiko website, www.sftaiko.com/essence, accessed December 15, 2020.

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By distinction, TaikOz identify as elite professionals who collaborate with artists including Kodo, but their creed states TaikOz “beat with every muscle, bone and sinew in [their] bodies, with an open and joyous spirit,”30 which mirrors Tanaka’s flow of human spirit through drums. This ambiguity may contribute to TaikOz’s perception that they are not authentic taiko players, despite their tremendous efforts. Aside from their marked non- Japaneseness, TaikOz’s identificatory processes produce a third taiko product, unlike Japanese spirit (Kodo) or Japanese-American kumi-daiko. In the absence of a familiar taiko foundation, race then seems to play an important role in authentication.

Eitetsu Hayashi tells history of taiko

Eitetsu Hayashi has performed with countless orchestras including Berlin Philharmonic, and at venues such as Moscow Tchaikovsky Hall. He has wowed live crowds of over 20,000, has composed extensively for taiko, and has published several essays and a successful book entitled ‘Ashita no taiko-uchi e’ (To the Taiko Players of Tomorrow).31 Despite controversy in Japan over the authenticity of contemporary-taiko, Hayashi won the ‘8th Award for Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture’ from the Japan Arts Foundation in 2001 and the Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize in 1997. In 2015, Hayashi performed Ishii's Mono-Prism with Waseda Symphony Orchestra (wherein all orchestral players were amateur) at the Champs Elysees in Paris amid a program of Strauss.

Hayashi claims to have single-handedly pioneered ‘artistic’ versions of taiko for world-stages and has professionalised taiko to a previously unseen degree.32 Hayashi’s stylisations are now benchmarks for global taiko, and he talks passionately about the meaning of traditions past and present. Because of his influence, I draw parallels between Hayashi’s career and TaikOz’s to show how taiko accumulates discourses that both validate and condemn practitioners in comparable circumstances. This highlights that discrimination is primarily made by race. Undeniably the time and place in which Hayashi innovated was accompanied by values of appropriation laxer than those TaikOz experience here and now. These are tied to economics, globalisation, and cultural zeitgeists.

30 TaikOz creed, quoted in Joni Scanlon, “Spirited beat on show,” Canberra Times, September 4, 2012: 21. 31 Eitetsu Hayashi. Ashita No Taiko Uchi E (To Tomorrow’s Taiko-Players). Japan: Shobunsa, 1992. 32 Kazumi Narabe, “Artist Interview, Innovating drum music, the spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” Performing Arts Network Japan, April 27, 2011.

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Eitetsu Hayashi, ‘went solo’ to investigate further possibilities in taiko performance around the juncture when Ondekoza split. He had felt limited musically when playing in an ensemble so invented a modern method that looked backwards to traditional fork arts, but also borrowed ideas from Western classical and popular musics.34 Hayashi's style was physically challenging, requiring enormous stamina and commitment, even when adapting traditional musics that were mellow and flowing. Hayashi revolutionised ōdaiko techniques,35 changing the stance from a side-on position to back-to-the-audience (setai-gamae), where hard-earned musculature could be displayed.36 This innovation changed more than the aesthetic look, it opened a range of new dynamic and expressive capabilities due to ergonomics.37

From a strong philosophical grounding, Hayashi has taken traditional musical forms, techniques and playing styles and worked them into dynamic new constitutions. He has also collaborated with musicians of many nations and genres. As well as soloing with numerous high-profile orchestras worldwide, Hayashi has collaborated with jazz artists,38 Tanzanian drummers,39 samulnori (Korean percussion ensemble), Irish fiddlers, didgeridoo40 and popular bands. Hayashi's mission is to be both quintessentially Japanese and universally human.41 His battle with identificatory duality (both old and new, the keeper and changer/maker of tradition) has confused many but he has appealed to ‘professionalism as an artist’ to escape contradictions. Art is similarly the justification for TaikOz’s musical and cultural choices. Below I quote Hayashi extensively because he likes to retain control of his public image, and paraphrasing could lead to unintended misrepresentation. TaikOz recommended I did not contact Eitetsu Hayashi directly for comment, as this might strain their relationship with him, so I respected their delicate advice and sourced all commentary

34 Ibid. 35 Paul Yoon, “Asian Masculinities and Parodic Possibilities in Odaiko Solos and Filmic Representations.” Asian Music 40:1 (2009): 101-115. 36 Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012: 88-93. 37 Hayashi's biography quoted in Cleworth, 2010: 9. 38 YouTube video of Japanese Bolero with Yosuke Yamashita on piano, Live on September 18, 1999, at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvyHp6WUefM, accessed January 12, 2020. 39 YouTube video of Hayashi collaborating with Tanzanian band Tatunane in 2007, accessed August 22, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUQ4So-UWkE. 40 Tim Lloyd, “The sounds of thunder: Australia and Japan in melting pot of styles.” The Advertiser, October 1, 2009. 41 Eitetsu Hayashi, “The Universality of Japan's Traditional Drums, Wadaiko: to express the deep spirituality of the wadaiko in a way that's meaningful today.” JAPAN Close Up, (year unknown, circa 2009): 34.

119 by Hayashi from printed media. Throughout I draw parallels to TaikOz who hold Hayashi in the highest regard.

TaikOz idolise Hayashi because he epitomises the bold artistry TaikOz strive for and achieve. Their newsletter in 2001 told “Hayashi transcends all genres,”42 by collaborating prolifically, working with “both Western dance and Butoh43... [and composing] original taiko music for films, theatre, and commercials... [Hayashi] has made numerous CDs and videos.”44 TaikOz venerate him too because he has the authority to re-contextualise misinformation about taiko’s history due to his fame, self-made success and pioneering personality traits. TaikOz find these traits attractive in Hayashi because while their own business operates similarly, their efforts meet mixed responses, and TaikOz want to be taken more seriously by associating their practice to Hayashi’s existing art and philosophical gravity.

Hayashi, born 1952 near Hiroshima to the chief priest of a temple, youngest of eight, did not inherit a traditional Japanese music career. Motivated by the Beatles’ Ringo Star, he formed a rock band in high-school. Intent on becoming a graphic designer Hayashi studied in Tokyo, but changed tracks to join Ondekoza. At age thirty Hayashi started his taiko solo career (inventing individual playing) and two years later debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1984. He forged this path with tenacity, self-belief and hard work, deriving inspiration from diverse art forms, especially visual arts. He was particularly influenced by Japanese-French filmmaker Tsuguharu (Leonard) Foujita, and 18th century Japanese painter Ito Jakuchu.45 Inspired by these artists, Eitetsu made taiko visible by making taiko visual. He also admired adventurers like Naomi Uemura (mountain climber, first to solo trek to the North Pole) and Yukoh Tada (first solo yacht circumnavigation) and always knew he wanted a physically challenging solo career akin to theirs.46 Like TaikOz, Hayashi pursued taiko as a career path against the grain, without local precedent, and without certainty of success; he chose it because he found it pleasing, was committed to becoming great at it, and devoted to making possible this profession.

42 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1. March 2001. 43 Butoh is a minimalist and expressionist Japanese contemporary dance form. 44 TaikOz Newsletter, Vol 1. March 2001. 45 Kazumi Narabe, “Artist Interview, Innovating drum music, the spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” Performing Arts Network Japan, April 27, 2011, accessed online May 2, 2012: 1. 46 Kazumi, “Spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” 2011: 3.

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Hayashi innovated ‘taiko set’, an arrangement of several drums into a drum-kit played by a soloist (unlike Oguchi Daihachi, inventor of kumi-daiko, who created a drum-set impression played by multiple participants). Before Hayashi’s innovative set-up, a group of drummers each played their own taiko on stage. Hayashi also stylised traditional modes of Japanese drumming, by accentuating musical nuances with visual features and bodily choices. Hayashi clarified in 2011:

There was never a tradition in Japan of drumming in the style or method that I use... I wanted to express Japanese aesthetics and, although it may sound a bit exaggerated, I wanted to express aspects of Japanese spirituality and thought... In the costume as well, I want people to see a high-minded, noble aspect of the Japanese... [And] at the same time [be] progressive and highly contemporary. Although it may be difficult for some people to grasp, I feel that these two qualities are not contradictory. In my performances with orchestras [my combination of the modern with traditional] succeeds in both aspects. For Europeans it is completely natural for orchestras steeped in the long tradition of classical music to also perform progressive contemporary music at a very high level.47

Because so much of the meaning surrounding taiko is based on stories (and not verifiable historic events), it matters to my account to relay ‘first generation stories’ like Hayashi’s. Traditionally, Japanese drums served as percussive accompaniment to dance or song, but Hayashi, along with colleagues, transformed taiko into three new things: a solo instrument, an ensemble instrument and an ‘art music’ instrument – removing taiko’s symbiotic or secondary role in conjunction with dance or song, and lifting the instruments from festival contexts. TaikOz continue Hayashi’s work, independently, by further stylising existent taiko forms, adapting taiko for various ensembles with novel instrumentation, adding their personal skills acquired through classical percussion to taiko technique, composing and commissioning works for taiko, and by simply being themselves.

Hayashi is renowned in Japan and abroad for his distinctive performing style, his ‘own directing’, choreography and self-professed staging expertise.48 To commemorate the 40th

47 Hayashi quoted in Kazumi, “Spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” 2011: 7. 48 Kazumi, “Spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” 2011: 1.

121 year of his taiko-artist career, in 2010 he performed in solo recital for the first time in 11 years, his Gassan II (about the Buddhist cycle of rebirth, samsara) to great success. His commitment to his craft, and his art’s legacy, persist decades after his idealism took form. At the advent of Hayashi’s career, Ondekoza aspired to fund a vocational college through folk performance, but not necessarily for virtuosity or fame. Yet Hayashi’s vision saw further; where taiko would communicate greater things like music, humanity, connection, spirit. Hayashi told one interviewer, “I didn’t intend to be a drummer from the beginning. But I have come this far. That is my honest feeling.”49 He was opportunistic, maximising career prospects as they arose. Eitetsu told this interviewer about historical and mythological misconceptions (emphases added):

[Ondekoza was] determined to use taiko drums as a form of entertainment that we could take around the world. The members of the group all lived together [in] a Spartan style that stressed stoicism. An aim was to show people that Japan had this kind of strong spirit and could produce amazing performances. That was our philosophy for raising money. Actually, at the time Japanese drumming was a rather rustic and laid-back performance medium. The old men we went to study drumming from would get drunk then play ad-lib. Today people think the traditional Japanese drumming involves a disciplined group of drummers all playing together in sync, but in fact that form of drumming doesn’t exist traditionally.50

He detailed his knowledge in traditional styles and departures:

In the Sansa festival-dances of Iwate, drummers play together in time with the dance, but the drumming is accompaniment, it is not the main performance. In the rice- planting ritual called hayashi-da that has continued since the Heian period [9th to 12th centuries] they line up drums and play in unison, but it should be considered drum-dance rather than music centred mainly on drums. Trad Japanese drumming does not involve unison. There is usually only a single main drummer [who] plays ad- lib. At Bon summer festivals they play the drum in time with the song and when the main drummer gets tired he switches with the next. There are no detailed processes or scored phrases that need to be practiced and mastered... In traditional noh and kabuki you have what is called the shi-byoshi (four-part rhythm ensemble) [that drums] together in a unique rhythm. But, here again, the taiko is not the main instrument... It

49 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Kazumi, 1. 50 Ibid., 2.

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is just one part of the ensemble that accompanies the recited narrative vocals and the shamisen (three-stringed Japanese banjo).51

Additionally, ‘real’ Japanese styles rooted in Shinto festivals and classical theatre are unrelated to contemporary taiko, Eitetsu Hayashi spelled out:

What people call wadaiko (Japanese drumming) today is actually a mix of kumi-daiko and [my] taiko. By calling it wadaiko it sounds like an old traditional. It has been 40 years since I started doing it, so it does have some history as a genre, but it is definitely not an old tradition… [When Ondekoza formed], we didn’t intend to recreate folk drumming as it had long existed. We wanted to create a new form of music centred around drums that would have a big impact on people. Playing drums together as a group is a form that was created after World War II, called kumi-daiko. [I aimed for] a new form [wadaiko] that was also different from that.52

Taiko fans and non-experts see wadaiko falsely as an old tradition, and Hayashi has suggested this misreading relates to Ondekoza’s method of body-entrainment, saying “In the early years, we really tried to train our bodies to become folk artists of the land while living on the remote island.”53 Hayashi implied, it is not due to the objects being old or reminiscent, or the styles of playing being old or reminiscent that taiko is widely misinterpreted. Instead wadaiko attracts this discourse because a collection of renegades in the 1970s ran marathons and carved their own chopsticks from drum-stick off-cuts; it was the hopes of those young people and the ways they branded their ‘of-the-land neo-folk culture’ as symbolically Japanese, that coloured taiko as traditional. Tradition is not a set of actions or events then, but a feeling or a ‘self-made sense of belonging’.54 This might mean that for TaikOz to appear traditional or legitimate, no matter what material they play, their attitude is more important than content. The ways TaikOz feel when they play – and identify as players – hold more value than musical aesthetics or social aesthetics.

Hayashi claimed it was his intention alone to create a new form of stage taiko,55 that Ondekoza’s vision for professionalised kumi-daiko had been myopic, or unrealised to its full

51 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Kazumi, 2. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.

123 potential. He proposed “[Neo-tradition] was eventually possible because we were not working in a professional context. And, conversely, that is probably why the new music we created looked like a return to traditional roots.”56 According to this statement, it was possible to invent something old-looking because Ondekoza/Kodo were trying to be professionals but were not yet recognised as professional. The implication here for TaikOz’s music is that while TaikOz are working as professional taiko drummers, and are recognised as such, their output will look new and not like a return to tradition. This reading suggests that by being professionally non-professional, the non-traditions Ondekoza perpetuated appeared to be ancient, and that witnesses accepted this association blindly. For TaikOz to make ‘real’ taiko that looks ancient, they should then be themselves, live fully, channel energy, and operate out of the spotlight. This way, when outsiders catch glimpses into TaikOz’s private practice, the lifestyle aspect will be apparent, and spirit-harnessing can be distinctly perceivable. This TaikOz do, but their work is not received publicly as Hayashi has proposed.

When journalists intercept TaikOz ‘in glimpses’ via performance or workshops, they routinely identify lifestyle and spiritual themes. Reviewers of Hayashi frequently misrepresent him too. After operating in Australia for more than twenty years, TaikOz encounter similar misconceptions about taiko that Hayashi continues to meet forty-five years through his international career. The main disjunctures are that things are not as they seem, that each surface is highly curated, and the engagements are meditated by conflicting values and cultures whose agendas produce alternative realities.

Following Ondekoza’s debut in the United States, Maki Ishii’s Mono-Prism set a new standard for taiko that borrowed significantly from modernism in classical music of the mid- 1970s. Of this pivotal moment in taiko history Hayashi said, “Looking back, our success coincided with a minimalist trend [in classical music] that employed limited materials... That movement was inspired by traditional African music, but I think there was a similar quality to our Japanese taiko, something I was not aware of in those days.”57 He humbly admitted how trends that would contextualise taiko in a broader World Music scene were not obvious to him, though his career benefited from them. During his decade touring internationally with

56 Ibid. 57 Chiho Iuchi, “Taiko pioneer Eitetsu Hayashi to mark 45 years of drumming to his own beat,” The Japan Times, December 11, 2015, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture, accessed December 26, 2016.

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Ondekoza, Hayashi’s audiences were ripe for seemingly specifically-local performance styles. Hayashi told, “Percussionists from the orchestras would come backstage to ask me with great interest how we composed our music and how we practiced. From those experiences I had confidence that Japanese taiko drumming was a form of percussion music, and performance, that had not existed anywhere else in the world and that it could be successful.”58 For Hayashi, qualities that would make taiko viable were conformity as percussion (a subset of universal human music), appearance of foreignness, composability and practice-difference. Each of these traits align with TaikOz’s mission and execution of taiko. After becoming a soloist, Hayashi used trial and error to find a sound and performance- style that was necessarily distinct and catchy. TaikOz have done the same, but feel they have been treated as dilettantes when they explore unexpected musical combinations and commercial arrangements.

Outside of orchestral circles, Hayashi accepted varied gigs because his philosophy marked every new situation as ‘a teacher’: “I worked hard, believing that I couldn’t be called a ‘pro’ unless I could give them what they wanted, even in a decadent atmosphere.”59 Hayashi told that Ondekoza group-style had been “a rather intimidating, imposing style [that] had been an unexpected success. But as a newly independent soloist, I had to provide entertainment. Given my nature, however, I was only able to perform in a serious way. So at parties it often didn’t excite the audience.”60 Like Hayashi, TaikOz must interact commercially across multiple entertainment industries, managing their ‘seriousness’ against the briefs of clients. TaikOz absorb techniques and ‘feels’ from collaborations (theatre folk, dancers, digital shamans, musicians) and constantly reinvent the depth of their expression by external stimuli. To be ‘pro’, TaikOz accept corporate gigs, orchestral bookings, they engineer independent projects and innovative cross-genre collaborations, sometimes with calamitous repercussions: for example, diluting their brand by drumming at rugby matches, accepting payment (and artistic direction/curtailment) from an international arms fair IDEX, and by miscalculating audience potential after a successful project (Kodo 2012) and over-spending on a subsequent project’s overheads (Future Directions).

58 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Kazumi, 3. 59 Ibid., 3-4. 60 Ibid., 4.

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TaikOz could not have predicted in 1997 that their most successful collaborative project between 2010-2020 would involve Indian dance (Chi Udaka), nor that funding opportunities that promoted collaboration with Australian orchestras would dry up forcing more entrepreneurship. Likewise, Hayashi had no specific image of what he wanted to achieve career-wise, saying “There was no precedent to learn from... it was difficult financially as well.”61 He had pioneered his seitai-gamae (spine to audience style) ōdaiko technique to self- accompany because, he said, “There is no traditional method for maintaining rhythm while playing [ōdaiko], I had to improvise a method [that became] what you could call a ‘shared asset’ of [taiko groups]... [After leaving Ondekoza] I had not intended to use it [as] a soloist.”62 Hayashi solved problems as they arose and did not forge his career with clear future objectives. Similarly, TaikOz pioneer taiko playing styles by merging their professionalism as Western percussionists with taiko cultures and collaborative forces. TaikOz’s ensemble skills are unparalleled, and these are traditional in the sense they were developed through musical training, but they are honed through taiko to produce excellent taiko products too. While TaikOz do not appear to have global influence within the genre of taiko – foreign groups do not seem to be ‘copying’ TaikOz’s forms or approaches – I suggest there are three reasons. TaikOz remain un-imitated because 1) most taiko players do not share TaikOz’s technical skills so find TaikOz’s material impenetrable, 2) other groups depend on their own histories and mentorships for inspiration and validation, and 3) TaikOz’s work remains obscure due to Oceania’s physical distance from taiko hubs.

Race, beauty, bodies, icons and costumes after Eitetsu Hayashi

An iconic image associated with ōdaiko involves fundoshi (loincloth) and hachimaki (headband). This look was conjured with homoerotic overtones by a French fashionista, borrowing near-nudity from an unrelated Japanese festival, and applying it to Hayashi’s body on 1970s European stages.63 TaikOz do not wear fundoshi when they perform, choosing instead outfits that accentuate their back musculature while covering their lower bodies. This costuming choice emphasises their non-Japaneseness and also non-imitation of Japanese tropes: TaikOz want their merits to shine without relying upon scintillating images successful for past taiko players. TaikOz also avoid perpetuating ‘false traditions’, and express

61 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Kazumi, 4. 62 Ibid., 4. 63 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012: 82-83.

126 awkwardness at the sexualisation of an art form that does not need help cultivating interest.

In the 1980s Hayashi thought those scanty costumes were too strongly associated with kumi- daiko, and fundoshi did not fit solo performance either, saying “exposing your body in front of people [is] embarrassing. Although people complimented [my] exposed back and buttocks [and] it had a dramatic effect in the performance, I personally didn’t want to expose my body.”64 However as the seitai-gamae inventor, and like TaikOz who (on other fronts) feel bound to deliver what their audiences have come to expect, Hayashi felt compelled to perfect that near-naked ōdaiko image.

TaikOz, not known for loincloth appearances, still receive ample media-comments about their muscles while their musical forms, musical communication or artistic innovation remain unmentioned. Muscles gain attention, are considered captivating and sexy.65 Hayashi echoed: “Even with my back to the audience, I can feel the attention of the audience becoming more focused and intense as the performance proceeds... [Audiences call] the sight and reverberations of the solo [ōdaiko] ‘awesome’!”66 And this awe is equated with beauty, beauty that has a race. Visuals come to stand in for sonic relationships, and body-beauty is an unexpected positive oft discussed in taiko literature, for example in Paul Yoon’s discussion of ōdaiko,67 and adjacently by Arjun Appadurai regarding martial arts in films, beauty standards and the makings of exoticism generally.68 Wary of proving musicality visually, by hyper- masculine muscle-popping, Hayashi wrote for Japan Close-Up: “When I perform overseas I am often praised for my musicianship. Critics say they never knew Japanese people to be so beautiful. Western audiences notice and appreciate ‘performance as movement’ and the beauty of the form.”69 As the world’s best taiko star, a self-made artist and pioneer, Hayashi’s views on what makes taiko beautiful should hold weight. He discusses beauty in terms of differences between races, instruments, and attitudes of admiration:

64 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Kazumi, 4. 65 Felicity Clark, “TaikOz: More than Muscles in the Media.” Into The Mix People, Places, Processes: Proceedings of the 2014 IASPM-ANZ Conference, Dunedin, New Zealand: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, (2015): 17-26. 66 Hayashi quoted in Kazumi, 5. 67 Paul Yoon, “Asian Masculinities, Odaiko and Film,” (2009): 101-115. 68 Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 7. London: SAGE, (1990): 295-310. 69 Eitetsu Hayashi, “University of Japan’s Traditional Drums, Wadaiko,” Viewpoint, Japan Close-Up, 34.

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I think we Asians appear most beautiful when exhibiting a form that we have mastered through total discipline... In foreign countries I have often felt we are no match in terms of human beauty for Africans or Europeans, as least when standing still. But we can see in Chinese martial arts, and the dohyo-iri line-up in sumo wrestling, and in the ways of tea and flower-arranging, that there is something unique to Asians in the beauty of our movements within a strictly defined form. Bruce Lee is a good example. He’s a hero even in Africa.70

Hayashi has said that Japanese beauty comes from adherence to discipline; that beauty- standards are comparable across races, but that some races are more beautiful than others.

Especially interesting is how Hayashi implies ‘Africans’ (a uniform group of martial arts enthusiasts) view a kung-fu film star. His tone is conversational, and distils years of rumination on these ideas, but reveals Japanese national pride.71 It also shows Hayashi’s conception of racialised beauty and inherent abilities. As ‘the world expert’, Hayashi appears to communicate that his witnesses should eventually see things his way. Justifying his position further, Hayashi has said:

If I am [an active World Musician] I think it is because I am trying to be myself as a Japanese, not because I am seeking to become the same as the rest of the world. It may seem contradictory, but the cultures and modalities that are peculiar to an ethnic group really have more universality that what are sometimes considered ‘global standards’, and are easier to understand for more people of more countries. A so- called native culture is the embodiment of the original characteristics of a people, so that even if the elements differ from culture to culture, I believe there is always some commonality between them. So in this sense, it would be very interesting if the ‘contemporary Japanese taiko’ possesses a universality that can stand with the best of the rest of the world’s cultures.72

For Australian TaikOz, the ‘original characteristics of a people’ they come from, and represent, is more diversified. Where Hayashi has safely assumed a national identity in Japan,

70 Ibid., 35. 71 Yaichi Haga, “Kokuminsei jūron (Ten Discourses on National Identity),” in Nihonjin Ron (Japanese Cultural/Racial Superiority), Ed. Ikimatsu Keizo, Tokyo: Toyamabo, 1907 and 1977; and Yoko Arisaka, “The Controversial Cultural Identity of Japanese Philosophy.” Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, Ed. Bret W. Davis, www.oxfordhandbooks.com, accessed December 18, 2017. 72 Eitetsu Hayashi, “University of Japan’s Traditional Drums, Wadaiko,” Viewpoint, Japan Close-Up, 35.

128 such a designation within Australia is complexified by our multi-ethnic, multicultural melting pot. Hayashi continued, emphasising universal spiritualism and embodiment:

The drum is the most human of all musical instruments... It conveys the smell of sweat and the heat of the body. It is deeply tied to the most basic spiritual enterprises of the human being, namely prayer and the reverence of nature. In my long life as a performer I have experienced this many times, so I have never treated the taiko as a way to show off my own skill and originality. I wanted to show its potential to be both a link to the deep spirituality possessed by all [people], and a means for refined, contemporary musical expression.73

Eitetsu Hayashi’s brand of humanism wafts between causes and effects. While capitalising on the story that he is a pioneering solo artist, Hayashi compounds an additional layer of profundity by universalising the spirituality of his actions – that he does not do it for himself but for the sake that all beings may reach their own potential. TaikOz feel judged for ‘showing off their skill and originality’ and express how inescapable this designation is, no matter how many approaches they take to their multi-faceted art.

Many of Hayashi’s innovations have been in response to the entertainment market. For example, he innovated self-accompaniment on ōdaiko in 1983 when designer Kansai Yamamoto invited Hayashi to play solo ōdaiko at his ‘Paris Collection’ fashion show in Niigata. Hayashi told: “Playing ōdaiko requires a rhythm-accompaniment but Kansai-san said he wanted me to perform alone… Like [singing] a cappella, it is very difficult. Kansai-san [made] such an unprecedented request because he had no experience with drum performance.”74 Catalysed by ignorance and market demand, a non-taiko-expert hired a ‘hot body’ to be trendy at low cost: ōdaiko presentation formalised. In a similar story, the influential 1958 film The Rickshaw Man coloured taiko culture forever when a director ‘spruced-up’ matsuri drumming to make his film scene more captivating.75 These innovations to entertainment were partly indulgent, partly innocent. TaikOz too have experimented with taiko forms through creativity and necessity. Those TaikOz projects that ‘work’ strike a balance between meeting public expectations and producing music with strong aesthetic and philosophical justifications. The flops tend to mix attributes in unpleasing proportions – too

73 Ibid. 74 Eitetsu Hayashi quoted in Kazumi, 5. 75 Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012: 78-88.

129 much Japaneseness, or not enough imprintable spirituality. Compositionally, TaikOz approach writing for taiko using different techniques to Hayashi or Kodo, and justify these approaches by either relating Japanese aesthetic concepts or by appealing to TaikOz members’ histories as classical musicians with exposure to multiple conventions.

Composition, aesthetics and ink

Some taiko innovations followed patrons’ demands, but Hayashi has also consciously shaped his artistic medium. He emulated sonically Japanese sumi ink-painting, preferring to translate static image into music than use temporal art-forms as inspiration. He explained, “In order to make viable solo performance, I have always struggled with the questions of how to compose my pieces. This has been much more difficult than the physical practice. There are no traditional texts to serve as guides when considering what direction a piece should take.”76 TaikOz have also battled to choose the ‘right’ associative imagery. Of image as sound and vice versa, Hayashi mused, “Just as we sense colour and space and distance within the gradations of monochromatic greys and black of the sumi, [a similar] image could be used for the supposed monotone of drum music. I tried [modifying] bachi (drumsticks) and changing the surface areas I hit on the drum skin.”77 These techniques were successful in distinguishing fine nuances on mechanically simple instruments.

TaikOz spend much mental energy selecting inspirations (from haiku to collaborations across genres) to legitimise their taiko for audiences, while pleasing their own sense of artistry. TaikOz have also tried to indigenise their taiko as Australian by using tropes from their other musical lives (jazz, orchestral, experimental music, pop) and collaborating with respected dancers or digeridoo players at the request of Japanese colleagues. Compositional value has been constructed by all parties via association, and is not reflective of sonic relations or hackneyed composers’ intentions. During the Australian TaikOz and Kodo collaboration in 2009, Kodo's then artistic director Motofumi Yamaguchi distinguished that Kodo used improvisation while TaikOz compose, but Yamaguchi felt that the two ensembles complemented each other.78 TaikOz compositions are rhythmically and thematically complicated, while Kodo tend to write strophic pieces linked by solo bridges. Each group

76 Eitetsu Hayashi quoted in Kazumi, 5. 77 Ibid. 78 Motofumi Yamaguchi, in Ash Wilson, “Boom of a different drum,” The Australian, February 20, 2009.

130 balances irregularity and uniformity in their own ways.

Melodic impulses: Hayashi’s visual arts versus TaikOz’s ratios and intuition

While Hayashi has drawn compositional inspiration from static images, TaikOz members tend to compose on themes or in collaboration with performance artists (temporal art forms like song, theatre, dance, film). When thinking purely of musical composition, TaikOz’s Ian Cleworth contributed to an educational resource for The Arts Unit explaining:

There is no distinction between so-called ‘tuned percussion’ and ‘un-tuned percussion’... So, when I compose I hear everything in terms of melody… In fact, in Japan we call pieces of music ‘uta’ (song). To develop my ‘drum melody’ theme I will use compositional techniques like repetition. But even when repeating a phrase I will often change it a little bit each time – maybe by adding or taking away an instrument or adding some different accents.79

Cleworth detailed his preferred tricks:

Mathematical techniques [can be heard] in Ota-i-ko where I take a phrase and chop beats off it until it’s just a fragment of the original – diminution in other words. I also like to compose long cyclic patterns and overlay them... My ear determines the final outcome – if all of these formulas don’t sound any good then I’m quite happy to chop them up and change them around. The musical line is ultimately what matters… Friends [can jam] away on your ideas [to] learn and be creative.80

Cleworth’s description uses terms and processes familiar to The Arts Unit’s readers, but not common to TaikOz’s students or the majority of taiko players worldwide. Cleworth transfers the information in this format because he is fluent in the language this document is actively designed to teach its readership, though he selects other language and prioritises other aspects of composition when talking to journalists without this situated knowledge.

Cleworth’s creative inspirations have come from many sources including haiku and theatre. His Toward the Crimson Sky (2012-2014) is a “moodily evocative 55-minute score based upon Miura Yuzura's haunting haiku, especially composed to showcase Satsuki Odamura's

79 Ian Cleworth quoted in The Arts Unit, “Asia Scope and Sequence: Australia-Japan Taiko Drumming Fusion,” Curriculum Corporation: Carlton South, (2008): 14. 80 Ibid., 14-15.

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17-string bass koto… At once intricate and riotously explosive [it employs] electronica, vocals, a wide range of taiko and percussion instruments, and bamboo flutes.”81 Another conceptual project composed by Cleworth, Seven Flowers (2019) themed on ‘seven stages of the artist’, was inspired by 15th-century noh playwright and theoretician Zeami Motokiyo’s once-secret treatise Fushikaden. Cleworth described Fushikaden as “a very wise, observant & deeply humanistic work”82 and his response in Seven Flowers honours Zeami's ideas.

Hayashi, on the other hand, has composed several works after specific visual artists. His work Jakuchu no Tsubasa (Wings of flightless birds, 2000) is based on the Edo Period (18th century) painter Ito Jakuchu who famously depicted detailed animals and plants. Mio no Hasu (Lotus along the Water Channel, 2002) is based on Takumi Asakawa’s paintings that promote the glories of Korean art during Japanese colonial rule. Hayashi’s first homage to a visual artist was Manrei, made 1998, honouring Man Ray.83 Hayashi found performance art too complex and profound to deconstruct and reinvent in taiko form, and he took comfort by translating elements of still forms like photography or drawing instead, described below. His compositions using visual-arts themes, he calls ‘taiko theatre’:

When considering motifs for composing, a lot [can] be learned from traditional arts fields, and although I do like noh, bunraku and kabuki theatre, I couldn’t presume to do drum pieces on the great playwrights Zeami and Chikamatsu who gave birth to these theatre forms centuries ago. It is a traditional arts-world that cannot be broken down in such a way. The [Man Ray idea] came as a coincidence, but it was also a revelation that opened up new possibilities for me to work freely [creatively].84

For Hayashi, allusion to static image is more practicable in artifice (taiko performance) than the translation of one rich, temporal art-form (theatre) into another (taiko). He does not mention rhythmic devices like subdivision, metre, melody. Hayashi speaks of transmutation of art but not the techniques that produce this effect. He is adept at such techniques, as proven with the world’s best orchestras interpreting western scores. But, crucially, this is not how he describes his artistic processes when asked. Tangentially, witnesses see static traces of other

81 “Toward the Crimson Sky,” TaikOz publicity, https://www.taikoz.com/productions/crimson-sky, accessed December 11, 2020. 82 Ian Cleworth, Blog: Seven Flowers: Highlights on FB & Vimeo, Mon 27 Apr 2020, https://www.taikoz.com/blog/seven-flowers-highlights-on-fb-vimeo, accessed May 26, 2020. 83 Eitetsu Hayashi quoted in Kazumi, 6. 84 Ibid.

132 arts in taiko, for example ritual, martial arts, or spiritual allusions. It is these static traces of association that are linked to taiko, and not the real practices of religion or even war- drumming.

To return, Eitetsu Hayashi and his colleagues in Ondekoza believed their brand of specific localism/exoticism was successful for two reasons. First, they used drums and their unique human forms to express spirit, making every aspect of their lives temples to art – they made themselves artists. Second, the aesthetic worlds permissible under this philosophical mooring were vast and free because they were means to an end, not a product in themselves.

Independently, and not by imitation, TaikOz operate in this second way, even though their backgrounds and beliefs differ from the first condition. TaikOz find legitimacy through their histories as musicians in other markets, and play taiko to express themselves. TaikOz look iconic, or seem to reference iconic images of Japanese music or culture to outsiders because TaikOz are ‘not making themselves artists’, but letting others determine their level of artistry based on fallacies, misinformation and faulty correlations. For example, in interpretations of TaikOz’s production with Indian dancers, Chi Udaka, multiple critics saw a hip hop battle. The critics’ discourses used simile, but not direct association between Chi Udaka and hip hop – they referred only to impressions left by both and not to the physical/sonic-realities of either. It seems the problem in TaikOz’s reception then may stem from associations like these being taken literally, when these rhetorical devices (of language, not music) only point towards a phenomenal reality. Given this predicament, rhetoric of music, language and aesthetics become important tools for decoding or applying meaning. And the social aesthetics of the networks that construct such meanings can be considered as important as component materials.

Japanese aesthetics applied by TaikOz and Eitetsu Hayashi

Hayashi speaks about Japanese aesthetics when conveying concepts and artistic principles, as do TaikOz. Allusion and impression via static or iconic images influence interpretations of taiko worldwide. I capture this argument also with the term ‘mythology’ throughout this thesis. Particularly in relation to spirituality perceived in TaikOz’s work, aesthetics of Eastern philosophies are regularly cited. My segment on spirituality and Onikenbai provides several

133 examples to prove that directions of flow between perceiver and perceived involve much projection. Aesthetic terms like ma (space) and jo-ha-kyu (slow-medium-fast) are common among taiko players too. TaikOz routinely educate concert attendees, program readers, and their taiko students about such concepts through notes and tips.

According to Donald Keene, an observer of Japanese culture in the 1960s, understatement (shibui) is essential.85 Understatement can be found as taiko’s many gradations. A famous image of Hayashi involves a single feather dropping from the rafters during a show – allegedly to demonstrate contrast between ferocious, vivacious drumming and the calm, light, fragile, lifeless object in gravity’s clutches. Such potent symbolism of duality could be an expression of shibui, but it could also be interpreted through another popular Japanese aesthetic binary such as suggestion versus exaggeration; irregularity versus uniformity; simplicity versus profusion; or perishability versus durability – where the former in each pair is dominant in Japanese art.86 Ikebana (flower arrangement) traits exemplify these characteristics: subtle colour selection, absence of symmetry, unobtrusive but deliberately imperfect vases, and the impending expiration of cut flowers. TaikOz may also be viewed with these ideas of suggestion, irregularity, simplicity and perishability in mind. TaikOz’s brand of taiko is more suggestive of borrowed culture than ‘quotational’ and hence leaves space for witnesses to imagine an origin (which they do, potentially to detriment of TaikOz’s commercial success).

TaikOz do not fit into most templates of taiko, making them irregular. Yoshida Kenkō, the fourteenth century Japanese philosopher and poet, suggested why his folk were fond of irregularity: “In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.”87 This aligns with Keene's 'suggestive' aspect in Japanese aesthetics, as distilled from Kenkō's Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness): “Perfection, like some inviolable sphere, repels the imagination.”88 TaikOz's inventive or borrowed rhythmic languages are not

85 Donald Keene, “Japanese Aesthetics,” Philosophy East and West 19:3, (1969): 293. 86 Ibid., 293 - 306. 87 Kenko quoted in Donald Keene, “Japanese Aesthetics,” 300. 88 Keene, 299.

134 perfectly Japanese: this adds mystery and depth (yugen89) to their enactment of taiko culture.

Neither are the bodies or backgrounds of majority TaikOz members Japanese, and this makes their practice recondite, symbolic, spacious. It is partly because they are not Japanese that their practice is beautiful, elusive, incomplete and special. Simplicity and profusion characterise TaikOz's music in a delicately balanced dance of opposition: it is simple and complex. Often TaikOz members compose in ways that ‘thin out’ textures, remove ideas or streamline ‘the message’. I mention all this because witnesses regularly imply that TaikOz should be using Japanese aesthetic principles to make authentic taiko products. And while TaikOz do employ these binaries, potential for their application is most apt at the point of reception (not inception), and any binary could be ‘mapped onto’ their art with a little justification.

In 2001, after collaborating with Eitetsu Hayashi in Japan, Ian Cleworth spoke to journalist Katie Nolan about TaikOz’s conceptual and compositional developments following deeper awareness of Japanese aesthetics and cultural principles. Cleworth told “A term used frequently in the study of wadaiko is mitsu-domoe, which translated means ‘mind, body, spirit’. Understanding the importance of the link between these forces is vital.”90 It is the links between these three, and not the discreet parts, that are important to wadaiko understanding. Nolan interpolated: “In the Japanese tradition, it is said that the drums are a symbol of life as they come from the earth, creating a philosophical connection between the two. This is communicated in the rituals surrounding performance, the posture of the player, and the ‘directness’ of the rhythms. While a Western ear may mistake this directness for simplicity, the intention is far deeper.”91 Cleworth elaborated:

In one of my pieces I was using some simple rhythms but when you superimposed them over one another they actually tended to be quite complex, with lots of fast conflicting accents… Eitetsu [Hayashi commented] `Hmmm, interesting'. He is a very quiet man, so I waited as I could tell he was thinking about things. I said `Should I simplify this bit?' and he replied, `Yes, this is a good idea, I think'… The Western ear

89 Keene, 295 and 298. 90 Ian Cleworth quoted in Katie Nolan, “Getting the Drum,” Courier-Mail, August 4, 2001. 91 Katie Nolan, “Getting the Drum,” Courier-Mail, August 4, 2001.

135

will often say, `But this is not complex enough'... The Japanese see the drum as the heartbeat of the womb... that is why it connects with people because it is actually taking you back to that elemental stage… You must beat the drums with the spirit of a child. [Not to] be confused with immaturity, it has the certain naivete [that] children bring to things – direct, straight to the point and felt, without a lot of analysing. [Our] group really tries to keep in mind [that] essential spirit [of wadaiko].92

TaikOz overthink, or consciously think, about not thinking too much. In this way, TaikOz had to relinquish Western predilections for cleverness. In Japan with Hayashi in 2001, TaikOz’s experience of taiko-learning spanned further than rhythmic drills and physical training. Cleworth said, “Particularly important for us as a group [was] to experience the sights and sounds, the smells and tastes. All those senses inform the performance… It [was] not like the Western idea of `how do you do this?' or `teach me how to play this rhythm or how to hit this drum'. In our case, we talked to the drum makers, we practised with 80 year [olds who told] us stories of when they were children, playing the drums. [This] sense of history [was] humbling.”93 Travelling to Japan and working with Hayashi was essential to TaikOz’s ongoing philosophical development. Interestingly, on that trip Hayashi called himself their ‘navigator’, rather than teacher, but was also “very strict on the group, working on the understanding of [mitsu-domoe] elements along with correct movement, correct postures and correct approaches.”94 Regarding aesthetic values circa 2001, Cleworth said, “In Western art music, if a work draws attention to its visual side we tend to brand it ‘superficial'... With Japanese drums it is integral [to marry] the visually aesthetic and the musically aesthetic. The way you move your body directly influences the sounds… It's not just about beating a rhythm... it's your approach.”95 So TaikOz’s doing of music constitutes more than sonic or aesthetic choices, it is behavioural, sensate, bodily and attitudinal.

Cleworth has also admitted to challenges of not having Japanese bodily proportions: “If you're not a native, you're never going to be able to play it like a native. Our bodies just don't move like those guys. It looks different.”96 When New York based taiko-soloist (and former Kodo member) Kaoru Watanabe visited TaikOz in 2012, the pair discussed bodily wisdom

92 Ian Cleworth quoted in Katie Nolan, “Getting the Drum,” Courier-Mail, August 4, 2001. 93 Ibid. 94 Katie Nolan, “Getting the Drum,” Courier-Mail, August 4, 2001. 95 Ibid. 96 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013.

136 and fluency. Cleworth purposefully described Watanabe is an American with Japanese parentage, and said “When Koaru was a Kodo apprentice, he thought learning the movements had nothing to do with culture or race. Things were just right or wrong. If that's the case, then TaikOz have a lot more work to do. We can't just say ‘our bodies are different and they don't work the same way’ [because of] body language and body type.”97 This statement is tragically optimistic – it suggests more work is required.

Timing, climates, economies, future stars

When TaikOz emerged from sister group Synergy Percussion in 1997, it was in an Australia drenched in multiculturalist rhetoric, World Music celebration, public festival funding, and a time when classical music journalism still featured prominently in newspapers. This provided a fertile launch-pad for TaikOz’s career that has since waned with dwindling grant funding, changing live-audience cultures that likely correlate with changing screen cultures and attention economies globally.98 Hayashi admitted he was lucky to begin his solo career in the 1980s during Japan’s hyper economy, before the ‘bubble burst’ around 1991. In those times progressive projects and artsy commercial events hired Hayashi often as ambient noise. By playing in diverse industrial venues Hayashi capitalised on ‘interesting effects’ produced in situ,99 and developed versatility unattainable from conventional theatres and concert-halls. Places affected reception as much as musical content, and dissonance with place-based expectations enhanced positive feedback.

For the future of their art forms, neither Eitetsu Hayashi nor TaikOz is interested in creating clones, but instead promote independence and vision. Hayashi trains Japanese male apprentices to be independent solo performers with individual artistic goals in student group Fu-Un no Kai, founded 1995.100 It has fluid membership of around ten participants. The group’s name means ‘a favourable opportunity for a great man to take an advantage to achieve his aspirations’. Both Hayashi and TaikOz foster taiko education courses through

97 Ibid. 98 Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008; and Kate Solomon, “The incredible impact of smartphones on music,” Telegraph UK, August 30, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/how-phones-changed-the-world/how-smartphones-changed-music, accessed November 17, 2017. 99 Kazumi, 5. 100 Fu-un no Kai page of Hayashi’s website, http://www.eitetsu net/fuun/ accessed June 25, 2021.

137 prestigious universities.101

Worldwide, Hayashi considers those to have hand-built their wadaiko most noteworthy. More impressive still are “street performers or students who were influenced by [Ondekoza’s 1970s] overseas performance tours [who have adapted] taiko in brilliant ways.”102 He credits especially the Blue Man group, and Stomp ‘junk percussion’ for having “clearly been influenced by Japanese taiko.”103 Hayashi clarified, “[Had they] tried to do Japanese taiko as it is, [their work] would be nothing more than imitation. What is great is the way they have adapted parts [into] their own unique type of performance.”104 Ondekoza, and later Kodo, devoted much energy modifying drumming, dance and song, not only for the stage but for the concert-going mind. Kodo have done this both heuristically and by incorporating Japanese aesthetics, and recently by employing a new artistic director, a master of allusion and grace, former kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo V.

Several other Japanese taiko innovators share Hayashi’s sentiment for measured, considerate change that indigenises a hybrid to its protagonists. Whether this attitude is a Japanese trait is debatable. Hayashi has summed, “Although I have apprentices of sorts, they will decide their own futures and the future of their art... It has all been a series of experiments with no defined goal at the outset, so it was not easy and I often failed and embarrassed myself.”105 And in this way, TaikOz follow on in a rich tradition of experimentation, creativity, failure and daring artistic risk. The culture they continue may only be a half-century old, but it is ‘real’ as it gets.

To conclude, Hayashi’s art has lifted festival drumming techniques to unprecedented virtuosity and physical prowess, placing traditions to which Hayashi is not indigenous onto international stages.106 Hayashi’s story is similar to the self-made career-trajectory of TaikOz,

101 Hayashi said of these university students, “Most [Japanese] students today only know Western-style music, and young people [from] the urban environment don’t [know] folk arts of the non-urban regions... At first I teach them the physical basics of drumming method, and for most of them that is too much for them to handle and they begin complaining.” Hayashi teaches the music education students transferable musicianship skills when they learn taiko for ‘basic performance skills.’ Quoted in Kazumi, 10. 102 Kazumi, 10. 103 Ibid. 104 Kazumi, 10-11. 105 Kazumi, 11. 106 While many of the styles Hayashi has stylised are Japanese with varying durations of history, they are from

138 and yet TaikOz believe that their public perceive TaikOz as imitators while others like Hayashi are original or traditional sources. To this Ian Cleworth attributes concepts of “racialism”107 (particularly Australian), as he is uncomfortable voicing ‘racism’ in our interviews. This chapter has evidenced how Hayashi has constructed an ethically-based identity with strong aesthetic principles and vision, yet how many significant innovations to taiko-culture have been circumstantial and driven by public unfamiliarity (or even ignorance) towards the form. Further, these ‘disjunctures’108 have codified contemporary taiko internationally. It has mattered less that traditions have been borrowed and repurposed than that the artists appropriating the forms have been Japanese, serious about their roles and identities as artists.

TaikOz’s taiko succeeds by staging material that looks old and Japanese but that has been stylised and considered aesthetically at every point. TaikOz’s efforts are recognised by the world’s best in this field. While professional staged taiko is not the most populous version of taiko activity, TaikOz do it exceptionally well, and their example could influence taiko players of all kinds around them. As will follow in the next chapter about how TaikOz intercepts with orchestral music, the discourses that stick to TaikOz tend to result from the things surrounding TaikOz, and not from what TaikOz do.

other regions and local cultures within Japan. Though Hayashi uses this material respectfully and in relationship with custodians, it has not been transmitted to him via a lineage or single guild to which he is a born member. 107 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 108 Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7. (London: SAGE, 1990): 295-310.

139

4. Orchestras, Racialism and Surroundings

Sound is a quality, not of the object that makes the sound, but of the surrounding medium.1

As taiko became a recognised staged music, increasingly since the late 1960s, the genre grew in conjunction with orchestral settings. Despite being marketed and interpreted as an ancient art form decontextualised, this reading is less substantiable than one where a new style emerged inseparably from Western classical music, its institutions and commercial culture. Biographies of the world’s most famous taiko stars and groups reference debuts in venues like Carnegie Hall and collaborations with organisations including Berlin Philharmonic as proof their professionalism is universally accredited. Without such means of dissemination, advertising, exposure and normalisation, taiko may not have grown in popularity to the same degree in Japan and abroad.

During contemporary taiko’s evolution, the sound of taiko’s success may have had less to do with taiko’s properties, and more to do with the surrounding medium of a globalising entertainment culture, eager to display and repurpose exotic excellence. In this sense, taiko – the objects – may be insignificant relative to the attitudes of their players, audiences and discourses. This chapter explores how taiko’s entangled relationship with other elite music cultures has come to influence ways TaikOz (Australian professional percussionists and taiko experts) are called upon to present taiko with orchestras, and are judged for it. Some criticism TaikOz receive reflects discourses of mis-perceived appropriation. These discourses have long histories or evolutions, that predate contemporary taiko, but attach to taiko with vigour.

TaikOz are not in control of their reception and several factors implicate them as imitative or appropriating musical forms seen as non-indigenous to them. Their music and image take on meanings depending on who is looking, where and when. Generally, their sound is described as loud, boisterous and balanced with the ‘yin energy’ of shakuhachi fluting, yet reviewers rarely comment on the subtleties of their drumming techniques and compositions. It seems TaikOz’s sound remains static (noisy), or otherwise under-investigated, while their image

1 Robert Pasnau, “What Is Sound?” The Philosophical Quarterly 49:196 (1999): 309-324.

140 changes (by collaborative juxtaposition). According to the opening quote, difference is determined by apposition and not by inherent qualities. Hence a simple interpretation says TaikOz should appear Japanese to orchestral colleagues, and Australian to taiko colleagues. And yet TaikOz feel they are interpreted as never being able to achieve native taiko status because they look non-taiko, even though they sound great.

TaikOz’s witnesses regularly see TaikOz as blenders of a surviving ‘traditional taiko’ with the foreign and unrelated genre of orchestral music. Historically, these two mediums have collaborated for as long as contemporary-taiko has existed and, in fact, the production of taiko as a staged instrumental music primarily happened in conjunction with orchestras. TaikOz hence continue a rich tradition of hybridity – their work is an authentic continuation, rather than an innovation that merges forms. TaikOz to this existing combination then contribute artistry and imaginative musicality. TaikOz Artistic Director Ian Cleworth was principal percussionist for Sydney Symphony Orchestra for decades and left to pursue taiko full time. Several other TaikOz members regularly play percussion with Australia’s finest orchestras. Members Kevin Man and Kerryn Joyce also have a duo, Karak, that composes and performs chamber music. While most TaikOz members hold music degrees, and each compose for taiko and other ensembles, their training in taiko is additional to their musical educations in other traditions including classical, jazz and pop. This diverse and highly skilled musical foundation make TaikOz extremely adaptable, interdisciplinary and relevant to various audiences.

Given TaikOz members’ adjacent careers in other musical forms, and their relationships with elite organisations and institutions such as universities and orchestras, TaikOz’s early career legitimacy indeed depended upon combining taiko with classical music because TaikOz’s concert-going public already appreciated the cultures of those venues and institutions. For these audiences TaikOz performed orchestral and ‘classical contemporary music’ traditions while appealing to multiculturalist and exoticist trends of globalising tastes. In this context (influenced by popular music, festival fair, folk, World Music imaginings2) since 1997 TaikOz have created over forty original works for wadaiko, often featuring such instruments as shakuhachi, shinobue, nôkan, voice, percussion, marimba, saxophone, guitar and

2 Timothy D. Taylor, Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2007.

141 didgeridoo. This body of compositions has developed TaikOz’s ‘sound’ by drawing upon members’ input. Each member has learnt with esteemed colleagues and teachers in Japan such as Eitetsu Hayashi, Fuun no Kai, past members of Sado no Kuni Ondekoza, members of Kodo, as well as friends and artists including Synergy Percussion, didgeridoo virtuosi Matthew Doyle and William Barton, theatre director John Bell of Bell Shakespeare Company, digital shaman Michael Keene Chin (aka Tokyo Love-In), choreographer Meryl Tankard, and to composers Peter Sculthorpe AO OBE, Andrea Molino, Gerard Brophy, David Pye, Lachlan Skipworth and Graeme Koehne. TaikOz have repeatedly performed with symphony orchestras in Australia and have also collaborated with major festivals in Sydney, Brisbane, Tasmania, Adelaide and Perth, often creating new compositions for wadaiko and other artists and art forms. TaikOz regularly performs in Australia's finest concert halls, festivals, dingy pubs, underground venues, as well as the theatres of regional Australia.

Through the collective power of these collaborators’ sympathetic creative spirits, TaikOz have forged a style of their own that reflects the members’ high energy, commitment and joy in making music. Yet TaikOz’s intersection with orchestral music is over-represented in media relative to TaikOz’s more experimental projects because this orchestral music attracts its own culture of journalism and reportage. Write-ups about orchestral performances have long held spaces on the cultural pages of newspapers, while reports of TaikOz’s shows at bars, theatres and smaller venues have received little mention, and more often on blogs than in print. Because print media texts about TaikOz and orchestra are prevalent, I naturally include these for discussion.

This chapter presents histories of Japanese composers who reflexively incorporated Japanese traditional instruments into Western-style classical music. I mention works and composers who pioneered taiko-orchestral fusions, tracing cultural and historic reasons for fashions. This demonstrates how TaikOz have followed a well-worn trajectory. Additionally, by using taiko implanted in classical repertory, TaikOz have increased their reach and audience engagement, before diverging into other performative taiko cultures. I address ways TaikOz compose and engage with commissioned works. The question whether ‘Japanese rhythm exists’ is problematised in case studies of Gerard Brophy’s Book of Clouds and Andrea Molino’s war critique Winners.

142 At their heart TaikOz are a modernist ensemble, like their professional siblings at Synergy Percussion. Their eclectic collaborative projects evidence this,3 as well as their detailed and deliberate orchestral ventures. This chapter discusses seminal Mono-Prism and Monochrome by Maki Ishii, and works specifically written for TaikOz. Finally, I address concepts of sexualisation and racism to hypothesise why TaikOz’s enactment of modernist ideals and practices are perceived instead as tokenistic, exotic spectacle. I trace where these notions appear, and which forces drive these.

Mono-Prism: taiko in an orchestral sphere Taiko gained popularity in Japan and worldwide through orchestral avenues. The piece to catapult taiko onto international stages was Maki Ishii’s Mono-Prism for orchestra and taiko ensemble, composed while on sabbatical with renegades Ondekoza on Sado Island in the early 1970s. As described by Eitetsu Hayashi in Chapter 3, Ondekoza borrowed traditional taiko material, Yatai-bayashi from Saitama prefecture, and reworked it because they were incapable of producing an accurate rendition and because they were constructing dynamic entertainment.4 Maki Ishii saw Ondekoza’s version of Yatai-bayashi and incorporated it into his composition, which also featured original material for shime-daiko (high pitched drum) showcasing the gradation of colour available on such a mechanically simple instrument. Ishii’s vocabulary was strongly influenced by aleatory techniques popular among his contemporaries (students of Arnold Schoenberg). Nearly a decade after premiering Mono- Prism, Ishii published arrangements of this material as Monochrome for taiko ensemble, and separately for Western percussion ensemble.

TaikOz intersect with Japanese orchestral music Following in the footsteps of their Japanese mentors, TaikOz merge taiko with orchestral instruments, players, stages, conventions and cultures. In the opening chapters I let Eitetsu Hayashi describe ways that he, Ondekoza and Kodo shaped contemporary taiko by repurposing traditional cultural material for local and international stages, frequently in conjunction with orchestras. Now I delve into important compositions and commissioners that propelled taiko into orchestral spaces, and hence TaikOz into legitimacy. For TaikOz’s career with orchestras, Mono-Prism has been the most important work in their history. They

3 For example pulse:heart:beat, Chi Udaka, TaikoDeck, Kodo partnerships, Kaidan: A Ghost Story. 4 Eitetsu Hayashi quoted in Kazumi Narabe, “Artist Interview, Innovating drum music, the spirit of Eitetsu Hayashi,” Performing Arts Network Japan, April 27, 2011, accessed online May 5, 2012: 2.

143 have performed it every other year with the Sydney, Melbourne, West Australian and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, under conductors including Hiroyuki Iwaki, Ryusuke Numajiri and David Porcilijn. See video from Mono-Prism with WASO.5

Synergy Percussion, from which TaikOz sprang, performed Maki Ishii’s Monochrome for their twentieth anniversary in 1992. Riley Lee, who had been a foundational member of Ondekoza, and hence had premiered this work in 1976, attended Synergy’s concert and admonished Ian Cleworth for this rendition. Lee’s criticism was that Cleworth and colleagues should be ‘all in’ or out, that dabbling in taiko was not justifiable. Following this conversation, Cleworth and Lee agreed to co-found TaikOz to play taiko with adequate conviction. TaikOz has an abiding commitment to Ishii’s music for taiko, having performed regularly his ensemble works Mono-Prism, Monochrome, Dyu-Ha, Beatessence 1 and Beatessence 2. Indeed, it is because several of these pieces require seven taiko players that TaikOz began with a membership of seven.

Cleworth has describes Ishii as “the ‘other side of the coin’ to TaikOz, as Ishii is of Japanese extraction and thoroughly versed in both Western ‘art music’ and traditional Japanese musical forms.”6 Additionally Ishii approached Western classical form and structure “with Japanese philosophy, musical concepts and techniques.”7 In program notes for Sydney Symphony’s 2009 rendition of Mono-Prism Cleworth wrote, “As a group of Australian musicians trained in taiko performance, TaikOz finds in Ishii’s music a ‘way in’ to exploring contemporary musical expression through the ancient art of Wadaiko.”8 Compositionally, Mono-Prism is successful because “Each group [(orchestra versus taiko ensemble) retains] ‘expressive essence’… [Ishii] does not compromise or water down either ensemble’s musical integrity in an attempt at musical fusion… The monochromatic taiko [sounds] are reflected through the ‘prism’ of the symphony orchestra and the result is colourful beyond imagining.”9 Notably, this philosophy of expressive essence and juxtaposition (not fusing), that Cleworth uses to legitimise Ishii’s taiko, is identical to TaikOz’s philosophy in Chi Udaka, their 2014-2020 collaboration with Lingalayam dance company.10 Maki Ishii wrote of

5 WASO, Mono-Prism, accessed March 26, 2013, http://freezone.iinet.net.au/vod/freezone/music/waso/2800. 6 Ian Cleworth, Program Note for Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Mono-Prism, 2009. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. Emphasis on hypocrisy because wadaiko is not unified, traditional or old. 9 Ibid. 10 Chi Udaka is discussed in Chapter 6.

144 Moni-Prism: Juxtaposing constant and irregular patterns and blending symmetric and asymmetric rhythms, [Mono-Prism’s] construction develops spirally to an exciting climax. The sounds visualise primordial birth, the evolution of life, and the changes of seasons – monochromatic, but with myriad gradations of grey.11 These quotes show differences between discourses of TaikOz and Ishii. Cleworth drew on taiko’s age as a sign of legitimacy, while Ishii spoke inventively using spatial metaphors (spiral development) and evocations of origin and innovation (birth and change). These differences highlight how TaikOz cling to false myth to justify their art, while compositional appropriator Ishii makes no defences for his creativity.

Graham Hilgendorf explained in our interview that Ishii’s use of the already iconic Yatai- bayashi made Mono-Prism and Monochrome accessible.12 These pieces are appealing for TaikOz because they are technically and aesthetically consolidated, as Hilgendorf distinguished: Some Japanese players are great players but they don't really know [Mono-Prism] and they don't necessarily understand it either because it's a real cross over between the East and West thing... We do understand all those sounds on the instruments… As percussionists, and particularly in orchestral percussion, but even in contemporary music like jazz, [we] always find new sounds on our instruments. In a sense, it's almost ‘the piece’ for us… It was our first style [laughs] because it's such a big power-piece.13

TaikOz entered taiko through Mono-Prism because it bridged their own worlds of interest and similarly captivated their audiences. Had Ishii’s pieces not existed, Hilgendorf speculated: We could have wholly studied [taiko] from a traditional sense. Ian [Cleworth] did do that [traditional path] originally, he started playing and first went to Japan when he was a teen. So he was performing with his sensei [Sen Amano] on-and-off for a number of years. I don't think they ever did Monochrome or Mono-Prism in that

11 Maki Ishii quoted in Ian Cleworth, Program Note for Sydney Symphony Orchestra, 2009. 12 Graham Hilgendorf, Interview with author, October 24, 2012. 13 Ibid.

145 group.14 Hilgendorf also suggested Mono-Prism helped “kick things off [for TaikOz] because Aussie [audiences were] able to tune themselves into this piece through its textures and techniques… and via that we [could] study other things.”15 Playing to the Australian audience had been critical to TaikOz’s success.

Classical music was as foreign to Hilgendorf as a student, as taiko was when he later discovered it. He explained how culture comes to belong: “I wasn't brought up on orchestral music as such, so going to the conservatorium really opened my ears and my mind to that music and I started going to the orchestra regularly to see whatever program they were playing. It's a beautiful sound and it's an amazing ensemble, certainly great sitting out the front playing Mono-Prism, it was incredible!”16 So while witnesses perceive TaikOz members to belong in classical music spheres, their conventions and canons were as foreign to TaikOz players as were Japanese cultural artefacts, and racially-fuelled assumptions have been misleading.

The other side of the coin: Japanese composers of Western-style classical music If TaikOz are misunderstood or criticised for their playing Japanese music – because they are seen to be doing something that does not belong to them – then it is worth investigating how Japanese composers became interested in classical music and then introduced Japanese instrumentation into Western compositional processes. Post-Meiji Restoration (1868), the prevalent Confucian worldview linked all domains of culture, thus for modernisation to occur the education system and even performing arts were revamped ideologically and materially.17 Three relatively isolated ‘spheres of Japanese music’ comprised 1) Western classical music, 2) Popular musics (both Japanese and Western-style), and 3) hōgaku (Japanese court and theatre musics). Academic David Hughes suggests Japanese composers in the Western idiom at that time had “perhaps ironically [by being reconstructive], come ever more to draw on their Japanese roots: [Takemitsu Toru and Miki Minoru] are prime examples.”18

14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 David W Hughes, “Japan: Music in the period of Westernization,” Grove Music Online, accessed November 1, 2012. 18 Ibid.

146 Japanese composers of Westernised music, active around 1900, were strongly influenced by German Romanticism. Post-Meiji ‘traditional Japanese music’ held popularity in society at large only secondarily to Western music.19 After World War I French impressionism was influential, and some composers employed local tropes in their pastiches. For example, koto and shakuhachi music by Miyagi Michio (1894-1956) aimed to emulate European styles using Japanese instruments.20 By 1930 European movements including nationalism and futurism found followers in Japan.21 Cosmopolitanism set in motion an interest in local musics that could indigenise ‘a global music’ in Japan. Twelve-tone music was popular and controversial mid-century: “most composers tried it [while] some composers still used 19th- century styles, some pursued nationalistic trends, and some participated in avant-garde movements.”22 Since 1960 Japanese composers explored more individualism, but radical avant-garde movements waned after 1970, though composers including Ichiyanagi Toshi, Shibata Minao and Takemitsu Toru cultivated an eclectic range of styles.23 Combinatory adaptations where Japanese instruments feature in European-style composition has become commonplace since the 1980s.24 Taiko only began to incorporate into orchestral music in the 1960s, and not from traditional platforms, but via appropriating parties like Ondekoza.

Composers including Shin’ichi Yuize, Hōzan Yamamoto, Seihō Kineya and Tadao Sawai have shaped contemporary Japanese composition by being experts in traditional instrumental performance. Additionally, Shūrestu Miyashita and Enshō Yamakawa inspired innovative instrumental writing from an internationally influenced perspective.25 Miyagi Michio, considered the father of modern Japanese music, invented the 17-string bass koto in 1921, the instrument for which Cleworth composed Toward the Crimson Sky.26 A third stream of Japanese composers, those from outside ‘traditional performance cultures’ have increasingly taken interest in traditional music; these include internationally famed Nagasawa Katsutoshi, Shimizu Osamu, Mamiya Michio, Moroi Makoto, and Takemitsu who favoured exchange of

19 Ibid. 20 “Miyagi Michio,” International Shakuhachi Society Komuso website, www.komuso.com/people/people.pl?person=663, accessed October 20, 2016. 21 Masakata Kanazawa, “Japan: Western Art Music to 1945,” Grove Music Online, accessed June 1, 2012. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Hughes, “Japan: Music in the period of Westernization.” 26 Toward the Crimson Sky is discussed next in Chapter 5, alongside Shifting Sand. Both projects explored the meeting of Japanese and Australian aspects of TaikOz’s drumming.

147 cultural values resulting in artistic cross-synthesis.27 Western composers have followed Japanese composers’ lead to orchestrate with Japanese traditional instruments. Stockhausen, Cage and Gubaydulina have each become intrigued, incorporating Japanese musical concepts into music for Western ensembles, and have had their compositions performed in Japan.28

Four Japanese composers to incorporate traditional music elements into their twentieth- century aesthetics are Isao Matsushita,29 Minoru Miki, Toshi Ichiyanagi and Joji Yuasa. Miki (1930 –2011) actively promoted Japanese traditional instruments and performers.30 He founded Nihon Ongaku Shūdan (Pro Musica Nipponia ensemble) in 1964, for which he composed extensively with divergent styles and techniques, especially for large ensembles. He contributed an orchestration manual called Composing for Japanese Instruments, which offers contextual information for local or foreign composers dabbling with traditional Japanese instruments.31 Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi is also famous for composing for percussion. He wrote In the Reflection of Lighting Image for percussion and orchestra (1980), Paganini Personal for marimba and orchestra (1983-1986), and Time Surrounding for percussion and orchestra (1984). Cleworth noted to me, “Toshi Ichiyanagi was married to Yoko Ono before she married John Lennon; and Miki is quite influential.”32 Joji Yuasa was self-taught composer who around 1952 founded the organisation jikken kobo (Experimental

27 Andrew S Allen, “Takemitsu and His Garden: Tradition in Contemporary Gagaku,” PhD dissertation, 2009: 1. 28 Hughes, “Japan: Music in the period of Westernization.” 29 Isao Matsushita is famed for composing using traditional instruments, in combination with ‘conventional’ orchestral instruments and other art forms. His most famous taiko work is Hi-Ten-Yu (Fly-Heaven-Play) for Japanese drums and octet (1994). It was premiered by Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, before revision as ‘concerto for Japanese Drum and Orchestra’ in 1996. The title Hi-Ten-Yu implies ‘drumming among the stars’. Matsushita was inspired by mythology about ōdaiko that calls it a ceremonial drum representing the unification of heaven and earth. For percussion ensemble he wrote Interwaves (1988), Optical Scope (1989, for percussion and electric organ) Awayuki-no-Mai (1994), Ko-Kyo (1985, for wadaiko and shakuhachi), Aki-no-Ma 2 (1989, for 3 shakuhachi, shamisen, biwa, futozao (wide-necked lute) and 2 kotos). Later in his career Matsushita explored scoring unusual combinations of instruments with non-musical-activities: for example, Dhammapada 1 for harp, violin, percussion and ikebana (flower arrangement, 2001); Minasoko-no-kan (traditional ballet) for noh dancer and small orchestra (2002); Go-un kai-kuh for variable Asian ensemble and light installation (1991); Dhammapada 3 for harp, violin, percussion and tea ceremony (2002); Gassho (a prayer), symphony with a text from Buddhist sutras for shomyo and small orchestra (2004); and Dhammapada 4 for harp, violin, percussion and calligraphy (2003). See Isao Matsushita, www.isao-matsushita.jp/compositins e.php., accessed August 27, 2017. 30 Minoru Miki, Composing for Japanese Instruments, Translated by Marty Regan, Edited by Philip Flavin 31 Ibid., An authoritative text, it contains hundreds of musical examples, diagrams, photographs, and fingering charts, and comes with two CDs of musical examples. The book contains valuable appendices containing compositions by him, Takemitsu and Henry Cowell. 32 Ian Cleworth, Interview with author, June 1, 2011.

148 Workshop) together with Takemitsu and others, to explore new directions in the arts, including multimedia.33 He was commissioned by the likes of Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Saarland Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Canada Council, Suntory Music Foundation, IRCAM and National Endowment for the Arts. Yuasa received many awards and scholarships, including one from Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music (1980).34 Around 1995 Yuasa composed JO HA KYU for 5 players, the title referring to the Japanese aesthetic form loosely translated as ‘slow-medium-fast’. These four composers first established their composing credentials in Western classical music before returning to motifs and methods from Japan.

Japanese composers have used multiple approaches to indigenise ‘a Japanese orchestral music’, and broad-cultural shifts involving ‘catching-up to the West’ have affected not only the music, but instruments, modes of transmission, education systems and practitioners’ identifications during the past century. No single assimilatory approach accounts for ‘a Japanese way’, but evidence suggests that local affectations have been applied to orchestral music, which is considered by them a global apex art form worthy of emulation and adoption.

This micro history reveals strong Japanese adoption of Western aesthetics and processes into a nascent, imitative form. Players of Japanese orchestral music do not appear scrutinised for their motives. Neither do composers of Japanese music appear scrutinised for their appropriations of Japanese cultural material which they found attractive only later in their careers. During my research period TaikOz did not perform any compositions by these composers, or in this style where Japanese experts in Western classical music compose for Japanese instruments. TaikOz as experts in Western classical music and taiko, composed for taiko, commissioned for taiko, and performed new taiko collaborations with orchestras. The opponents to TaikOz’s continuation of this method, appear to be Australian and/or invested in stories that rely upon outdated, oversimplified notions of traditional transmission.

33 Luciana Galliano, The Music of Joji Yuasa ed. Peter Burt. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 34 Yuasa also received a Japan Society Fellowship (1968–69), Berlin Artist Program by DAAD (1976–77), and IRCAM (1987). He is now a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. His 1970s compositions for percussion included Inter-posi-play-tion I and II, Territory, and Mai-Bataraki from Ritual for Delphi; in the 1980s he wrote Ishibutai Kô for ryuteki, 3 shakuhachi, 17-gen koto and 2 percussion, A Winter Day - Homage to Basho, and Interpenetration No. 2.

149 TaikOz play Australian and international taiko compositions Popular in taiko discourse is the idea that some rhythms sound Japanese. Next I mention three works: Book of Clouds by Gerard Brophy, Winners by Andrea Molino, and Breath of Thunder by Lachlan Skipworth. In 2011 Ian Cleworth commented: “Are there Japanese rhythms? Philosophically speaking, no, but in practice, yes, there are rhythms indicative of Japanese music and sentiment.”35 He explained TaikOz’s musical language is indigenous to TaikOz, sourcing ideas from Japanese taiko tropes and other places, but that TaikOz’s fluency becomes apparent to TaikOz only when confronted with explaining to outsiders, for example, to Australian composers, how taiko rhythms should be.

TaikOz worked with Gerard Brophy on orchestral work, Book of Clouds (2008), instrumented for TaikOz, Riley Lee on shakuhachi, two Synergy Percussion members playing gongs and colouring instruments, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Having previously collaborated, Cleworth and Brophy casually discussed the formal requirements of Book of Clouds. Cleworth suggested they “stick with instruments that are not so taiko-specific stylistically… because regional styles like yatai [bayashi], hachijo, miyake, have such specific languages that it's hard for [those unfamiliar] to compose that way.”36 Instead Brophy should remove markers of ‘Japanese specificity’ and rather highlight the international and evolving nature of contemporary-taiko.

Cleworth said that by neutralising the local-specifics of taiko-practice, Maki Ishii had succeeded in internationalising taiko within Mono-Prism. But unlike Brophy who intended to compose for taiko, Ishii simply lifted an appropriated Japanese cultural artefact yatai-bayashi into his orchestral work. Ishii had gained a ‘deeper understanding’ of traditional yatai- bayashi via his sabbatical with Ondekoza, though they had appropriated yatai-bayashi from Chichibu’s yo-matsuri with liberal alterations. The version of yatai-bayashi Ishii incorporated in Mono-Prism was already a hybridised, stylised adaptation of a tradition from a far-away region. Ishii hence quoted an abstraction, and further, used Japanese taiko to serve aesthetic goals befitting his Western classical music taste. For Brophy to compose in taiko idiom without prior experience, guided by non-custodians, is actually typical of taiko-orchestral collaborations.

35 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1, 2011. 36 Ibid.

150

Together Brophy and TaikOz scored Book of Clouds for taiko-sets, ōdaiko and katsugi-okedo. Cleworth said, “Katsugi has the visual element, but it’s a newer instrument [incorporated from Korean traditions]. It lends itself to a fuller range of rhythmic possibilities.”37 These instruments seem generic or universal, likely due to Eitetsu Hayashi’s stylisation of each on international stages. Hayashi’s resultant styles are less codified by contemporary taiko groups who imbue playing with mythology that reinforces ambiguous historicism (for example, group Sukeroku’s chudaiko-playing technique).

After Eitetsu Hayashi’s style, Cleworth orchestrated his personally-expressive work Flowing like a ripple, the centrepiece of Toward the Crimson Sky, for ōdaiko, taiko-sets and hachijo, precisely because these “looked unmistakably like taiko.”38 Even though two of three instruments used cross-over between Book of Clouds and Toward the Crimson Sky, Cleworth’s justification for scoring them was antithetical: in Toward the Crimson Sky they were ‘iconic taiko’ and in Book of Clouds they were chosen because they are ‘not taiko- specific’. The distinction speaks of the multiple definitions of taiko, used interchangeably, to mean both traditional content and modern staged performance.

Brophy, without knowledge of taiko, and without taiko music to appropriate, instead drew on his knowledge of Brazilian samba rhythms, which according to Cleworth “plainly didn’t work [because they sounded] inauthentic, twee… I've heard Japanese groups try to do Latin rhythms too – it sounds really naf.”39 On a side note, American taiko players have also been known to assimilate Latin and First Nation’s drumming material,40 and another TaikOz collaboration involving Latin rhythms was Graeme Koehne's Gojiro in which reviewer Harriet Cunningham heard: “A lumbering giant learning the conga! Shime-daiko... cowbells, maracas and temple bells provided a funky salsa beat... Koehne[’s] tongue-in-cheek dramatics [were] also thoroughly consistent with the spirit of taiko… a democratic art form, full of life, and open to new ideas.”41 Regarding Book of Clouds, Cleworth clarified that Brophy “has a sophisticated understanding of Brazilian rhythms, but it just didn't fit on the

37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Shasta Taiko, www.shastataiko.org/Public/HomePage, accessed May 16, 2017. 41 Harriet Cunningham, “Beat That! Music You Can See And Feel,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 15, 2003: 14.

151 taiko. We may as well have played tom-toms.”42 Ideas like sophistication, formal refinement and musical appropriateness are important aesthetic criteria for Cleworth, while he acknowledges fellow taiko enthusiasts create to different tastes and values.

Brophy’s intricate Brazilian rhythms did not work on the taiko because TaikOz could not use their bodies in a taiko idiom. Cleworth said: “We couldn't play in our taiko style. The hands, the arms, the body, the legs, just didn't move right, so we workshopped it with Gerry [Brophy]. We ended up cutting out a lot of notes – making it less busy. We started to change the actual melody, as in [the position of the pitched] taiko-sets because movement-wise it just didn't [fit]. So even when we used non-traditional taiko-instruments like katsugi-okedo and taiko-sets, [the music was] connected with body and the visual element.”43 When Cleworth composes for TaikOz his highest ideal is sound, but he reasons that sound is inseparable from image, and taiko requires taiko-specific body-language.44

TaikOz workshopped Book of Clouds with Brophy to ‘make it more taiko’ by uncluttering the sound to make space for the image. Language of the body trumped music. Thus Japanese rhythms or musical tropes, and Japanese instruments, paled in importance to gesture, stance, flow and action. TaikOz’s doing of image-making, and action-taking in other projects like pulse:heart:beat (2013 collaboration with Synergy Percussion and filmmakers). Likewise Lachlan Skipworth’s orchestral work Breath of Thunder (2018), challenged notions of which aspects of taiko are musical and which are associative.

Winners, Andrea Molino Winners, multi-media and online work composed and conducted by Andrea Molino, was premiered by TaikOz, Fabrica Musica (Italy) and the Queensland Symphony at Brisbane Festival in July 2006, and later that October in Centre Pompidou, Paris. Documentary footage of Winners in available online.45 Winners is a “music action” composed for wadaiko, orchestra, saxophone and film.46 This ambitious and multinational project frames taiko as an instrument that belongs in multidisciplinary art, that sits comfortably with orchestra, and that

42 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1, 2011. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Molino’s website, accessed September 7, 2015, http://www.andreamolino.net/index.cfm?id=4200, and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/8261394. 46 Ibid.

152 communicates ‘more than music’. Where Molino could have chosen samba, taiko was consciously elected, and I assess why.

Molino’s critical mission was to disrupt regular discourses of winning and losing. He said: “In language, in media, there's a perception of cultural categories, of winners and losers… But I started finding contradictions… I don't want to give people answers, I want to create confusion.”47 Exploring cultures of victory, but also survival, Winners presents intimate recollections from victims of five social catastrophes involving conflict and violence (New York, USA; Sharpeville, South Africa; Dresden, Germany; Ayutthaya, Thailand; and Maralinga, Australia); and through testimonies of people in palliative care. Audiences hear witness-accounts of cataclysmic events: wars, massacres, riots.48 One story told was of Maralinga in South Australia, a site for British atomic weapons testing (1953-1957). On Maralinga’s arid rangelands nine major nuclear bombs were detonated, as were 700 ‘Minor Trials’. Radioactive clouds travelled far, causing sickness and death of surrounding communities, predominately aboriginal and recruited servicemen. In Molino’s conglomerate, Maralinga’s history required taiko and orchestra to tell. While Nagasaki and Hiroshima come to mind fast by association, this story is not from or about Japan, so the taiko were not marking place or nationhood but instead conveyed things like power, war, exertion, comradery, uniformity and sonic colour.

In Winners “the whole world was brought into the concert hall”49 using then cutting-edge telecommunications and film to convey ‘conflict in music’ – where real-time interaction between protagonists and musicians from different nations and cultures would become both the topic of investigation and the medium of presentation. In this context, taiko’s intense boom represented conflict, but perhaps did not represent politics of cross-cultural musical appropriation: of ‘winning at pastiche’ or ‘losing sites of authenticity’. The taiko, which they called wadaiko (drums of Japan) here did other work. Just as TaikOz independently mix languages and contemporary disciplines, the ‘global project’ Winners built a new form of communication using music, video, interviews theatre, arts, design and innovative communication-technologies, where for Molino’s chamber music the world was the chamber. Molino told Artshub:

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Adair Jones, Artshub Australia, August 2, 2006.

153 With Winners I’m trying to damage black and white perceptions of things... I want to damage this cultural dichotomy and leave the rubble on the floor, not replace it with anything. I am not saying ‘here is the truth’, I like to question the question. It is up to the audience to find their own answers, and I’m very excited to give the audience this kind of freedom. If you consider the way most stories are told, there is the beginning, middle and end. Then out of that end, a moral. Everyone is supposed to get the same message from the tale. It’s the same with history, except the ending or moral can change depending on who is telling the story.50 This too is how TaikOz leave space for their public to interpret, and I as an interpreter of TaikOz’s work present the questions they face without imposing answers. Molino and TaikOz are disruptive of concert-norms and prioritise stories with multiple realities while retaining a strong sense of personal and organisational, internal truth. These missions have been reflected in media, who recognise disjuncture but garble the reasons for it. One reviewer of Winners, described TaikOz’s contribution as ‘sexy’ but not so affecting as a filmic image: Thrilling spectacle. Behind a scrim… TaikOz, on a platform above, goes hammer- and-tongs on a barrage of Japanese drums... It's breathtaking, sexy as hell... The real impact [is] made not through sounds but via the haunted, terrified eyes of a terminally ill woman trying to make sense of her fate.51 Image trumped sound vibrations, even when disruption was the central theme.

Lachlan Skipworth, Breath of Thunder In 2018 TaikOz joined with Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Japanese-American jazz and taiko star Kaoru Watanabe to present a concert of cross-cultural works. Watanabe contributed two jazz-fuelled pieces featuring fluting and voice. Reviewer Angus McPherson drew out relationships between the performers saying Ian Cleworth “opened this collaboration between his old band and his new, TaikOz and the SSO, with his own composition Waves for solo kanade-okedo, a high-intensity primer [with] pulsing polyrhythms.”52 The program explored the Japanese aesthetic concept of ‘ma’ (negative space that accentuates entities). McPherson described ma as ‘space that forms part of the whole’ and related “There was certainly a magic

50 (no author), “Winners,” Artshub, July 14, 2006. 51 Martin Buzacott, “Winners World Premier,” Courier Mail, July 24, 2006. 52 Angus McPherson “Taikoz and the SSO whip up a storm in the concert hall,” Limelight Magazine. February 27, 2018.

154 to the decay and silence between the sounds.”53 While he found the overall program fragmentary and slightly unbalanced in its wild extremes of dynamic, the premiere of Lachlan Skipworth’s Breath of Thunder, “a work that lashed the orchestra with a series of rolling maelstroms, tied all the threads together.”54 He established Skipworth’s dedicated emersion in Japanese musical forms: Skipworth’s music has long been infused with Japanese influences – he spent three years in Japan studying the shakuhachi – so this concert bringing together Taikoz, [Riley] Lee and Watanabe made the composer’s SSO debut [fitting and] dramatic. From light, rain-like sounds and atmospheric, muted horns to powerful orchestral tuttis, taiko drums crashing… a work of both exquisite delicacy and tremendous power.55 In this example, a young, enthusiastic Australian composer, Skipworth, followed in the footsteps of TaikOz members, Ondekoza, fellow Australian composers like Anne Boyd (also fascinated with shakuhachi), and Skipworth wrote for the many musical instruments and cultures to which he belonged.

Insider attitudes, race and relevance TaikOz found a legitimising entry point into taiko culture through Maki Ishii's taiko- ensemble works Monochrome and Mono-Prism. They have continued via their own compositions and by encouraging others like Lachlan Skipworth. Their awareness of the roles they play in legitimising their ongoing art has interested me, so I interviewed several members. In 2011 Ian Cleworth told me about TaikOz’s daily engagement with identity, progress and change. Cleworth had recently spent two weeks back with Sydney Symphony Orchestra where questions of identity surfaced as he compared his notions of orchestral traditions (that include and exclude taiko) against the ideas of his orchestral colleagues’, some of whom saw TaikOz’s music as “dodgy.”56 Cleworth said “To a point, certain things haven't changed. The orchestra knows what it is, it has a very strong identity. I don't think anyone [in Sydney Symphony] seriously questions their identity as individuals or as the whole organisation, but nonetheless those pressures of survival and being useful to a

53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1, 2011.

155 community and also upholding traditions, they're still questions that are relevant.”57 Worldwide symphony orchestras are pressured to prove ‘relevance to a community’ and Cleworth said “the strength of a symphony is the breadth and depth of repertoire. Even though you see things repeated over and over again, there is a wealth of material. As you get into contemporary [classical] music… identity is wrapped up in exploring new things.”58 Certainly, TaikOz explore new things and also have a breadth of repertory from Western and Eastern canons. In each they are sometimes misread, thought to be self-indulgent, even racially insensitive in their appropriations. However, this is not how TaikOz actually work, it is only how people routinely see them.

Cleworth developed his passion for taiko as a teenager, long before he achieved status as a symphonic percussionist. Unknowingly, he followed in the footsteps of Australian composers like Peter Sculthorpe OA OBE, Richard Meale and Ross Edwards who had, a generation previously, turned to Asia for inspiration. Cleworth said, “I was only partly conscious, heading off to Japan in the mid 80s that those [composers] got to a point in their lives and musical lives where they rejected home: England and Europe... Messiaen had been a big influence on Richard Meale [who] wrote a piece called Clouds Now and Then [1969] based on a haiku; and Nagauta [1966] a direct reference to the naga-uta stages of kabuki and noh.”59 Cleworth explained that the existent narrative, pioneered by those composers’ interests in Balinese gamelan and Japanese gagaku, was important in the birth of TaikOz.60 In his youth Cleworth had not been conscious of these composers’ processes, but he remembered reading musician bios and being fascinated by their stories: Possibility in Asia was already there before I ever thought to travel to Japan... so for my generation, the path was already worn, it was normalised. The shift from England to Asia mirrors Australian society and culture… In a way, they gave us permission... It dawned on me later that everything in Australian culture has been imported except for Indigenous culture.61

In a migrant-rich country, origin stories mark immigrated cultural material with special value,

57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

156 and these stories can outweigh the significance of the objects in question. As previously discussed, the majority of taiko stage groups worldwide claim taiko is ancient, spiritual, martial and unequivocally traditional, and I refute these points while maintaining the stories are extremely important to proponents of taiko. That the mythology does not linearly match the contemporary phenomenon does not devalue either, nor their relationship, because it is the dance between convention and innovation that lies at the heart of taiko. This situation aligns with Japanese philosophical concepts62 that underlie a real and imagined, current and remembered, ‘Japanese psyche’, that is attractive to Australians in TaikOz’s context.

TaikOz’s musical practice is deeply local and contemporary. Rather than imitative, borrowing, re-creating or paying homage to a foreign culture, TaikOz create identity as professional Australian musicians, following on from classical composers and musicians, past and present. Regardless, some of Cleworth’s contemporaries in Australia see TaikOz’s work as weird, tokenistic appropriation.63 He recalled, “Even now, some of my classical colleagues can't understand why I left the orchestra. They see what I'm doing now, [post-]orchestra, as just 'weird'. And it's 'dodgy'. They ask, ‘Why are you doing this? You're not Japanese... You're really on shaky ground’.”64 Curiously, Cleworth’s orchestral colleagues did not voice complaint about the inclusion of Japanese instruments into a conventional Western orchestra. And while Cleworth’s classical colleagues blithely played Viennese waltzes across oceans and after centuries, they seemed not to judge their own appropriation through similar parameters.65 Cleworth wondered, what makes their culture their own?66 He questioned: What are we talking about here: is it culture, or is it race? I've never really explored it further because it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's entering into the realms of racialism or racism. It's a complicated area. I've not felt confident and I feel ill at ease. But if you can understand that our culture has been imported, made up of influences from all over the world, Japan, Russia, America... yeah... then what are we really talking about here?67 Cleworth’s orchestral colleagues had assumed that because they had only tokenistic understanding of TaikOz’s chosen repertory, that TaikOz too must only understand it

62 Like Zen, as discussed in Chapter 7 about Onikenbai. 63 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1, 2011. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid.

157 superficially. When they perceived difference, there was no scale at which this difference would become acceptable or knowable, and therefore no future state in which TaikOz could reach legitimacy. These orchestral musicians saw taiko as Japanese, and TaikOz members as not-Japanese: an irreconcilable distance between being and doing. As TaikOz frequently tell their witnesses, and as I have demonstrated by this thesis, TaikOz only attempt to transmit Japanese aspects amid their own performance aesthetic, which takes already-hybridised Japanese musical cultures as inspiration. Their doing and being is fairly integrated.

During that same conversation, Cleworth relayed his experiences of Western classical music and non-Japanese popular music, during his 1980s study of taiko in Japan. He said orchestral music did not feature in his Japanese daily life but he qualified, “I'm not talking about classical music experts in Japan of which there are many – they have great orchestras and excellent musicians – I'm talking about my taiko teachers and other people involved in the performing arts world generally.”68 In Cleworth’s day-to-day Japan, pieces like Dvořák’s New World Symphony and Ravel’s Bolero were popular. Strangers would say, “Oh, you play classical music? Dum dadada Dum dadada Dum dadada...”69 Cleworth explained, “There was that idea that those sorts of pieces really embodied something about Western classical music.”70 Each popular piece was a microcosmic example of specific and generic genius, standing alone and for all others.71

Cleworth did not seek out Western classical music while in Japan, he was there for traditional Japanese music and other local encounters. Cleworth's colleagues in Japan understood he was there to study Japanese music, but socially they attended gigs together. One night in a jazz club with his sensei Cleworth was asked to “sit in on congas.”72 There was an assumption that because Cleworth played percussion that he was fluent in all genres and had the spontaneity and desire to exercise those skills publicly at any chance. Social performance, as in skit-nights or drunken revelry, are entrenched in Japanese culture in ways less familiar in Australia. Interestingly, when TaikOz host Japanese guests in Australia for workshops and musical tours, this Japanese approach to parties is adopted to 'welcome' the guests, to make

68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 This ‘one in many, many in one’ concept from Zen Buddhism features in Chapter 7 on Onikenbai. 72 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1. 2011.

158 them feel comfortable. It structures social engagements and makes clearer the expectations of particular social interactions and transactions. When TaikOz go to Japan, they do their best to honour Japanese customs, and when TaikOz invite people and pieces of Japan to Australia, TaikOz favour Japanese custom: they always modify themselves for the comfort of their guests/hosts. TaikOz take a humble, diminutive stance, placing their informants, mentors and visitors on a pedestal. Wherever they go, there they are: adapting, melding, disappearing. But if image trumps vibration, they erase themselves in the process of doing/being/becoming.

Playing with an accent, racialised bodies Do Australian orchestras play Strauss with an accent? In trying to locate the 'Japaneseness' within taiko, I have analysed multiple scales on which such an interpretation could be validated. The taiko drums are Japanese in material, in development and design, but after Chinese and Korean prototypes. Tropes that 'sound Japanese' played on taiko are made conventional through repetition. A more palatable argument might involve Japanese rhythmic grammar or syntax: a scale larger and more relational than atomised rhythmic units.

Questions about what defines Japaneseness versus Australianness featured in nearly all my interviews with TaikOz members, and crept into all chapters. Cleworth tended to argue that body language and bodily movement define a Japanese sound, and that ‘collections of units of sound-in-time’ do not.73 He lamented about taiko: “It is suited to Japanese bodies and body language... Our bodies just don't move like those guys. It looks different.”74 The ratios between limbs and torso-length, for example, have physical ramifications for ergonomics. In 2013 collaborator Kaoru Watanabe and Cleworth discussed this problem. Cleworth reported: If you're not a native, you're never going to be able to play it like a native. When Kaoru was a Kodo apprentice, he thought learning the movements had nothing to do with culture or race. Things were just right or wrong. If that's the case, then TaikOz have a lot more work to do. We can't just say our bodies are different and they don't work the same way.75 Interestingly, Cleworth separated the physical limitations born of different drums’ bodies – the musical language appropriate to a giant ōdaiko is necessarily more spacious than that of high-pitched, tight-skinned shime-daiko. Few artfully attempt to play shime-daiko repertory

73 Ian Cleworth, Interviews 2011 and 2013. 74 Cleworth, Interview, July 17, 2013. 75 Cleworth, Interview, March 5, 2013.

159 on ōdaiko or vice-versa, but Cleworth appears to place another standard upon the bodies of human agents. Bodies of objects, bodies of traditions, and bodies of people each receive different treatments. This type of discussion is sensitive because it touches on ideas that race affects ability. It implies that arm-torso ratio can be ‘right for this’, and that physical limitations of performers’ bodies can make this activity inauthentic. This contradicts the ‘taiko is for everyone’ TaikOz school bi-line (which is also common among taiko groups worldwide), and moreover the ‘taiko is for everyone professionally’, sentiment prevalent for taiko performers around the globe. While it has seemed implausible to argue that rhythms could attract local identities (as reflections of something they are or do, rather than by association or familiarity), the default when talking about human bodies does invite these distinctions. TaikOz’s foray into orchestral taiko music has been instrumental in indigenising their bodies on stages – because their bodies ‘do belong’ on the stages they assume. Their bodies seem local with Australian orchestras, and less exotic than when playing Japanese taiko (where relative to Japanese taiko stars TaikOz’s body-language looks Western or like orchestral percussionists). TaikOz’s marginality in both realms permits ‘another set of bodily- functional norms’ into which TaikOz’s successful output legitimises their weaker attributes: it levels their participation in both categories.

Conclusions on orchestral taiko As TaikOz attempt the contemporary staged variety of wadaiko, TaikOz do not try to be, nor claim to be traditional Japanese drummers, Buddhist ceremonialists, war beaters, Japanese court musicians, or Shinto festival percussionists. Neither do they perform ‘stagified’ versions of any of these particularities so as to gain approval or prestige. Their taiko, like most contemporary taiko, is a hybrid that draws on the mentioned Japanese aspects alongside other non-Japanese (and non-Japanese-American) elements. Contemporary taiko has always paired with orchestral music (as voiced by Eitetsu Hayashi in previous chapters), so I presented histories of Japanese composers, Australian composers and others that have welcomed taiko instruments into the fold. TaikOz continue the contemporary tradition of staging visually stunning, physical drumming alongside refined orchestral music. Nearly every assumption made of taiko and TaikOz has been invertible, and hence unstable in its relationship to truth. Therefore I deduce that the stories that stick have more to do with the particular contexts – the surroundings – than the activities enacted. It is the space around, the ma, that matters.

160 5. Taiko on Australian Stages - Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky

Since TaikOz’s 1997 evolution from Synergy Percussion, they have developed a version of taiko that adheres to Japanese tradition, Japanese contemporary-taiko, and world-taiko culture, while simultaneously drawing on the Western classical music traditions and members’ personal musical lives. TaikOz present music to a primarily contemporary- classical music audience in Australia, an audience that perpetuates a listening culture established on ideas about sound, refinement, conceptual clarity, aesthetic beauty and historical legitimacy. While Synergy Percussion continue to be praised for their innovation in contemporary musical performance and especially for inventive collaborations, TaikOz often meet confused responses to attempts at mixing taiko with other genres or styles of music, dance and visual media. TaikOz members explain this is because their audiences hold expectations as to what taiko is, can be and should not be, as well as what is deemed appropriate in a concert hall context. TaikOz consider these audiences to see TaikOz’s practice as Japanese, if with an Australian accent. Yet delineations of Japaneseness or Australianness do not adequately reveal the complex flows of cultural material that underlie TaikOz's work, or taiko culture in general. This simplistic national binary poses problems for TaikOz whose commercial success relies on ‘looking authentic’ amid misconceptions.

This study investigates TaikOz through a relational lens because each enquiry reveals specifics of form or history entangled with contradictions and fallacies. These propel me to investigate contexts beyond the forms, and reasons for the stories that gain momentum. My chapter about Australian taiko teams identified a first and second wave of Australian taiko enthusiasts. The first wave were percussionists, drummers, multiculturalists, and were primarily led by non-Japanese players. The second wave saw groups fostered by Japanese expatriates celebrating Japaneseness in Australia through taiko, majority post 2008. This theme was evidenced in written testimonials and chronicles found online, but did not reflect Japanese expatriate taiko playing in Australia who have no public interface: there may be engagement with taiko in Australia that remains unobservable via this inquiry. However, themes of what it means to be Australian or do something Japanese came into focus. For many, didgeridoo’s inclusion signalled Australia while also producing appealing resonances with drums. The relationships were more symbolic more than sensuous when scratched.

161

This chapter investigates TaikOz projects that challenge nationalised designations. It shows TaikOz have responded to previous criticism about essentialism (in either direction, East or West), but how their responsive projects – the results of their integration of feedback – have been misinterpreted nonetheless. To reiterate that TaikOz continue in a long tradition of taiko appropriation, but are judged by alternate criteria that mark them as outsiders, this chapter opens with criticisms from Australian reviewers circa 2000, then revisits some lineages and modes of transmission that have brought the style, and piece, Yatai-bayashi, to international prominence. Differences between situated (in festival, ritual or theatre) and staged taiko in Japan remain distinct today, and have also transformed considerably throughout the last fifty years. Those taiko traditions that have become iconic worldwide, buoyed on stories of antiquity, are largely fictional or elaborated.1 And while a ‘true origin’ is not essential for a tradition to have merit, tensions arise because taiko stories are highly valued by practitioners though based on non-truths. Thus when TaikOz produce professionalised staged taiko performances in Australia, confusion about appropriation and tradition colours TaikOz’s artistic endeavours as mistaken, brazen or artsy yet inauthentic. I begin with a few media quotes highlighting this difficulty, which hint at theory about taste and the production of categories.

Two major TaikOz projects that explored what Australian taiko might mean are dissected here. Neither contains didgeridoo. These works consolidated TaikOz’s identity between 2010-2014. Shifting Sand by Graham Hilgendorf and Toward the Crimson Sky by Ian Cleworth each defined TaikOz’s wadaiko direction, and have been interpreted as Australian, in departure from an essential Japanese original genre imagined by witnesses. Hilgendorf made taiko Australian by placing drums in beach landscapes and composing on seaside themes. Cleworth made taiko Australian by writing of himself, his career, his passions, his aesthetics and his emotions. I use these compositions as springboards to talk about themes of appropriation in taiko discourse.

First I discuss formal aspects of Hilgendorf’s Shifting Sand. I list component cultural artefacts including Yatai-bayashi. Next I travel back in time, to show how other groups have appropriated the same material and their processes crystalised the taiko genre worldwide.

1 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012.

162 Then I trace how TaikOz came to know Yatai-bayashi, intentionally revealing this chronology only after historical context, to prove how even with keenness and commitment, TaikOz’s routes to understanding were indirect. I briefly explain my experience playing Yatai-bayashi to demonstrate situated knowledge, and to introduce discussion on transmission of material, from another angle. This segment reiterates how the aspects of taiko considered to be traditional are not as they seem, and that value judgements about authenticity become compromised without such bases.

The second part of the chapter studies Crimson Sky, a program co-composed by several TaikOz members but featuring Ian Cleworth’s atmospheric work Toward the Crimson Sky for taiko, bass koto and recorded synthesised sounds. Despite these two projects being contemporaneous, written by leaders within TaikOz, exploring common themes, and performed to similar audiences, these two works appeared to do different work according to fans and critics. These divergences challenged TaikOz’s identity, notably according to their management. An anonymous board-member commented: The whole concert Crimson Sky built [to] Toward the Crimson Sky. Not in a theatrical way, but that work has such a great climax. The journey is fantastic because there is such subtle diversity in the music. [Yet] Shifting Sand was criticised by board members for being ‘too Japanese’. I don’t think they were talking about the music, they were talking about the costuming and [affectation]... It [is] a bit hokey with exaggerated theatrical gestures.2 This critique invites questions about what makes taiko look Japanese, or sound Australian, and which aspects of taiko even constitute music. When the board of an artistic entity cannot agree on what their genre, purpose, mission or output are, it follows that a rich site for innovation and misperception exists.

Media juggle meaning of Australian taiko: politically correct, high-octane for yuppies TaikOz members and management squirmed when isolating which musical elements either encase meaning or slot into recognisable categories, and media respondents to TaikOz continue the trend. Ensuing examples indicate levels of media hostility locally to TaikOz’s ambitious individualism through taiko. These thoughtful voices critique TaikOz’s early career in ways that have not been replicated between 2005-2020, potentially due to changed

2 Anonymous interviewee, 2013.

163 journalism culture and funding.3 In 2004 a reporter eructed, “TaikOz is no cult, but it's still much more than just playing a drum… [Why] are a bunch of Australians dressing up in Japanese costumes and immersing themselves in a culture they can never really hope to understand?”4 In 2000 another writer, surrounding millennium celebrations, called TaikOz “High-octane yuppie music for the politically correct.”5 This writer commented: At the Opera House, multiculturalism is alive and well. TaikOz is what happens when a bunch of Australian percussionists learn Japanese drumming. Add shakuhachi, Eitetsu Hayashi, and the inevitable token didgeridoo, and there you have it… TaikOz bash their battery of instruments hard… Physical enough to qualify as sport… Is Asian culture the way to the future? When will Australian culture be definably itself?6 With colourful imagery and taut criticism of Australia’s cultural climate then, the reviewer captured a predicament that TaikOz, twenty years on, have still not escaped: Australia[n] audiences can engage in a performance for its own sake, free of prejudice or preconception… [Sydney’s] Olympics are a symbol for just about every national aspiration; but culture? Paul Keating fostered the notion of an Asian nation, encouraging Australians to look to their neighbours for cultural inspiration as well as for economic gain… Keating's initiative produced a new rash of Antipodean self- doubt. White guilt meets cultural cringe.7 TaikOz, and their offshoot student group Taiko no Wa, do appear marred by cultural cringe and white guilt. As discussed, Taiko no Wa borrow their future from Asia without definable selfhood on show, despite their ambition. Ian Cleworth, quoted extensively later this chapter, has resolved to innovate and make art, even through his persistent veil of Antipodean self- doubt. I scrutinise whether Australian audiences can engage in a TaikOz performance for its own sake, free of prejudice or preconception, given common impulses to categorise national quotients and degrees of foreignness.

Also in 2000, academic media critic Vincent Plush described TaikOz: “Clad in black singlets, eight shoeless young players stride deliberately on [and] position themselves ceremonially...

3 Margaret Simons, “Journalism faces a crisis worldwide – we might be entering a new dark age,” The Guardian, April 15, 2017. 4 Harriet Cunningham, “Bang the Drum,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 6, 2004: 8. 5 Shirley Apthorp, “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo - Multiculturalism is alive and well in Australia,” Financial Times, March 1, 2000: 9. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

164 Silence, intense focus and POW! [They] seduce and tantalise. The eye relishes the glistening musculature of drums and players.”8 Plush explained TaikOz’s foundation in perceived misappropriation via Synergy Percussion: In 1991, Synergy's first cross-cultural theatre work, Matsuri, was performed in Sydney and was released on CD in 1994. At the time, Synergy's blurring of cultural boundaries attracted some criticism; questions relating to ‘cultural borrowing’ or ‘appropriation’ were amplified by the practice of sampling world music in 9 contemporary CDs without permission or acknowledgement. Plush reported how Cleworth experienced misgivings about performing the music of another culture outside its natural context, and explained that “In a typically Zen way, a solution was simple and obvious: Cleworth would form a group specialising exclusively in performing music of the Japanese taiko ensemble, but from an Australian perspective. Anxious to avoid accusations of ‘jumping on the World Music bandwagon’, [TaikOz would explore] the Japanese tradition of wadaiko in depth.”10 Plush drew on spiritual association and the notion of a Japanese mindset (a Zen way), while denouncing the baseness of ‘bad appropriators’ commercially exploiting arts of faraway peoples. Plush further justified TaikOz’s Australian methods by mentioning their notorious Japanese endorsement. He drew readers to NHK (Japanese national broadcasting network) who advocated for TaikOz: “Alongside the cheering, foot-stomping and rave reviews, NHK's endorsement put to rest any lingering sensitivity about ‘cultural appropriation’. TaikOz [in 2000] have already achieved international acclaim for [their] sustained and highly disciplined virtuosity.”11 Plush additionally forecast TaikOz’s upcoming program containing “traditional festival piece, Yatai-bayashi, a work which demands such physical and mental strength that it stands at the core of the group's existence, [alongside orchestral piece] Monoprism (1975) by Maki Ishii.”6 This statement placed TaikOz’s Yatai-bayashi in a history of their own group, exclusive of previous traditions or renditions. Each of Plush’s impressions contextualised TaikOz’s workings through discourses from classical music and ethnomusicology. He benefited from discussion with Cleworth, during research for his article.

Veteran jazz reviewer John Shand in 2001 compared New Zealand dance to TaikOz’s

8 Vincent Plush, “Enter the drummer,” Courier Mail, October 21, 2000. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.

165 visceral effect on Australian audiences: “The bellicosity of a haka... Rhythms of taiko drumming are seldom especially complex; the craft lies in the collective precision and energy.”12 He commented on staging, as though their music were theatre: “What sets TaikOz apart [is] a sense of each piece being a new scene in a full-length play… An evolving cast of players emerges to play [varieties of taiko], creating substantially different moods [and] momentum... [Fluting adds] another dimension to the drama.”13 In 2014, Shand again reviewed TaikOz and mentioned film. When a fellow Crimson Sky audience member complained ‘there's no tune’, Shand countered, “In fact the music had been alive with melodies, but those of indeterminately pitched drums… Cleworth created dialogues between pitched and un-pitched material [using] nohkan, shakuhachi, voices and the haunting sound of the mighty bass koto played by guest artist Satsuki Odamura (plus some contributions from a sampled keyboard that were so oddly gauche it was as though they had wandered on to the wrong movie set).”14 Both Shand’s observations compared TaikOz’s music to visible arts.

These media snippets demonstrate long-form cultural criticism that has dwindled for TaikOz in subsequent decades. Given taiko’s visuality, associations to other performance- or visual arts have been common, as have been descriptions of each musician’s attractive musculature and hefty instruments. Themes of Australia have been recurrent but flippant. As reviews of Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky were sparser than early-career TaikOz critiques, I also include commentary from fans and TaikOz community members to gauge reception.

Shifting Sand – consolidating representations of national identities Graham Hilgendorf’s six-movement impressionist piece Shifting Sand was distinct for TaikOz. It championed an aesthetic both Japanese and Australian, drawing on symbolism, costuming, reference and quotation. The Shifting Sand project, both a staged production and commercial DVD, stood out because it embodied a selfhood unlike TaikOz’s usual expressions. Compositionally Shifting Sand was playful, evocative, image-laden, emotive. Hilgendorf composed much of the material on sabbatical in Japan in 2005, as he and partner Masae Ikegawa spent eight months studying taiko with various leaders and absorbing regional cultural delights. Hilgendorf was missing his Australian surf lifestyle while abroad

12 John Shand, “Waves of Tranquility and Thunder,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 2001: 16. 13 Ibid. 14 John Shand, “Taiko Drumming review: won over by the song of the drums,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 5, 2014.

166 so expressed his longing through taiko. Shifting Sand aimed to convey both TaikOz's command of traditional Japanese drumming styles and members’ Australian identities. TaikOz filmed a DVD of Shifting Sand both for archiving and merchandising purposes. The film intersperses TaikOz’s drumming with images of lifesavers and beach scenes. Snippets of footage are available on YouTube.15 Images designed to promote this DVD, and their previous DVD, manipulated images of ‘Asian faces’ and iconic local art to communicate potently without words. Symbolism of Australia, Japan, masculinity, borrowing, and artistic anonymity each pierce through images of TaikOz.

I dissect the second movement of Shifting Sand, ‘Scene II, O-Matsuri’, tracing traditional Japanese themes and modes of transmission. The traditional Japanese piece Yatai-bayashi16 quoted within, has over the last fifty years become recognised as a style, a genre and canonical repertory for taiko-players, so I analyse its pathways of transmission and signification. As Yatai-bayashi is foundational to contemporary taiko, my mentions of it bleed into many other chapters.17 The music’s many designations account for my multiple capitalisations and hyphenations of its title, whether descriptive or denotative. I use yatai- bayashi for the genre,18 Yatai-bayashi for the piece, or any variation unchanged within a quotation.

I unpack from Scene II, O-Matsuri the types of essentialised, stereotyped national identities within TaikOz’s filmic representation, despite TaikOz’s genuine attempts to express their ‘nationless’ art. Hilgendorf’s compositional approach follows an extensive history of similar processes by other Australian composers (and visual artists) who indigenise their work by referring to Australia’s landscape. My ethnography of TaikOz’s process with Shifting Sand relays the group’s fluctuating identity. Media reviews reveal how public reception diverged from TaikOz’s conception, where communication faltered and dissonance crept in. By asking questions about compositional goals, I pinpoint ways TaikOz’s projects are born from artistic ideas and not by intended commercial outcomes. By defending TaikOz’s artistic process, I make excuses for the failures of communication between their art and their public, a sympathetic gesture to relieve my stress for their predicament.

15 TaikOz Shifting Sand Highlights, www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8g9h6q5q2M, accessed June 22, 2017. 16 The Saitama yo-matsuri version. 17 See also Part 2, Chapters 3 and 4. 18 This is not the conventional spelling, which unites the compound word. I have hyphenated it only for ease to the non-Japanese or non-taiko-familiar reader.

167

Most TaikOz independent productions, including Crimson Sky, showcase pieces by various members and composers. Shifting Sand differs as a single work, conceived to convey aspects of a theme: the seaside. Long-standing past-member of TaikOz,19 Hilgendorf compiled over an hour of music, theatre and movement, into a programmatic piece about the ocean’s majesty and wild unpredictability, and also human emotive reactions to the sea.20 Hilgendorf composed for taiko to express his Australianness, through the medium of his passion: “I am fascinated by the extremes of the taiko [and ocean] – soft and delicate, whispering with such depth... [Both] can also be massive.”21

TaikOz’s original Shifting Sand premiered in March 2010 in association with Sydney venue CarriageWorks. It toured Australia in 2012. Program notes treated the composition as ‘story- telling’, a unique designation that emphasised how Hilgendorf’s personal life inspired, not Japanese appropriation: “To tell his story, Hilgendorf has incorporated classic taiko styles including Hachijo-daiko (yoko-uchi side-on style from Hachijo Island), Yatai-bayashi, O- Edo-bayashi, ōdaiko, and dengaku-okedo.”22 Program notes were more poetic than descriptive, without mentioning instrumentation, musical conventions, performance styles, Japanese or taiko mediums, but instead evoking bodily memories, visions and sensations:

Scene II O-Matsuri (The Carnival) Our team is strong. Together we move with the summer seas, steering our vessel across the crystal surface. Sliding down the ocean’s plane, the wave peels, cracks, and fizzes, drawing us inexorably towards the sandy beach. Competing with each other, competing with the ocean.23

Shifting Sand, according to Graham Hilgendorf Hilgendorf and Ikegawa24 spoke with me in late 2012 about Shifting Sand. We discussed criticisms made – that the aesthetic was intentionally imitative of Japanese taiko; that it departed from TaikOz’s regular group ‘persona’; that it essentialised national identities, or sat

19 Hilgendorf and Ikegawa left TaikOz in 2014 in response to organisational restructure, focusing on YuNiOn. 20 Shifting Sand, TaikOz program notes, 2010. 21 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 22 Graham Hilgendorf quoted in Shifting Sand, TaikOz program notes, 2010. 23 Shifting Sand, TaikOz program notes, 2010. 24 Hilgendorf and Ikegawa now perform as ‘YuNiOn’, separate from TaikOz. YuNiOn website, https://www.yunion.org, accessed March 11, 2017.

168 uneasily for some witnesses. Hilgendorf and Ikegawa responded sensitively, offering me alternative ways of viewing the work.

Contrary to the original program notes, Hilgendorf did not conceive of Shifting Sand as a non-divisible gesumtkunstwerk, but rather “scenes based on the same.”25 Also, it was not written solely by Hilgendorf. Masae Ikegawa contributed musical material and themes, as well as costume design and manufacture. A publicity and branding choice, TaikOz listed only one composer for clarity, erasing acknowledgement of Ikegawa’s significant contributions. Ikegawa wrote the themes and bridges for the slapstick third movement Playtime for narimono (cymbals, metal time-keepers), which Hilgendorf arranged. She also contributed to the pieces in dengaku and hachijo styles. Ikegawa designed and sewed the costumes while heavily pregnant and said, “I made the black and white monk coats… lifting all those heavy materials with a big tummy. If [our child] had come early, then the costumes wouldn't have been ready.”26 The production evolved from grass-roots and expressed its players’ lives and journeys.

During their 2005 Japan trip, Hilgendorf and Ikegawa saw as many performances and festivals as possible. Hilgendorf said “It wouldn't matter if it was the most amateur group you'd ever seen, [we checked out] everything constantly.”27 There Hilgendorf noticed: “It was nice walking away from [my taiko] instruments for a short while, just to miss them and also to work out what it is that I actually miss – what the feeling is – because sometimes you're so busy doing it all the time that it's easy to forget why you're doing it.”28 As a tourist, Hilgendorf saw commonalities between the types of movement, hype, group-mind, undulations and flow that appear between Japanese festival culture and Australian beach culture. This was likely because these two peculiar entities were indigenous to his life’s passions. Both spheres appear equally natural and performative by his conception, so they linked to his professional stage life too. He recalled: I was missing [Australian] surf [so] started to see parallels between the [Japanese] festivals and [Australian] carnivals we have on the beach, and boats and movement of water and the way performers move on stage. And different aspects of both cultures

25 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 26 Masae Ikegawa, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 27 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 28 Ibid.

169 and countries and art forms… if you could consider the beach an art form... And what people do [in] each… I started writing [music] for writing’s sake.29 Hilgendorf was not trying to capture or repurpose content from his travels into commodifiable performance products for Australia, but connecting human activities with counterparts: I didn't think ‘I really want this performed’ but just started writing music. So in that sense, [this work] was for me [not an audience]. Some people write poems… I was writing music like it was a diary. Most of that music was [incomplete], just sketched out, organised and themed with names and shapes of pieces.30 Impressions and images spurred creativity. Symbolism mattered: There was a lot of imagery involved from the word go, for instance in the [movement of Shifting Sand for several ōdaiko] called Lifeline, the first thing I had was the shape of the taiko on stage. It's the idea of a rope tied to a boat tensing and relaxing as waves pulled: there's tension and release. The image of life-line was there before I started writing any notes.31 Hilgendorf explained he used instruments to convey images that summed feelings. This process was not about creating the perfect ōdaiko piece, nor writing a pastiche of existent ōdaiko repertory gleaned through field-study in Japan, but about using a medium indigenous to himself (ōdaiko) to represent a symbol of dynamism: the rope tensing, and the secondary symbolism of emotional security coming from mooring (cultural belonging).32

Hilgendorf explained his reasons for writing Shifting Sand: “TaikOz has performed ‘concert pieces’ in the past. We've done collaborations with theatre and dance companies before but we've never done [a theatrical piece] on our own.”33 He added elements of dance, drama and movement to push fellow TaikOz performers to expand their range.34 When I asked who he wrote Shifting Sand for, Hilgendorf fumbled: “Good question [laughter]... No one’s ever asked me that.”35 It was not written for an Australian audience; not to impress Japanese colleagues, not to convey something Japanese, not to depart from TaikOz’s regular output;

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Mooring might be an attractive image to Hilgendorf because it indicates his inner landscape, seeking constancy or safety from a lifeline amid misinterpretations about his artistic pursuits. 33 Graham Hilgendorf quoted in Emma Spillett, “A show is born,” Illawarra Mercury, April 1, 2010. 34 Emma Spillett, “A show is born,” Illawarra Mercury, April 1, 2010. 35 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012.

170 and not to impose an Australian voice on Japanese forms.36 It took shape in response to opportunity (diversified leadership within TaikOz, and as a merchandisable product), and its core was personal and collaborative with his partner Ikegawa.

Shifting Sand, ‘Scene II O-Matsuri’ The second movement of Shifting Sand conveys ‘festival’ and is inspired by two unrelated forms of Yatai-bayashi, quite separate Japanese drumming traditions from different locations and lineages. These are merged with yet other canons of festival taiko music. When placed in an Australian landscape, this matsuri homage takes on a third meaning. A giant flag swayed behind the drums was reminiscent of flags in Japanese festivals but also of Australian beach yellow-and-red surf markers. The parallels drawn are not equivocatory or comparative, but loose and affectual: they are about ‘the feeling’ not the things. This taiko project appears theatrical because it conveys emotion. The staging incorporates physical comedy or mild clowning. Hilgendorf’s piece references both known and unknown material. Five sources are distinguishable: 1. Work-song Kiyari from Miyake Island, typically associated with Miyake style. 2. Edo-bayashi, or O-mikoshi-daiko, a ‘national’ tradition from Old Tokyo (Tokagawa). 3. Yatai-bayashi from a Saitama festival, Chichibu Yo-matsuri. 4. O-mikoshi culture from unspecified locations and festivals in Japan. 5. Yatai-bayashi as appropriated for stage by Ondekoza and Kodo, now canonical.

These five are interspersed with serious and amusing moments, symbolic dancing, fans and flags. It is unusual to feature a Miyake work-song alongside Yatai-bayashi because Miyake Island’s ‘traditional drumming’ is inseparable from this song, and independently iconic, also largely due to Ondekoza’s appropriation. It was unconventional that TaikOz performed multiple versions of Yatai-bayashi in one piece and especially unusual to include Kiyari, and yet TaikOz did not merge these out of ignorance, but for what seem like aesthetic reasons.

Many Japanese festivals incorporate o-mikoshi (heavy, portable Shinto shrines, carried on poles by roughly sixteen men each). Yatai (carts) are forms of o-mikoshi, so yatai-bayashi refers to music played around or within shrine carts. O-mikoshi are accompanied by music

36 Ibid.

171 corresponding to carriers’ behaviour and directionality. In Hilgendorf’s carnival movement, Scene II O-Matsuri, drummers carry drums onto stage as part of the piece. These are slung on long beams carried by several drummers each, who walk belabouredly as though crossing hot sand. A theme is played on one drum as it is delivered, then another theme signals the drum placement’s completion. Then one drummer remains playing that instrument while other carriers leave stage to collect the next drum. Hilgendorf said of his homage: The carnival movement, O-Matsuri, obviously comes from the idea of Yatai-bayashi [from Chichibu]… But the way it slows down into that next lilted rhythm when we're bringing in another taiko, I got that from another festival, I can never remember the name of it, I haven't actually been but I've seen some great footage where there are big yatai involved. They are walking, actually running, with this cart. It's really dangerous and apparently people die at this festival every year.37 Indicating how rhythms interrelate with environment, Hilgendorf continued: When [yatai or o-mikoshi carriers] are walking, [musicians] play a slow rhythm and when they get to a certain section of the road, I don't know whether it's predetermined or not, it's like the music tells them and they start running with the carts and the music gradually gets faster and faster. And they run with these carts through sections of the town. When they slow down, the rhythm slows down and so there's this really nice change between the swung and the straight rhythm.38 Hilgendorf suggested the musicians follow the carriers who follow the landscape for changes in pace and intensity. Alternate and sympathetic ‘directions of influence’ are documented in literature about Japanese festival music,39 but it is my understanding that these directorial dynamics tend to be locally constructed rather than a national phenomenon, nor consistently philosophically determined. Even though Hilgendorf did not know details of these practices, he imitated them.

Amusingly, Hilgendorf saw a parallel between the bodily stances of cart-carriers and “[true- blue Aussies] dragging a bike or an esky down to the beach.”40 In O-Matsuri, when TaikOz carried taiko onto stage it was as physical comedy. Their exaggerated, bopping, jocular, bow-

37 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 38 Ibid. 39 Jane Alaszewska, “Promoting and preserving the Chichibu Night Festival: The impact of the Japanese Cultural Properties Protection Law on festival music transmission.” Conference paper, Bukkyo University, Japan, 2010. 40 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012.

172 legged gaits joked of Aussie larrikins and imitated o-mikoshi play; it was light-hearted and affectionate. It was not farse.

This type of physical comedy in music echoes established Japanese taiko staging. Ian Cleworth and I discussed how Kodo rehearse and study actorly-play as part of their art and stage-craft. Cleworth told me Kodo’s ‘character-pieces’ are “very funny”41 and well- constructed: Kodo’s routines [have] that Japanese slightly-childish quality that you see at their parties where they get a bit silly. But they've tweaked it for international audiences. It always gets a laugh. Some of it is really clever. Their body language and delivery is amazing. Flawless timing. It's superb. They work the whole face, the whole thing. I'm sure they get in professionals to help them with coaching... Back in Riley’s Ondekoza days, they had to study film clips of Charlie Chaplin [who] was one of their role models because he was a master of physical comedy and movement. Being a silent movie actor he had to convey meaning without using his voice. There is then evidence of Ondekoza studying theatrics.42

As the ‘hokey theatrical gestures’ in Shifting Sand were criticised by TaikOz’s board for being ‘too Japanese’, I asked Cleworth how he experienced that work from the inside. Regarding Playtime, the movement for small metal instruments (narimono) that included clowning, he reflected “It was like taking on a character. I found it really hard to ham it up. As it got more refined, it lost something of the rawness or spontaneity... Taking on a persona, not just a musical character, requires a whole other set of skills [and] professionalism.”43 When considering TaikOz’s physical comedy in Shifting Sand, to separate taiko from clowning, given the way these have co-evolved in apex performance groups, seems disingenuous. That some Australians find this genre of entertainment cringeworthy must be separated from assessments of authenticity.

Internal and external interpretations of Australianness in Shifting Sand Media responses to Shifting Sand often bridged conceptual cervices for potential audiences, but also differed from TaikOz members’ experiences of the project even when members

41 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid.

173 talked directly with journalists. Hilgendorf told media: “The beach takes control of our emotions.”44 A journalist interpolated, “Shifting Sand… seeks to capture the beauty, majesty and force of the ocean… More than just the beating of drums; it incorporates a complete world of [sound,] a reflection of contemporary musical life, irrespective of nationality.45 Hilgendorf told Newcastle, “Shifting Sand is really about the different colours [and] weather patterns, but it's also about our emotions… I've always loved the ocean since I was a boy… It was a natural fit as [taiko can] have a very sharp sound but it's also very warm... In this piece we not only strike them with the sticks but also rub them with our hands and rub them with our fingers to create different sounds.”46 Anton Lock echoed to media: “Crashing waves, surf carnivals and the games people play on beaches… It's exciting mixing the movement and dance with drumming and bamboo flutes.”47 Reporters included TaikOz’s repeated statements about emotion and what the work meant to TaikOz, but obscured this message with clichés and popular fabrications about taiko history. Such journalism is sensuous and descriptive and does not call into question complex cultural meaning, like those previously quoted from ten years prior. The information that matters is front and centre, but without readers’ intricate and nuanced understanding, these points are less pronounced than hyperbole and sensationalism.

To address pricklier topics avoided in newspapers, I interviewed TaikOz members. Hilgendorf mused over whether Shifting Sand was more Japanese or Australian: “Those Shifting Sand parallels… I think the music and the rhythms are probably closer to Japan than to TaikOz in a sense, but you know we've... [pause]… maybe that is TaikOz. [Our thing is to do wadaiko].”48 Hilgendorf implied that when TaikOz play, they be themselves by doing Japanese drumming. By making this causal relationship, Hilgendorf distinguished between being/doing TaikOz and being/doing Australianness (or non-Japaneseness). He synthesised, “Australianness exists, but we are TaikOz. We respond to it [Australianness], but we are not it.”49 Hilgendorf elaborated, “Our influences are obviously from ‘the Japanese culture’ [singular] and wadaiko [differentiated from Japanese culture], but our influences are Australian. We live and work [in Sydney] every day… [Another Australian group could copy TaikOz]

44 Graham Hilgendorf quoted in “Capturing nature's shifting sounds.” The Queanbeyan Age, March 18, 2011. 45 “Capturing nature's shifting sounds.” The Queanbeyan Age, March 18, 2011. 46 Jade Lazarevic, “Ocean Rhythms,” Newcastle Herald, April 17, 2010: 21. 47 Anton Lock quoted by Ken Longworth, “Thumping great theatre,” The Newcastle Herald, April 14, 2010. 48 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with author, October 24, 2012. 49 Ibid.

174 and say that ‘Now this is an Australian wadaiko, this is how [we] do it in Australia’. It’s not for me to decide though, and I don't know, as it isn't that developed yet.”50 Hilgendorf deferred any power in judging an Australian taiko scene, and venerated other Australian taiko, no matter its form.

Cleworth explained how Hilgendorf and Ikegawa “have done Matsuri-crawls... Hilgendorf really digs that whole community music-making thing. The energy of festivals and so on. His project Shifting Sand tries to invoke that feeling. Stylistically he's drawing on lots of different elements from other players and traditional contexts.”51 In this statement, Cleworth uses ‘distancing language’ when talking about community music, subtly implying that ‘that whole thing’ is not his way. Cleworth then verifies that Hilgendorf’s interests and musical choices are, however, in line with ‘regular taiko’ because they are backed by ‘traditional contexts’ and by numerous proponents of taiko. This statement exemplifies how TaikOz’s Artistic Director states his beliefs about taiko while also validating other versions of taiko, and supporting the discourses that prop those versions. This acceptance of variation and of innovation has characterised taiko throughout its modern history. Next is a brief overview of my personal experiences with yatai-bayashi, before histories of ‘real’ festival yatai-bayashi and staged versions, and how Graham Hilgendorf composed O-Matsuri on themes previously borrowed and varied ad infinitum.

My Yatai-bayashi I studied wadaiko including Yatai-bayashi with TaikOz in their Sydney school between 2007- 2014 and have actively participated in the national taiko community. At least four other groups in Australia perform Yatai-bayashi regularly (though likely twelve groups): Taiko Drum in Hobart, Wadaiko Rindo in Melbourne, Kizuna on the Gold Coast and Taiko On in Perth. I performed Yatai-bayashi with Tasmanians at pop music event Falls Festival in 2008, and in rural NSW at Cowra Japanese Gardens52 in 2012. Yatai-bayashi is prevalent on Australian stages to multiple demographics. I attended performances in Japan featuring Yatai- bayashi in 2009 and 2012. I have also played Yatai-bayashi with New Zealand taiko teams in 2017 including Wai Taiko (Waikato University) and Haere Mai Taiko (Auckland). I have embodied experience of the exertion required, how time (and hence musical pulse and rhythm)

50 Ibid. 51 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011. 52 The famous site commemorating 1944 attempted prison escape of 1104 Japanese prisoners of war.

175 dilates when the body fatigues, and have heard the mythologies surrounding Yatai-bayashi from each of these parties via their self-justifications and promotional material. In this thesis, however, I prioritise stories of taiko scholars, taiko stars and TaikOz.

A short history of Yatai-bayashi Hayashi is a generic term for an ensemble of musicians. Hayashi ensembles belong to noh and kabuki traditions as well as festivals. Typical hayashi configurations use a high-pitched drum, mid-drum and low-drum, a transverse bamboo flute and a metallic time-keeper. Matsuri-bayashi and O-edo-bayashi are specific ensembles for Shinto festivals, usually signalling the arrival of mikoshi (portable shrines). In noh and kabuki the hayashi is often invisible off stage (geza-ongaku) or behind a kuromiso (black curtain). Yatai-bayashi (ensemble musicians relating to carts) are also invisible inside yatai (carts), and yatai are forms of mikoshi.

Common to many matsuri celebrations is the series of five Edo-bayashi pieces, played in a specific order and repeated as often as necessary for the occasion. Edo-bayashi includes the pieces: Yatai, Shoden, Kamakura, Shichome, and (shorter)-Yatai.53 They should not be confused with the more general Edo-matsuri-bayashi. In ‘Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments’, William Malm distinguished how these piece-titles are common across the country but signify different melodies: “The names merely seem to designate broad divisions in the traditional festivals rather than specific tunes.”54 These titles are not always descriptive: for instance Yatai means ‘parade float’, Shoden (or Shoten) can mean anything from ‘a place of prayer’ to ‘sacred spirit’ or even ‘to submit a petition to the imperial court’; while Kamakura is the name of a city, and Shichome means ‘Fourth Avenue’.55 Music played by matsuri-bayashi ensembles is sometimes further named according to region; for example, as Malm noted, “there is a kanda-bayashi from Kanda district of Tokyo.”56 Particularly in Tokyo’s Shitamachi area, hayashi perform set pieces in a certain order. The pieces correspond to different points during the procession; Yatai is played when the procession begins and ends, while Shichōme is played when a mikoshi enters or leaves a shrine.57

53 Brian Vogel, “Transmission and Performance of Taiko in Edo Bayashi, Hachijo, and Modern Kumi-daiko Styles,” Doctoral thesis, Rice University, Houston Texas, 2009, 24-47. 54 William P Malm, ‘Traditional Japanese Music and Musical Instruments’, 59. 55 Brian Vogel, “Transmission and Performance of Taiko in Edo Bayashi,” 2009, 5. 56 William P Malm, 2000, 58. 57 Brian Vogel, “Transmission and Performance of Taiko in Edo Bayashi,” 2009, 37.

176 Likewise, at Chichibu’s yo-matsuri (December night festival), the site of the most famous yatai-bayashi, certain rhythms and pieces correspond to landscape, landmarks and procession operations.

Yatai-bayashi from Chichibu’s yo-matsuri It has been important to TaikOz to learn Yatai-bayashi from appropriate custodians, including traditional players in Chichibu and elsewhere. Chichibu’s yo-matsuri originally commemorated the once-a-year meeting of mythical lovers: a female representation of the Bodhisattva Myoken and resident male mountain-god of Chichibu.58 This yo-matsuri is considered “one of Japan’s three greatest hikiyama (float) festivals”59 with chōchin (paper lanterns). This night-festival, said to be “at least 300 years old,”60 celebrates Chichibu Shinto Shrine which has an alleged history of more the 2000 years.61 While these romantic but unsubstantiated dates strengthen a sense of historical legitimacy, evidence from ethnologists including Hashimoto Hiroyuki,62 Sasahara Ryoji63 and Barbara Thornbury64 suggests that Japanese festivals may have taken their contemporary form only at the turn of the twentieth century65 with Japan's industrialisation and modernised trade. Resultant technological advances, such as transport, modified folk performance by introducing elements of competition between neighbouring towns, shaping local performances as “a sort of tourist culture”66 or “a sham.”67

Hugh de Ferranti has noted a tendency since the 1980s for Japanese towns and new suburban districts “which had never had a shrine-based festival tradition to devise new municipal

58 Yomatsuri, Chichibu-Jinja, www.chichibu-jinja.or.jp/yomatsuri, accessed January 25, 2013. 59 Chichibu Fest, JNTO, www.jnto.go.jp/eng/attractions/event/traditionalevents/a63 fes chichibu html, accessed August 20, 2012. 60 Japan Atlas Festivals: Chichibu Yomatsuri, www.web-japan.org; and Hello Travel, www.hellotravel.com, accessed November 8, 2013. 61 Japan: The Official Guide, www.jnto.go.jp, accessed November 8, 2013. 62 Hiroyuki Hashimoto, “Between Preservation and Tourism: Folk Performing Arts in Contemporary Japan,” Asian Folklore Studies 62:2, (2003): 225-236. 63 Sasahara Ryoji. “Hikisakareta genjitsu: kyodo buyo to min'yo no kai o megaru shoso.” Kyodo seikatsu to ningen keisei 3:4 (1992): 99-134. 64 Barbara E Thornbury, “From Festival Setting to Centre Stage: Preserving Japan's Folk Performing Arts,” Asian Theatre Journal 10:2 (1993): 170. 65 Millie Creighton, “Consuming Rural Japan: The Marketing of Tradition and Nostalgia in the Japanese Travel Industry.” Ethnology 36:3 (1997): 239-54; and “Changing Heart (Beats): From Japanese Identity and Nostalgia to Taiko for Citizens of the Earth.” East-West Identities: Globalization, Localization, and Hybridization, edited by Chan Kwok-bun, Jan W. Walls and David Hayward, 203-28. Boston: Brill, 2007. 66 Hiroyuki Hashimoto, “Between Preservation and Tourism.” Asian Folklore Studies 62:2, (2003) 230. 67 Barbara E. Thornbury, “The Cultural Properties Protection Law and Japan’s Folk Performing Arts,” Asian Folklore Studies 53:2 (1994): 214-16.

177 festivals, replete with matsuri-bayashi repertories adopted from elsewhere.”68 During the 1990s, moreover, a blurring of distinction between minzoku (folk) and sôsaku geinô (constructed) forms resulted as ‘new’ taiko groups came to be presented as ‘performance traditions’ representative of towns or villages (furusato geinô) in diverse contexts.69 Jane Alaszewska has written how shorter-form ‘performances’ of Yatai-bayashi have evolved in this way in Chichibu.70 Chichibu’s yo-matsuri is considered, however, a long-term cultural icon that existed before these national-scale changes within Japan, and the narrative of antiquity that this provides players of taiko is more valuable than dissenting fact. Naturally, culture shifts and evolves too, and newer forms or purposes exist on continua.

TaikOz feature a yatai-bayashi inspired number in nearly every concert program. Sometimes they play it in Kodo style, sometimes in mash-up with electronic beats, or interspersed with fluting or orchestral music, and oftentimes to serve an artistic goal while also meeting public expectation that this icon of world taiko culture be included. Rarely do they perform yatai- bayashi in Chichibu style. TaikOz appropriate already-appropriated versions rather than attempt an ‘original’ style loaded with signification and inflection.

Chichibu yatai-bayashi music, played while processing, consists of several primary taiko sections beneath a quasi-improvised fue (flute) melody: a short introduction, an extended solo on the chu-daiko comprising of ō-nami (big wave) and ko-nami (little wave), tamaire (‘ball- toss’) a shime-daiko solo, and a brief coda called bukkiri (a sudden cut). Repeated ostinati by the shime-daiko and kane form a base-rhythm and atop this foundation the chu-daiko play the hallmark wave rhythms. A slight lilt is characteristic of Chichibu style and has posed problems for would-be imitators (including Ondekoza) of their local inflection.71 To begin the procession, shime and kane start their ostinati as a quick introductory rhythm is played on the chu-daiko. The rhythmic relationships do not transcribe neatly into Western notation because the local affectation is oftentimes irregular, and needs to be ‘felt’.72

68 Hugh de Ferranti, “Japan Beating,” 78. 69 Ibid. 70 Jane Alaszewska, “Preservation as a force for innovation: recent developments in Japanese festival Drumming,” unpublished MA thesis, PSOAS, 1999, 27–30. 71 Benjamin Jefferson Pachter, “Wadaiko in Japan and the United States: The Intercultural History of a Musical Genre,” Kenneth P Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2013, 142. 72 Benjamin Pachter, “Wadaiko,” 144.

178 Although the music can always be heard, only stopping when the procession is finished, the performers are never seen. As the ceiling of the musician's carts are not tall, chu-daiko are set at an angle on the floor and a rota of drummers play in a seated position with their backs at a 40° angle. Inside these dark cart-bellies, drummers alternate between periods of playing and rest; enough people are packed into the cabin so the music continues uninterrupted for hours. Benjamin Pachter explained, “[when] the float is dragged through the streets, the drums inspire the many people pulling the float to continue on. Indeed, much of the music of Chichibu Yatai-bayashi serves a purpose beyond the musical, tied to motion and spatial coordination of the float.”73

Musical material alternates when the yatai is turned, either 90 degrees into another street or 180 degrees in preparation for a later procession moving in the opposite direction. At these points in the procession, shime-daiko players begin a solo section called tamaire which is semi-improvised, along to atarigane (kane) and fue quasi-structured playing.74 Certain rhythmic cells are common, but the order in which they appear is determined by artistic licence and varies slightly. Once corner-turning is completed by yatai carriers, a signal is given to the musicians by the bearers, and the music once again returns to the ō-nami/ko-nami cycle.

Today, owing to the popularity of the music, and its status as an Intangible Cultural Heritage object, there are many Yatai-bayashi staged performances by various groups too. Groups perform similar music as in the floats, only much abbreviated, approximately ten minutes per performance, as compared to the potentially hours-long duration in situ procession. I have included this long form description of Chichibu Yatai-bayashi and derivatives, but not of Hilgendorf’s version in Shifting Sand, because I received academic pressure to prioritise source material, as though an opportunity was being missed for comparative score studies. Such an analysis would not add value to my argument that form matters less than function in this content. This material is already many times abstracted (even before TaikOz play it, following Kodo), while also justified with haphazard and unconvincing stories, so ascribing value to TaikOz’s adaptations through formal correlations would only create meaning in the closed system of Western musical analysis. Nonetheless, inclusion of this historical and

73 Ibid., 146. 74 Ibid., 147.

179 contextual content serves as a basic literature review for available discourse about yatai- bayashi in English. By comparison, I have not included a history of Australian surf-lifesaving culture, nor of Australian clowning; not a history of musical quotation in Australian chamber music, and not even a history of Graham Hilgendorf’s previous major compositions. I have not discussed intersections of any of these topics either. I have included a Japanese musical- cultural history only under duress that it has more significance than other elements in TaikOz’s music. This indicates the same bias in academia that TaikOz face in their artistic community. The problem relates to permissible stories. Despite this inconsistency I continue, as advised, to detail how yatai-bayashi met the world.

Ondekoza transformed Yatai-bayashi Ondekoza, old-world Japanese revitalists, appropriated Chichibu Yatai-bayashi for the stage in the 1970s. They changed the original(s) in multiple ways. Ondekoza have also famously modified hachijo and miyake styles. Ondekoza were not alone in this type of appropriation: for example, eminent Sukeroku Taiko utilised Tokyo edo-bayashi in their well-known works Midare Uchi and Matsuri Daiko similarly.75

In 1952 Takano Ukichi and son Harumasa of Chichibu Yatai-bayashi hozonkai (preservation society), won a national festival-music contest for their rendition of Yatai-bayashi. Twenty years later, in 1972 Ondekoza invited the pair to Sado Island to train taiko novices. Seven years after Takano taught Ondekoza did Chichibu’s Yo-matsuri receive an ‘Intangible Folklore Cultural Asset’ designation in 1979. Only a quarter century after a staged appropriation gained national attention, and was popularised on disparate stages by non-lineal amateurs, did the original festival rate culturally.

Ondekoza’s workshop with Takano and son was unsuccessful, as musicologist Shawn Bender noted: “Ondekoza members had not yet acquired the technical proficiency needed to master the rhythmic pattern.”76 They were not yet drummers or musicians, though they had set into practice a regimen that would in future allow them to become these. Unperturbed by their failings, Ondekoza drew on the musical literacy of member Eitetsu Hayashi, the only among them with musical experience, to transcribe their guests’ lessons.77 From these ad hoc scores,

75 Sukeroku Taiko’s appropriations of traditions are discussed in Benjamin Pachter, “Wadaiko,” 91-133. 76 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012: 74. 77 Eitetsu Hayashi, Ashita No Taiko Uchi E [To Tomorrow’s Taiko Players], Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1992, 60.

180 Ondekoza retained some information and were able to practice.

In a second attempt to acquire yatai-bayashi, three Ondekoza members travelled to Chichibu to observe rehearsals of Shitago Ward locals rehearsing for the upcoming yo-matsuri. They tape-recorded the music for future practice. Eitetsu Hayashi transcribed these too, but changed the rhythmic feel, removing the swung inconsistencies, and dramatised the movements for pizazz. He found the ‘bouncing element’ of the swung rhythm, locally called namari, challenging: “[Coming] from outside the region, [I] was unable to perform it, [so] I made it [a] fast, steady rhythm without the feeling of that beat.”78 Eitetsu later described Ondekoza’s difficulty with transmission: Japanese folk-music was originally not conceived on a structure of specific beats per measure, nor was it written down on a score. Pieces were usually learned by memorising kuchi-shoga [vocables]… Each [Chichibu] player’s method of playing the assigned part differed slightly and often featured an element of improvisation.79 From this account, we read of amateurs without musical skills, appropriating traditions from far away, for the purpose of financial gain through professionalised stage performance. They changed what they could not copy accurately. Their creative process was shaped by incompetency not artistry. While they respected the sources they borrowed from, they were free to interpret and modify, in ways that TaikOz do not seem permitted to as non-Japanese contemporary stage musicians in Australia. The cultural climate in which Ondekoza appropriated is not comparable to TaikOz’s.

Additionally, as Hayashi told, each rendition of yatai-bayashi is distinct to individual players. This accounts for why so many contemporary taiko groups today believe their version of yatai-bayashi is correct or legitimately theirs, while not matching a uniform edition. Modern groups concerned with authenticity who have travelled to the source to ‘collect’ verifiably accurate executions can each leave with alternate recordings before then interpreting and changing nuances for their own players. Ondekoza’s heuristic process of ‘producing’ yatai- bayashi in its most famous format exemplifies that transmission is always variable. Members audio-taped ‘originals’ as a tool for learning remotely. The only among them with drum-set experience from high school, then slowed the recordings for transcription into Western

78 Eitetsu Hayashi, quoted in Benjamin Pachter, “Wadaiko,” 149. 79 Eitetsu Hayashi, To Tomorrow’s Taiko Players, 59.

181 rhythmic notation in 4/4. Yatai-bayashi patterns consist of irregular, short units repeated in multiples not divisible by four (like much folk-drumming). Ondekoza smoothed irregularities by adding or subtracting beats so rhythms fitted neatly into easily conceivable time- signatures.80 This helped not only drummers but their audiences to ‘feel’ regular metre, notice patterns and themes, and recognise formal structures of pieces, for example where solos begin and end. This has led witnesses to ‘understand’ and hence enjoy Ondekoza’s renditions.

Eitetsu Hayashi, using his Western rhythmic conception, noticed some yatai-bayashi patterns recurred. When he ‘chunked’ this information, he helped Ondekoza learn the material sooner than if he had sung them long sequences in kuchi-shoga (vocables). To assist his fellows’ learning, Hayashi first translated back, from Western notation to written Japanese kuchi- shoga, so his colleagues could conceive their actions in their own local idiom. Every choice in transmission facilitated ease. Bender recounted Hayashi’s story: He transcribed it without even understanding… Having no video recording on which to rely, Hayashi devised a sticking pattern, new rhythmic phrasing, and a [bodily] playing-position that suited him. He also modified its rhythmic feel [making it] mechanical.81

After an initial learning phase, to lift this regional festival style onto an international stage, Ondekoza strategically changed not only to ways yatai-bayashi sounded but how it looked. Previously the drummer had been invisible inside a cart, but Ondekoza wanted to display the Japanese male body in states of feverish exertion. They instated three chu-daiko players instead of one, who each sat leaned backwards while making exaggerated arm-strokes in unison to emphasise musical accents and muscular tone. This was likely one of the first times that a Japanese group visited another area with the resolute purpose of ‘delocalising’ a festival rhythm – stripping out the intricacies of local nuance – and adapting it for the stage.82 Bender wrote: “They arranged these now-abstract units for their own use, reincorporating them… Ondekoza did not just extract the ‘essence’ of the piece; they sped it up… introduced a sequence of parts for multiple players, and created something new.”83 Their fumbling with,

80 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012: 75. 81 Ibid., 75-76. 82 Ibid., 76. 83 Ibid., 76-77.

182 and sexualisation of, a remote artefact has drastically changed and popularised yatai-bayashi. This account confirms that to appropriate Japanese festival music belongs to ‘taiko culture’, is modern, Japanese, and is the reason taiko is now famous in Japan and worldwide. Taiko tradition depends upon it.

Several mid twentieth-century Japanese taiko groups borrowed regional festival music for adaptation on stages. While Osuwa Daiko and Sukeroku Taiko groups both utilised matsuri music, they tended to allude to local rhythms without directly imitating. Pachter explained, those groups “would often hearken to [festival sounds] thematically rather than presenting the original rhythms,”84 whereas Ondekoza modified Chichibu’s ō-nami, ko-nami, tamaire, and bukkiri rhythms, and these formal contents legitimised their nascent art form on stages. Ondekoza’s Yatai-bayashi referenced a specific tradition: it borrowed the name Yatai-bayashi while removing the carts (yatai), modifying the ensemble (hayashi), changing the rhythms, standardizing a fluid form, eliminating the festival context and removing the landscape. Ondekoza changed more elements than they kept, but by framing their Yatai-bayashi as a transmission of tradition they altered the course of both future contemporary-taiko and the mythological history that supports contemporary renditions.

For Ondekoza theatrics were more important that authentic replication of the yo-matsuri original, just as was the case for other early Japanese taiko pioneers including Oguchi Daihachi.85 When Ondekoza exaggerated physical gestures in Yatai-bayashi, it was not only to boost excitement, but to boast their hard-earned physiques: it was self-serving. Ondekoza often programmed Yatai-bayashi close to their iconic piece O-daiko– where male drummers hit the high-mounted, huge drum, wearing only fundoshi (loin cloth) – so Yatai-bayashi also became a site for appreciation of male bodies’ beauty. Their sex sold.

Transmission TaikOz include a yatai-bayashi-inspired piece in nearly every concert program, so Scene II, O-matsuri is no anomaly. Yet paradoxes inhere in the tensions between stasis and altered- transmissions. This is true for Ondekoza’s version of yatai-bayashi as for TaikOz’s versions of taiko in general, but the scale of the impact upon their authenticity varies drastically. All

84 Benjamin Pachter, “Wadaiko,” 2013, 150. 85 Ibid., 130-153.

183 taiko groups must negotiate relationships between preservation and interruption, and importantly how they respectively reflect and act upon these relationships.

As a taiko player and enthusiast, out of respect for TaikOz’s processes with these dynamics, I have intentionally omitted a score of TaikOz’s Yatai-bayashi from this thesis. TaikOz are incredibly protective of this cultural artefact, though it is my transcription of their version. Coded knowledge is treated as exclusively unknowable by TaikOz. Students in TaikOz’s school are not permitted scores even upon request because TaikOz believe it is better to learn taiko as taiko has traditionally been taught – aurally – even though TaikOz members use scores for ease and speed of assimilating new information, as do contemporary Japanese taiko players. Through this reluctance to disseminate cultural capital, TaikOz try to be authentic to an imagined ideal ‘taikoness’ which should be Japanese-inspired even though this is not how any other agent along the transmission chain has operated.

While Ondekoza in 1972 translated material into receivable idioms – foreign festival music into their local kuchi-shoga – within TaikOz’s school circa 2012 TaikOz typically refused to use familiar methods or schema to help students. This was because TaikOz wanted to teach the ‘feel’ of taiko, and not the material of taiko. The feel of taiko involves many sensitive cultural dynamics of inclusion, exclusion and belonging, and TaikOz use musical-material to pass on their experiences of those dynamics – it is not about teaching taiko culture, which does not uniformly exist, but about TaikOz’s re-expression of their initiations into many realms of it. Students in TaikOz’s school mistake this opaque transmission for performed ‘Japanese humility’, or respectful posturing. These students constitute the inner echelon of TaikOz fans who attend every performance, who play in Taiko no Wa, and who have kindly informed my research through interviews. Their participation as students, players, concert goers and critics yields a special vantage on Australian taiko culture, but one that is indivisible, or inseparable, from messages siphoned to them by TaikOz. And TaikOz have not been explicit enough when defining what has been their experience versus what constitutes an ever-evolving taiko culture separate from themselves.

TaikOz School does not simply teach doko-doko rudimentary drumming drills, it teaches TaikOz’s position as outsiders to Australian classical music institutions (which TaikOz left to pursue taiko), and TaikOz’s outsider status to the Japanese taiko they revere. Their performances and recordings reflect similar positions, but rather than see their own role in

184 this, TaikOz members frequently report dissatisfaction that this intricate ‘feel’ is missed or misunderstood by concert-goers and reviewers. TaikOz members tend not to acknowledge their choices to present watery versions of their experiences as though these were ‘the way’. Their expression is more personal than they say, and because they do not say it, it is not recognised by those outside TaikOz. TaikOz teach of their emotional experiences as perceived non-indigenous taiko players, and present this same status on stages, despite their artistry. While Eitetsu Hayashi modified musical material to accommodate his fellows’ poor drumming skills, TaikOz modify to express non-belonging, then guard their material with all the conventions that have excluded them.

Indigeneity In what began as a chapter about Japanese quotation and allusion within an Australian semi- theatrical chamber music composition, we have found the formal elements that seemed to hold cultural meaning cannot be adequately justified with the narratives that surround them. Contradictions and omissions dilute the desired purity of a quoted originals (plural as every version on the long trajectory stands alone), and hence social and psychological factors that have impacted each stage – genesis, alteration, transmission, adoption, modification, repurposing – take on more meaning. If performance is a site of teaching, just as is TaikOz’s school, then the cultures of transmission and indigeneity of all participants (players, audience, critics) matter. And the same consolation is due to the journalists who intercept TaikOz in the briefest moments, grasping for logical connections and allusions where unfamiliar content, designed to titillate – designed to highjack their attention and pleasure centres through devices like comedy, repetition, visual metaphor, sonic or tonal home – requires translation into another medium (text) for others outside the immediate experience.

To restate, the differences in transmission for each mentioned Yatai-bayashi proponent, can be generalised into five processes. First, there was a mythical mode of ancient transmission which was aural and traditional, local and fluid, situated in matsuri and hence Shinto practice. Evidence for this comes from stories told by experts like Eitetsu Hayashi.86 This existed and continues to exist, but it is not the same culture as contemporary staged taiko, and it is not merely a ‘feeder’ or predecessor.87 Second, Japanese twentieth-century taiko artists met with

86 Eitetsu Hayashi, To Tomorrow’s Taiko Players, 59. 87 An explanatory analogy: colonial bush-dance fiddling co-evolved alongside orchestral music in Australia, drawing on pastoral melodies, dance rhythms, social conventions, but has next-to-nothing to do with elite

185 ‘ancient knowledge’ and received information in ways indigenous to the learners (using tapes and notation). Third, these amateur taiko artists transmitted skills and artefacts on stages with emphasis on values they perceived in ‘type one: ancient tradition’ but did not adhere to themselves. Type three then professionalised their process. Fourth, TaikOz met ‘type-three: Japanese stage amateurs cum professionals’ and tried to learn as type three taught (prioritising traditional transmission narratives, though not employing these). TaikOz sneakily used techniques from classical musical training to facilitate their learning of the hybrid, but bought into the mythology of type one’s legitimacy. Fifth, when TaikOz share yatai-bayashi, by performance or education, they claim each link in the transmission chain has been traditional. TaikOz place primacy on type one, implying its presence in every stage, but really it is the only step that is both invisible and un-provable at any level, and that directly contradicts all evidence of how taiko transmitted to TaikOz.

As a student in TaikOz’s school I queried why TaikOz chose this mode of teaching, given the contradictions. Invariably I was told, by reluctantly bound faces, that TaikOz needed to act Japanese to be legitimate: they felt it was important to uphold tradition so students could have a ‘real taiko experience’. Members demonstrated how uncomfortable they were with this, but also that no alternatives were possible because their predicament was beyond their control – TaikOz felt their public needed this myth of traditionalism upheld. I was encouraged to learn in this uncomfortable way because when the knowledge would become internalised, I could be prouder of my achievement. Thus TaikOz sold me a cultural experience, but one that had nothing to do with ‘Japanese culture’, taiko or music.

TaikOz do Yatai-bayashi ‘Yatai’, as it is affectionately known in TaikOz’s community, has been central to TaikOz’s repertory since the start because it was emulatable after Ondekoza and Kodo, and because it inspired Monoprism, the Maki Ishii orchestral work that placed taiko within Western classical music’s view. In Shifting Sand, Graham Hilgendorf blended several forms of Yatai-bayashi to playfully act out an imagined matsuri scene. The paths by which he and colleagues came to know this Japanese musical content was not straightforward. Here I trace TaikOz’s entries into yatai-bayashi traditions, modes of learning, and ‘lightbulb moments’.

concert violin music, even when composers quote rustic themes. In this example the people and instruments are of the same time and place, share ethnicity, some cultural attributes and conventions, but they are parallel. They can intersect but remain resolutely divergent.

186

An interview with Ian Cleworth, unveiled interesting subtleties of identification regarding his learning processes and performance goals for Yatai-bayashi. I present these to demonstrate how Cleworth and TaikOz, as learners of taiko, rarely knew what they did not know – they were unaware how their knowledge of Japanese traditions and contemporary renditions were incomplete or able to evolve. At every stage of learning and playing yatai-bayashi, TaikOz have followed social rules visible in their circles, and believed therefore they had acted respectfully. As more information became available, their understandings have complexified. Over time they have grown acceptance that their yatai-bayashi iterations (as separate from existing models) are satisfactory too, flowing within a long history of innovation.

Cleworth learned Yatai-bayashi by rote in Japan in the 1980s from his sensei Sen Amano whose version was a variant on Chichibu Yatai-bayashi.88 The rhythmic language and sitting style were similar but the order of phrases was, so Cleworth learnt later, quite different from Chichibu Yatai. Ten years later Cleworth formed TaikOz with Riley Lee, who had been a founding member of Ondekoza. Only gradually Cleworth realised the extent and gravity of Lee’s history with Ondekoza's Yatai-bayashi, and the greater context in which Ondekoza had appropriated and stylised it with composer Maki Ishii. Cleworth said, “That piece had been central to Ondekoza’s beginnings and even now it's a centrepiece to their performance repertoire.”89 Long after meeting, Cleworth came to see Lee as “an incredible resource!”90

It was not until 2005 when TaikOz studied Yatai-bayashi in Chichibu that Cleworth realised how different these originals were from versions of Ondekoza or Sen Amano. Cleworth's journey towards understanding the ‘roots and routes’ of Yatai-bayashi was in a happy state of incompletion. When I asked him about where and how his first teacher Sen came to know Yatai, Cleworth could not say. Nor did he have any concept whether Sen's interest in performing this original, traditional music followed a broader trend in Japanese indigenous identity construction. Cleworth had not asked Sen for details of the piece's place, time, evolution or accepted cultural meanings because Cleworth had been “a raw student”91 and did not know the scope or particulars of what he ought to know about it: he believed he was

88 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, June 1, 2011. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid.

187 learning it from an appropriate source given that both the piece and his teacher were Japanese and taiko-related.92

TaikOz later learnt a Yatai-bayashi in the O-edo-bayashi (Old Tokyo) repertoire which Cleworth explained “is nothing like the Chichibu version but they share a name.”93 Not until TaikOz in 2008 spent a week studying with Yosuke Suzuki, head of the Wakayama Ryu (school) of O-edo-bayashi for the Sanja-matsuri in Tokyo, did members get a better sense of context surrounding the pieces called Yatai-bayashi. Cleworth said: “I was in a state of not so much confusion as total ignorance. I didn't know which questions to ask.”94 He confessed he had no idea which came first (O-edo-bayashi or Chichibu Yatai-bayashi) or whether they were related. He answered intuitively, “I think they're totally independent and that the name Yatai-bayashi is descriptive.”95 This interview confirmed that TaikOz are committed to doing taiko ‘right’, but that even when they are aware of gaps in their knowledge, they prioritise playing the drums rather than researching justificatory history. They are content not knowing because they identify as practitioners and artists, not experts.

TaikOz continually study sound and aesthetics in Japan, but learn of historical and social factors peripherally. TaikOz believe music's value inheres in the sounds and techniques of producing sound. These are the aspects of music they consider themselves to be manipulating under the guidance of their Japanese colleagues and mentors. While they move their bodies and appeal to audiences’ sight, even in physical display they identify as sound-artists. All this they do under the umbrella of art, artifice and artistry. They use taiko, and specific artefacts like Yatai-bayashi to ‘be artsy’ in their own way. Masae Ikegawa explained of Shifting Sand, “I think Shifting Sand is a kind of ‘one art’ to me. That's what Eitetsu does. He picks one guy, maybe a guy who has died and become famous and then he studies his life and then writes music to venerate that life. I don't see this sort of story-telling with Kodo's performance, but Eitetsu is more ‘arty’. His playing is making art. Making a stage. So Shifting Sand is ‘one art’ with the theme of the ocean.”96 For comparison, when Eitetsu Hayashi conveyed early photography in taiko work Manrei, his art was accepted as logical, natural, staged, concert- music in a way that TaikOz’s blend of ‘taiko conveying the ocean’ is not. TaikOz are instead

92 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Masae Ikegawa, interview with the author, October 24, 2012.

188 seen to be borrowing something foreign, misusing it out of context, and slapping a local theme (ocean) onto it, then justifying the lot with an emotional palette that does not befit any of the material from which the whole is constructed. Further, this perceived cultural appropriation appears a privileged, perhaps even Australian, trait that does not align with a Japanese historical importance that produced a cultural object or its sacred transmission through time. I have demonstrated how each of these assumptions is false, and hence I have shown ways TaikOz are misinterpreted. I have inferred the clumsy position in which TaikOz negotiate divergences between expectations and reality. Ultimately, while staged taiko cultures in Japan and America have been satisfied with origin and transmission stories that call a modern rendition “inspired by”97 an artefact, Australians who intercept TaikOz demand additional accountability.

Conclusions from Shifting Sand To sum, before assessing the concurrent project Crimson Sky, TaikOz’s Shifting Sand pioneered an Australianised version of taiko by blending images of Australian surf-culture with TaikOz’s particular brand of taiko music, that ended up ‘looking Japanese’ to many. The juxtapositions of an ‘Australian character’ against iconic images of Japanese festivals – dancing, carts, flags and clowning – created dissonance in witnesses. TaikOz’s Shifting Sand placed taiko in Australian landscapes and emotional spheres. It conveyed aspects of TaikOz’s Australianness by virtue of transmitting ‘Japanese things’. TaikOz’s physical comedy (while carrying drums onto stage) might have seemed like a mockery of Japanese festival culture to a non-expert witness, but this was not intended. I have drawn readers’ attention to visual and aural cultural signifiers incorporated to re-position taiko generally, TaikOz specifically, the beach, Australian identity and notions of disingenuous appropriation. In doing so, I questioned whether TaikOz’s abstraction of Japanese cultural artefacts, current world taiko, and yatai-bayashi, produced a successful contemporary art work. By eternalising Shifting Sand in DVD format, TaikOz produced saleable merchandise, but have also kept a record of their well-intentioned, innovative, self-building process.

TaikOz have not always been aware of what they were doing, or rather what ‘what they were doing’ was doing, as evidenced through stories of how they acquired understandings about

97 Benjamin Pachter, “Events and Festivals, Traditional Taiko: Chichibu Yatai Bayashi,” Esto Es Taiko: The Taiko Magazine, https://estoestaiko.com/2015/12/07/chichibu-yatai-bayashi/, accessed September 2, 2020.

189 Yatai-bayashi forms. In this sense, they have enacted a historical approach, but not attempted authentic reproduction. As Antoine Hennion has suggested, “Nothing is more modern than an historical approach to an old [or unfamiliar] repertoire.”98 Yet critics write TaikOz’s history, where TaikOz do not have a ready-made place or write their own rules; TaikOz follow on an inevitable path that only unfolds as they work.99 It is because “music has nothing but mediations to show: instruments, musicians, scores, stages, recordings. The works are not ‘already there’, faced with differences in taste already there, overdetermined by the social.”100 Theorists on creativity suggest a credibility gap exists between ‘the ways we think about music’ and ‘the only music we think about’101 so I have argued that TaikOz’s musical creativities fall into the gap between witnesses’ situated knowledges and TaikOz’s musical and theatrical choices. TaikOz members see their meeting of wholes, done with mutual respect, to match contemporary Australian performance cultures’ values. TaikOz’s musical creativities are integrally wrapped up in the hegemony of Western classical music because TaikOz operate in that market and many TaikOz witnesses draw from that aesthetic system, which prioritises narratives of authenticity (ideas not shared in ‘Japanese’ appropriated taiko cultures). This is at the heart of the paradoxes surrounding taiko formalisation. Within the culmination of a transformation of musical taste, and not by a passive and anachronistic return to sources, TaikOz could validate their own practice.

98 Antoine Hennion, “The Production of Success: An Anti-Musicology of the Pop Song.” Popular Music 3, (1983): 159. 99 Ibid., 162. 100 Antoine Hennion, Margaret Rigaud and Peter Collier. The Passion for Music: A Sociology of Mediation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015, 83. 101 Nicholas Cook, Music: A very Short Introduction. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

190 Crimson Sky: being another self TaikOz are bound by tensions of essentialised cultural categories, particularly about country and custodianship. In a cultural climate obsessed with national representations (Australian and Japanese), TaikOz’s concert program Crimson Sky marked a departure from meeting public demand to self-expression. Some audiences were confused due to a lack of hyper- masculinised powerful beating, while others wept at its subtlety. Media responses typically lagged, ‘missing the point’ of this project, and instead those wrote about taiko generally with reference to the truisms of spirituality and premodern war drums. In Crimson Sky, composer Ian Cleworth wrote of himself, of his life, of his musical career. He hoped it would be received as revealing or intuitive, but instead it was interpreted as a failure to do generic taiko.

Reviewers described what they saw, but lacked context to see nuanced philosophical divergences or evolution of taiko, both in TaikOz’s output and for the art form broadly. Those voices tasked with representing TaikOz, instead described personal, aesthetic experiences. Reporters’ experiences were not inferior or incorrect, as TaikOz obliquely imply, but did follow a predictable template of description and association that judge taiko by troublesome criteria. I aim to explain why this keeps happening.

This segment explores TaikOz members’ artistic processes, attitudes to their work and feelings about public conceptions around Crimson Sky, again regarding perceived Japaneseness and Australianness. Media about Crimson Sky reveals criticisms and assumptions that categorise TaikOz unfavourably. Throughout their career TaikOz have actioned feedback, incorporating expectations no matter how inaccurate, in the pursuit of commercial success, while balancing artistic integrity. But even as TaikOz recalibrate their art in response to their market, criticisms either remain static or are exclusionary of change.

As discussed previously, TaikOz do taiko differently to most contemporary taiko groups because they treat it as ‘music’ (and not just entertainment, performance, or taiko). TaikOz want to be attended to as professional and staged, like their mentors Eitetsu Hayashi and Kodo. TaikOz’s Japanese mentors encourage this ‘musical’ approach, insisting that TaikOz ‘not copy’ but ‘make taiko their own’.102 Australian mentors are sparse and polarised. A

102 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, June 1, 2011.

191 TaikOz devotee explained: The board were worried that TaikOz may go in a particular direction [with the Shifting Sand DVD, and collaborations with Kodo in 2009 and 2012] because there are very strong Japanese affiliations. There simply must be [affiliations]. There was a risk that TaikOz would become imitative, but Crimson Sky would give the lie to that immediately. TaikOz is a remarkable group in that it has strong wadaiko background and discipline. It’s not Japanese music. It’s terribly much in the Western aesthetic. This is what makes TaikOz such a fascinating group in the Australian context.103

Worldwide, taiko is a community pursuit and simultaneously a staged cultural commodity that is frequently marketed as traditional. TaikOz meet challenges while ‘making taiko their own’ both because taiko discourse is distorted by several factors, addressed in thesis introduction, and because those who review TaikOz know little about taiko or taiko- discourse. Reviews of Crimson Sky offer little about TaikOz and their concert program. The platform tasked with bridging ‘artistic meaning’ and reception has fallen short. Without this interface, TaikOz’s art must speak for itself, and their individuation lacks a verbal framework.

Crimson Sky: the production, the music Crimson Sky premiered in March 2012 in Sydney, toured Brisbane and Canberra in 2013, and regionally in 2014, thus it overlapped Shifting Sand. Synergy and TaikOz Limited received an ‘ARTS NSW’ grant worth $54,295 for Crimson Sky’s rural tour. The first half of the program featured shorter works: Ian Cleworth’s virtuosic Of The Fields for katsugi-okedo (shoulder-slung taiko); Anton Lock’s Exploration – “tour de force for [TaikOz member] Graham Hilgendorf on his beloved drum-set pitted against four taiko-sets;”104 and Tom Royce-Hampton’s Solace for koto and shakuhachi, accompanied by delicate percussion and taiko. In 2012 Cleworth’s old crowd-favourite composition Ota.i.ko returned: “A feel-good, big and fast-paced piece, it [saw] TaikOz joined by 4 members of Taiko no Wa, TaikOz’s student-ensemble who recently won the 2011 Tokyo International Wadaiko Contest.”105 In the program’s second half, koto virtuoso Satsuki Odamura joined TaikOz for Cleworth’s multi-layered 50-minute work, Toward the Crimson Sky. Taking inspiration from a haiku by

103 Penny Campion, interview with author, April 12, 2013. 104 TaikOz media release, 2014. 105 Ibid. A mention of Taiko no Wa is extremely rare.

192 Miura Yuzuru,106 Toward The Crimson Sky evokes sensual imagery of dragonflies ascending: aka-tombo red dragonflies sarasara nagaru flowing like a ripple akane-zora toward the crimson sky107

Before assessing Cleworth’s compositional decisions and execution through interview material and interpretation, I evidence how Toward the Crimson Sky was loved by expert- witnesses and disliked by dilettantes, and I offer reasons for this divide. Penny Campion, one of TaikOz’s school community and a past board member, summed best: Audience is a really slippery concept. The audience that needs to exist to make a group survive is a different thing from an ideal audience which is what artists always aim at... When you’re doing something unusual, not mainstream, you also have to pitch to people who have a passion for that unusual thing. But composers aim at the ideal common audience. Artists aim for those who are sufficiently like them to ‘get’ what they’re doing and empathise... Obviously there are compromises.108

Reception: Voices from TaikOz’s community Another member of TaikOz’s community, also a past board member, described impressions of Crimson Sky starting with TaikOz’s relationship to classical music and moving into discussion of order: I don't really like traditional Western music... not the way taiko music interests me. A lot of people didn't like Crimson Sky but for me it was a real turning point for TaikOz. Before Crimson Sky, TaikOz were trying to find their place. On the spectrum of taiko music, Eitetsu [is] concert soloist, polished, technical... Kodo bring theatre into it, showman[ship]... And further along the spectrum Drum Tao is all theatre. TaikOz muck around in all three areas... One concert would be traditional, and then they'd be jumping around playfully. Crimson Sky defined TaikOz... a new direction… And a lot of people didn’t like it. Reviewers didn’t understand it because it wasn't orderly.109

106 Publicity for Crimson Sky included Cleworth’s interpretation of the haiku: “The poet’s images conjure thoughts and feelings that are intensely – almost painfully – poignant… The autumnal [imagery] arouses visions of impending death, whereas the reference to ‘flowing like a ripple’ is both playfully light-hearted and sensuous, with a strong feeling of choreographed movement.” TaikOz, 2011 Crimson Sky Media Release, Nov 20, 2011: 2-3. 107 Miura Yuzuru, haiku quoted in TaikOz Crimson Sky Media Release, 2014. 108 Penny Campion, interview with author, April 12, 2013. 109 Anonymous informant 1, TaikOz community, 2012.

193 This informant assumed reviewers disliked Crimson Sky because it was not predictable. When asked how Crimson Sky was affective, they remarked: I remember crying. There’s a moment in that concert where [Cleworth] achieves stillness. Perfect stillness, even though there was music playing... Probably only people who know Ian [Cleworth] would find that. People who don't know TaikOz found it difficult. They would have thought ‘these people should be playing traditional Yatai-bayashi’... In a lot of things that TaikOz are doing now, there's a free-form style, where the rhythms are not taiko rhythms. You've got to go on the journey as an audience: it’s not predictable.110

A third informant from the TaikOz community shared the following thoughts on Crimson Sky which show a high conceptual investment in TaikOz, thorough contextual understanding about the music industry, and state of world-taiko. They demonstrate affection too, especially within criticism of subjects they regard highly: Toward the Crimson Sky had more substance [than] ‘Boom Boom’. Anton [Lock]’s pieces [including Exploration] are really fun... Gorilla throbbing… [And] Anton can run around doing back flips and saying ‘hey ladies’ because that's who he is, but [Cleworth] doing it... his ebullient dancing is awkward… even though I'm predisposed to like him… The vibe at Angel Place was muted. You still had the die- hards who’d ‘woo’ at anything ‘ooh physicality’ but it was more serious. Toward the Crimson Sky showed the type of ensemble TaikOz really are, which is new music, not the traditional... It was a proof of concepts. To me their ability to say, ‘we don't need to finish on the loud joyous jumping’ is meaningful because I see that they find joy in the stillness and introversion too.111 This informant relates Crimson Sky to TaikOz’s coterminous projects, explaining how each is a means to be themselves, and how this departs from their previous ideologies and methods: It was less about having the pull of ‘the Japaneseness’ or not. It was presented as a composition. It wouldn’t have worked without the koto, and I guess that's due to [their] orchestral background… Some American groups are pretty boring because they’re so slavishly trying to do the ‘only Japanese’ thing. I think TaikOz goes too far in the other direction sometimes. [Their recent innovative Australian projects:

110 Ibid. 111 Anonymous informant 2, TaikOz community, 2013.

194 Pulse:Heart:Beat, TaikoDeck and Origin of O] have been ‘the young guys’ stuff’ like the collaboration with that dreadful Tokyo Love-In ‘# guy’. I find him to be a jarring fit with the studied musicianship of TaikOz... The thing is, you can’t build up an audience for a decade and then change horse midstream. [TaikOz imply to their public] ‘Well we were really into that stuff we were taught by Eitetsu Hayashi, Kodo and more… And yeah those guys are not trad they’re modern, but in terms of ‘modern taiko’ they're as trad as you're gonna get. Dudes in a temple hitting once every fifteen minutes is different. So TaikOz give the young guys some lead to make shows.112 These comments demonstrate emotional stock in the success of TaikOz. This fan knows a lot about taiko and holds impassioned opinions about TaikOz’s dilemma. Someone else from TaikOz’s community explained the differences between Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky, and implied that, had the choice been theirs, they would have “immortalised” Crimson Sky on DVD instead: “Shifting Sand [seemed] ‘too Japanese’.”113

A Melbourne audience member felt duped by Crimson Sky because it did not contain the usual boldness and instead referred to a Western classical music aesthetic: Everybody left going, ‘Huh?’ ...People were waiting, thinking ‘when are they going to play the full-on physical, let’s get the muscles out, driving beats?’ and it never came. It had ambient synth sounds, droning electronics. It really confused the audience. [Now] I see, in Crimson Sky TaikOz were trying to embody who they are more, while the audience were still in the head-space of ‘taiko has to be this one thing’.114

Reception: Media commentary Reviewers of Crimson Sky made several more references to players’ bodies than to the music. Andrew Taylor wrote, “Playing [wadaiko] is no task for a weakling if the bulging muscles in Anton Lock's arms and shoulders are any guide. The 25-year-old looks more like a boxer than a musician and composer.”115 Lock explained the converse to Taylor: “You want to use your whole body to resonate through the drums so that requires not only strength and power but also flexibility and softness… To get so in harmony with everything, to make the exact sound you want to make at the exact time is a real challenge.”116 Next Taylor touted thunder,

112 Ibid. 113 Anonymous informant 3, TaikOz community, 2013. 114 Melbourne audience member, personal communication, 2014. 115 Andrew Taylor, “Drum machines reach for the sky,” Sun Herald, March 11, 2012: 25. 116 Anton Lock quoted in Taylor, “Drum machines reach for the sky.”

195 “The noise produced is more than a match for the earplugs they provided.”117 For Taylor, the look and feel of the players deserved more focus than the musical show.

Sydney Morning Herald's David Vance described Crimson Sky thus (abridged): Energetic, hypnotic, elemental... TaikOz revisits traditional Japanese taiko drumming from a contemporary perspective… Akin to watching a musical variant of martial arts. There is an intense discipline in the synchronisation of the performers, a ceremonial approach to the instruments and fellow musicians, and a muscularity, evident in the bare-armed display of gym-fit biceps, in many of the rhythmic patterns. The occasional primal grunt adds to the allusion. What is paramount is the theatricality of the performance. A spectacularly somersaulting cymbal player; the precise balletic choreography of drum strokes... all make for an engaging spectacle, but one that earns respect for its sense of ritual and a genuine belief in, and commitment to, its artistic, even spiritual, value.118 Of compositional style, Vance commented: The program contained works by members of the ensemble... Incorporation of a drum-set in Lock’s Exploration seemed anomalous, acoustically as much as visually... Impressive though the performances were, I could not help feeling I had heard all these minimalist musical gestures earlier in the evening, and that while enjoying the transient euphoria occasioned by the visceral pulsing of massed drums and the balmy clouds of electronic and koto haze, I drifted away, uncertain that there was much to write home about.119 Vance’s review captures the ambiguity cited by other critics and fans, evidenced next.

Philip O'Brien interviewed TaikOz members for his Crimson Sky preview. Therein TaikOz could voice what they thought they were doing. O’Brien dropped military hints, then let Cleworth correct common misconceptions: In feudal Japan, these drums were used to motivate troops and to set pace on the battlefield. Centuries later, the name TaikOz is a distinctive choice, reflecting respect for ancient traditions as well as an unmistakable Australian flavour… TaikOz has always prided itself on diversity in performance. But artistic director Ian Cleworth

117 Taylor, “Drum machines reach for the sky.” Sun Herald, March 11, 2012: 25. 118 David Vance, “Minimalist but perhaps a tad too bare.” Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2012: 10. 119 David Vance, “Minimalist but perhaps a tad too bare.” Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2012: 10.

196 admits, ‘There's still a perception that the ensemble is just a collection of big drums played very loudly by a bunch of muscular blokes. That's not a fair reflection of the art form or what we do... TaikOz is a synthesis of East and West... an engagement of mind, body and spirit’.120 O’Brien further quoted Cleworth, “While we use Japanese instruments as our mode of expression, we are Australian musicians working in Australia and draw on a lot of other aspects of our culture here. We're respectful of the roots and traditions of this music but we have to be true to who we are.”121 O'Brien directed readers to TaikOz's visual aspect, “Watching TaikOz in performance is a fascinating contrast between power and relaxation. As frenetic as the taiko rhythms appear, the drummers seem almost suspended in a trance as they play... an experience to be seen as much as heard... the drummers [are] like felines waiting to pounce on their prey.”122 TaikOz’s message of multiple-authenticities is clearer when members speak with writers than when TaikOz are witnessed without explanation.

These examples demonstrate that in 2013, after TaikOz had spent seventeen years talking with the media, TaikOz’s witnesses (as typified by Taylor and O’Brien) had not acquired a ‘base understanding’ of what taiko is and how TaikOz intersect with tradition and innovation. Or rather, that their medium of journalism required of them to tell captivating stories of warriors and noise alongside TaikOz’s gentle corrections.

Ian Cleworth’s compositional process In March 2013 I interviewed Cleworth about TaikOz’s recent goings on, and especially about compositional approaches in Toward the Crimson Sky. I quote him extensively to evidence ways Cleworth thought and spoke about composing and performing it. This thesis is concerned with TaikOz’s negotiations with discourses and complications their actions attract. By writing a history of Cleworth’s thoughts, I trace how each fluid interplay with musical material is an investigation on a path towards excellence.

Cleworth’s score of Toward the Crimson Sky details rhythms, melodies, harmonies and expressions, but he said it “only gives you half the information”123 because it is an abstraction

120 Philip O'Brien, “Haiku at heart of drum symphony.” Canberra Times, October 22, 2013. 121 Ian Cleworth quoted in Philip O’Brien, “Haiku at heart of drum symphony.” 122 Philip O’Brien, “Haiku at heart of drum symphony.” 123 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 2013.

197 of performance. More apparent in taiko than other types of music, taiko's exaggerated visual and choreographic aspects defy notation. Toward the Crimson Sky uses musical language derived from Cleworth’s percussion background. He said, “I wanted it to reflect my musical thinking of the time. It has a strong focus on rhythmic complexity… Synth-pad beds give it harmonic direction.”124 In previous compositions for TaikOz, Cleworth emulated conventional taiko tropes, playing foreign interpreter. But in Toward the Crimson Sky Cleworth made taiko his own and expressed his tastes in Western music. To ensure the work ‘sounded like him’ and not ‘like taiko’ he employed several techniques. Cleworth said, “When I wrote for bass koto I deliberately chose modes [musical scales] that are not Japanese. In fact it's based on a Hungarian scale and its inversion. This was not an arbitrary choice. It was from a piece we played in Synergy years ago. I loved the intervals.”125

Though Cleworth specified he loved ‘the intervals’, he later implied the ‘original pitches’ of this mode were more desirable than a transposition. This shows that his taste for these formal parameters were driven by emotion and memory, and had evolved musically outside his taiko career. Satsuki Odamura struggled as the Hungarian mode did not fit the range of bass koto, so they transposed it down a tone. Cleworth ‘submitted’ to intervals when preferred pitches were not available, compromising his artistic ideal for pragmatism. Of interest, Cleworth did not choose the Hungarian mode because of its suitability to bass koto, for a formalistic possibility, in fact he discovered the two were incompatible only after completing the composition.

I have argued throughout the thesis that TaikOz write meaning onto their practice by remaining in the margins of every designation they choose or are ascribed. They define who they are by what they are not. My field notes from this period interpreted: While Cleworth is willing to be relative (he accepts intervallic relationships when absolute pitched systems are not feasible), his ideal is absolute. It demonstrates a love for limitation. It is no accident that the (fictional) stringent cultural codes surrounding taiko music and mythology attract and retain his interest. He loves the state of ‘waiting for permission’, a trait common to well-conducted orchestral musicians.126 I imply again that Cleworth’s tastes and proclivities are constructed in his environment.

124 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 2013. 125 Ibid. 126 Felicity Clark, field notes, 2013.

198

Both Ian Cleworth and Riley Lee have pioneered hybrids of East and West by arranging and composing music for taiko and shakuhachi in a context of Australian staged music. Both have grappled with challenges of being imitative versus creative, and of which specific processes attract which designations. Cleworth commented, When you hear koto or shakuhachi, you hear Japan. Riley [Lee] too says ‘these are world instruments’. He plays Western classical music on his [shakuhachi]. Because the sounds [timbres] of these instruments are so identifiably Japanese, a way to broaden things is to use different modes, scales or harmonies.”127

Cleworth suggests that to avoid sounding imitative of Japan, he instead decontextualises stereotypical Japanese sounds by having them do non-Japanese things. Implied but not overtly stated is that to mix Japanese sounds with ‘random’ techniques is unpopular, but to combine the discrete entities of Japanese instruments and Hungarian intervals is more favourable than Japanese instruments and the composer’s contemporary aleatory freedom. Wielding two distinct knowns is safer than blending Japanese instruments with himself. It allows him to mix his history with Japanese sounds’ history by removing the present (both blended entities are from the past, his past). In this reasoning, humility is preserved by distancing the composer from the content of composition, removing some of the pressures of infinite artistic choices and what these might be made to mean. Cleworth restated: So to argue it from the opposite perspective: if I use a Japanese scale with the sound of the koto, it’s going to sound really Japanese. There's nothing wrong with that, but I need to make it more my own [so I refer] to another piece from Synergy that I've always liked. That makes it mine... which is not to say it’s less Japanese or more Australian or whatever, because what does that mean anyway? Cleworth has suggested that Japaneseness or Australianness are ascribed during reception (at the intersection of performance/observation), and not during inception or activity. His compositional process does not intend to communicate either of these categories because they are beyond himself. His defence, as always, is to perform ‘selfhood’ through sound, because for TaikOz, the musician’s irreducible unit is sonic, not cultural. This reductive core belief, however, is culturally constructed (in Australia, in elite musical spheres, in universities, in their pasts and presents, in local value systems), but seems so naturalised to these subjects

127 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, March 2013.

199 that it provides comfort.128

Earlier in Cleworth’s compositional career he experimented with other methods of authentication, saying: [Initially] with TaikOz, I was writing this hybrid of taiko and percussion music but I thought, ‘hang on, I need to actually come to grips with taiko’, so I started to compose what I thought were taiko pieces. This was to learn how to play taiko and to treat it not as another percussion sound. A good way to come to grips with 'taiko as taiko' is to play taiko music – traditional repertoire like Yatai-bayashi, Miyake, Hachijo. You've got to get to terms with some of these forms... You can't do all of them, there are too many... After that I tried to write a ‘straight taiko piece’ which doesn't make any sense really. That was the thought process.129 Cleworth points to evolution in his thinking and acknowledges where his logic, though ideal at the time, expired and progressed: Now I'm returning to more abstract notions. Crimson Sky is a good example of my treatment of ‘sound and rhythm’ as ‘sound and rhythm’. Now I have a better understanding of shime-daiko, what it can do, what suits it rhythmically in terms of its natural language – I can compose better for it.130 One aspect that has been both obvious and requiring of repeat learning has concerned physical advantages and limitations of particular instruments and bodies.

Typical rhythms become associated with a certain instrument because of the physical properties of that instrument – its shape, its sound producing mechanism, the sticks used. Physicality of the tool lends musical language. Cleworth said: “[Small] shime-daiko [has] good rebound qualities [while giant] ōdaiko takes a lot of force to move the air within, [and for either our] posture is important.”131 This quote isolates how Cleworth distinguishes between appropriate sounds and techniques for instruments. They require different treatments because they are physically different. Similarly he talks about the ways bodies of taiko-artists can be natural or have a ‘bodily accent’. When discussing objects, it is easy for him to accept

128 Hennion suggests that taste is “the formation of a specific competence, increasingly well-defined and self- sufficient, that makes us appreciate the works according to a regime of connoisseurship – a format that we stop seeing as we come to belong to it most naturally and intimately.” Antoine Hennion, “The Production of Success,” 161. 129 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, March 5, 2013. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid.

200 discrimination between approaches. When talking about his art practice though, he is more sensitive about what is permissible, possible, and artistic, and why some limitations are insurmountable – like ‘changing into a Japanese physique’ or even changing public opinion. The body of public opinion, as a tool for witnessing TaikOz, also produces certain stories more readily than others.

Proponents of taiko discourse typically use aesthetic systems from other extant (and related) traditions to govern what sorts of musical choices appear appropriate and then ‘appropriateable’.132 When taiko-players depart from this model it is by asserting what they ‘do’ and suggesting their actions constitute the ‘living’ of tradition. Simultaneously, when taiko-talkers (journalists or witnesses) ‘do’ what they do – they are progenitors of discourse that then shapes the actual phenomena they interpret.133 According to Butlerian performativity logic, discursive (or musical) interpellations are attempts to pull or put someone ‘in their place’, forcing individuals into subjection according to social norms. This interpellation is not descriptive, but inaugurative, in the sense that it “seeks to introduce a reality rather than report on an existing one.”134 Further, TaikOz frequently substitute ‘a fact from one system to which they belong’ for an interpretation in an adjacent medium. Their statements are regularly accurate, but only with further context. Again, my field notes documented: When justifying appropriation, TaikOz members often bind themselves in explanations of these conceptual criteria by answering truthfully the questions they are asked. For example, when asked about ‘Japanese rhythms’, they talk about rhythm. They answer, instead of proposing more interesting questions that redirect interviewers to meaningful sites. TaikOz explain directly, economically, that their work is made meaningful through criteria like pitch, duration, cultural affiliation, but they only answer this way when they are asked. Their responses are necessarily circular to avoid long-winded discussion or philosophical ‘re-education’.135

Through composing three coterminous projects circa 2012 – Crimson Sky, Shifting Sand and

132 Tomie Hahn, Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance, 2007, 118. 133 Steven Feld, “Communication, Music, and Speech about Music.” Yearbook of Traditional Music 16 (1984): 1-9. 134 Alecia Jackson and Lisa Mazzei. Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data across Multiple Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2012: 79. 135 Felicity Clark, field notes, 2013.

201 TaikoDeck – TaikOz made taiko their own. In TaikoDeck, Tom Royce-Hampton put electronic music inside taiko (and not the other way around); in Shifting Sand Hilgendorf put taiko inside an Australian landscape; and in Crimson Sky Cleworth expressed himself through taiko and other sounds. Cleworth explained: “Coming from a Classical music background, music is abstract. This is where I come into conflict with the whole ‘taiko thing’ from time to time. For me music is sound, pure and simple... As I've [developed], the visual side of things has revealed more depth. It's intrinsic, not extraneous. There's an equal relationship between audio and visuals.”136 Following this visuality, next I quote a conversation with Cleworth in which we contemplated a ‘Western compositional approach’, where the composer manipulates abstract, conceptual sounds, then asks a musical technician to materialise these ideas; that is, to perform a concept which may not come naturally in their medium, but that looks befitting.

Flowing Like a Ripple – a centrepiece The central movement of Toward the Crimson Sky, Flowing Like a Ripple, uses three archetypal taiko playing styles. Each was innovated by Eitetsu Hayashi: taiko-set, ōdaiko, and hachijo-daiko. Cleworth chose these three because they are unmistakably, visibly, ‘of taiko’ and unlike other drumming cultures. Cleworth explained while this instrumentation is ‘completely taiko’ his rhythmic language is ‘totally his’: “My intention is to demonstrate where I am now as a musician… Here is the taiko, here's the percussion [element], but hopefully they're becoming one and the same – more natural.”137 Cleworth later described Flowing Like a Ripple as “compositionally different to other taiko pieces… Stylistically, the composition is based on hachijo-style playing, and rhythmically too, because [hachijo] lends itself to a certain musical language. But the structure and internal writing is very much me.”138

Cleworth chose mentor Hayashi’s iconic versions of these three traditions – ōdaiko, hachijo and taiko-set. In 2000 TaikOz worked with Eitetsu Hayashi in Australia. In 2001 TaikOz worked with Eitetsu and others in Japan for several weeks and began studying Hayashi’s piece in hachijo style, Michio no Yuko Hito. Cleworth told: “We worked on that assiduously for a couple of years. Eitetsu has a close connection with Kikuchi-san [hachijo-style founder

136 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid.

202 and custodian]. But Eitetsu adapted it and made his own style out of it which is visually quite different. If you see the two styles side by side, it's clear how they differ... Because we were playing his piece, we used Eitetsu's hachijo style.”139 TaikOz also self-trained this style in Australia by sending videos of themselves to Hayashi for critique.

Meanwhile, in 2005, TaikOz’s Graham Hilgendorf and Masae Ikegawa studied independently in Japan with Kikuchi-san, honing their ‘root’ hachijo style.140 Ikegawa described to me, while studying there they practiced outdoors on a cliff – singing and playing to a wide, un- listening ocean, and that this now affects the way they sing and play to an audience.141 While Cleworth had specialised in Hayashi’s abstraction or stylisation of Kikuchi’s hachijo-daiko, his fellow TaikOz players had developed expertise in ‘the original’ form, and both bodies of knowledge have enhanced TaikOz’s interplay with Japanese cultural objects and TaikOz’s own culture. Ikegawa and Hilgendorf continue to perform hachijo and have shared these skills with Australia’s taiko community, now separately from TaikOz.

By 2006 when Hayashi toured Australia with TaikOz in the Nature's Rhythm tour, Cleworth said Hayashi’s hachijo variant “was really becoming a big part of our way of playing.”142 Over a span of more than seven years, TaikOz engaged with multiple forms of hachijo drumming, and they understood intimately how each version operated within the taiko space, in Japan and internationally, making their selection of this form anything but indiscriminate.

Form: Flowing Like a Ripple In 2011 consolidated his Toward the Crimson Sky score, Cleworth wanted a core that was unmistakably ‘taiko’ surrounded by movements with influences from percussion, classical music, Japanese traditions and more. He divided the piece into nine parts – 1abc, 2abc, 3abc. The central part 2b, Flowing like a ripple, would contain just taiko. Cleworth shared, “I wanted a style that couldn't be anything but taiko… How do you classify that? – whether it's traditional or wadaiko or whatever – that its roots are from Japan.”143 Cleworth specified place but not time to signal tradition. He continued, “Obviously composing with my background, my skills, the influence of Eitetsu [Hayashi] was very strong… That's my

139 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 140 Masae Ikegawa, interview with the author, October 24, 2012. 141 Ibid. 142 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 143 Ibid.

203 training. Both the rhythmic and visual language, which are inextricably linked... formed the musical material. [Flowing Like a Ripple] is linked to the greater work Toward the Crimson Sky by the base-rhythm.”144 Using kuchi-shoga (vocables) Cleworth sounded his non-typical hachijo base-rhythm: It is one bar played on different instruments at different speeds: Tdes, tdes ga-tekka; Tdes, tdes ga-tekka; Tdes, tdes ga-tekka.145

In Toward the Crimson Sky Cleworth employed an unconventional scale to make bass koto sound less Japanese, and a non-hachijo base-rhythm to constitute a hachijo-daiko even further abstracted than Hayashi’s stylisation of Kikuchi’s traditional version. Borrowing and repurposing extended beyond instrumentation and compositional techniques too, as Cleworth recycled this central movement again as a stand-alone piece in collaboration with Kodo on Australian tour in 2012. Alongside Kodo,146 Cleworth repurposed this material using the truncated title Like a Ripple.

Beside Kodo’s repertory, Cleworth’s complicated composition and choreography looked different. To me it seemed to have a ‘Western mindset’, one where the composer invented intricate sounds, asked musicians to materialise these, and then to make these sounds look comfortable or natural only tangentially. So while hachijo-style drumming, with its graceful figure eight strokes played sideways on a high mounted drum, is typically lilting, driven, gradually accelerating, and highly choreographed, Cleworth’s version was fast and mechanical.

Following Masae Ikegawa’s story of playing hachijo in concert halls as though off imagined seaside cliffs, I asked Cleworth if such a thing as a ‘taiko mindset’ existed; one that might account for hachijo’s flowing choreography, and if this mindset was distinguishable from a Japanese mindset in general, or an Australian mindset, regarding composition and musical execution. I implied that Cleworth’s Flowing Like a Ripple was unlike those I had seen in traditional hachijo, though similar to the appropriations by Japanese artists including Eitetsu Hayashi. Cleworth’s conceptual strength seemed to outweigh and preface the choreography required to implement it. Cleworth clarified in conversation:

144 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, March 5, 2013. 145 Ibid. 146 Kodo were formerly Ondekoza, and Eitetsu Hayashi was a member of these original taiko stagers.

204 F – Your hachijo was ‘the traditional element’ in this movement. You were working hard [with] masculine form [in contrast to hachijo’s typical flow]. I didn't realise this was an Eitetsu style of hachijo until your explanation today. IC – I must qualify, Eitetsu's version is based on Kikuchi's style from Hachijo Island. F – It looked like you had a fully-formed rhythmic idea (sequence of sound) that then you transplanted into this physical format (figure eight shapes side-on). For me, in hachijo style, rhythms come from native-movement and not the other direction. So one makes a shape with ones body, and that shape propels a sound. But in your composition if felt like you had the sound in mind and then your players made the shapes despite the sounds. So it seemed like an inverse relationship to the hachijo style. That was my impression. IC – I think it’s more of a circular thing. Before sound, movement; movement-sound; sound-movement. So you're saying that in a traditional sequence, movement leads to sound? F – In hachijo-style, ‘movement produces sound’ was the direction I assumed. IC – Yup. And your impression was that here, sound directed movement, that movement was an afterthought? F – Your movements certainly accentuated the sounds, but it looked to me like ‘the concept of the sound’ came first. IC – Yeah it’s actually both. I spent many hours making that connection. It starts from the base-rhythm. It started from sound purely. And you won’t hear that base-rhythm in a traditional hachijo piece. That was deliberate. Again, like the use of a non-koto scale, I also didn't want to use a so-called ‘traditional’ hachijo base-rhythm. So certainly to a player or knowledgeable listener, they would realise that. In certain ways you’re right. They'd ask, ‘Is that hachijo or not? I can see that there's hachijo in there, but is it really hachijo?’ They would ask, ‘Is this traditional? Modern? Western? Japanese? Is it authentic?’ It throws up all those things.147

In ‘copying’ or paying homage to Hayashi-style hachijo (a Japanese artist interpreting Japanese cultural artefacts), Cleworth sounded and looked Western. Later Cleworth elaborated on the selfhoods produced when borrowing: Eitetsu talked to me about radical individuals in Japanese history... He mentioned

147 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, March 5, 2013.

205 Basho the poet, and Ise Miyake the fashion designer, they follow their own path. They innovate. There's this weight of these figures, these giants, genius figures... It's really daunting. I find that really debilitating sometimes, for us lesser mortals. It's a constant battle… You have to avoid comparisons because they undermine your confidence. [Comparison is] futile because you have to use what you have, and do it as openly and honestly as you can. That's where I get hung-up, especially coming from my classical background. Particularly now, the central canon of composition is shifting out of currency since post-modernism... Some of the criticism we get is from percussionists. They ask ‘Why are you doing [taiko]? It's so simple’. And we silently gasp inside, ‘If only you knew’.148 This quote demonstrates considerable thought, placing TaikOz’s work in lineages of others. It contextualises the pressures Cleworth faces from both institutions to which he belongs and in which he leads, with wavering morale. Every space demands of him justification. He described how Like a Ripple would prove TaikOz’s worthiness to cohabit the world’s best taiko stage alongside Kodo: “I was hoping that with Like a Ripple, it would display our taiko credentials too. Yeah, we can play great drum-set, mallet percussion et cetera, but we can play the taiko… The Kodo guys accepted us totally.”149 I interviewed Kodo members about their collaboration, but as they agree with Cleworth, I excluded these for brevity. Other TaikOz members comment next about instrumentation and compositional techniques in Toward the Crimson Sky, and of Japanese or Australian ascriptions. Their responses cover human-bodies, repertories, accents and inflections.

What does appearance affect, if not sound? Riley Lee was amused that a TaikOz collaboration involving koto could ‘gain Australianness’ and lose Japanese associations: “It was a uniquely ‘TaikOz voice’ or expression, that's cool.”150 Lee did not participate in Crimson Sky due to recovery from serious injury, so Cleworth instead composed for Kevin Man’s shakuhachi, shinobue and nohkan. Lee complimented, “Kevin is one of the few people in the world who could do that part [for flutes and taiko].”151 Lee described Cleworth’s usual approaches to flute parts: In Toward the Crimson Sky, I'm not sure how much of Kevin's flute part was actually

148 Ian Cleworth, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 149 Ibid. 150 Riley Lee, interview with the author, September 14, 2012. 151 Ibid.

206 notated [or was improvised within parameters]… [When Cleworth composes melodies for me] I think ‘damn, I have to learn it’ [laughs]. And [alternatively Cleworth] has said ‘just play here’ and ‘I want this mood’ or ‘I want this mode’. He gives directions rather than specific notes. [Cleworth] composed Satsuki's koto part [even though] she is one of the few koto players in the world who is very good at improvising – she had to become that [to work in Australia] with Tony Lewis and Sandy Evans [in jazz/fusion trio ‘Waratah’].152

Graham Hilgendorf performed in Crimson Sky and acknowledged how distinctive the musical language was to TaikOz: “It did have ‘the Cleworth ring’ – it was challenging as a performer, but I also felt the challenge for everybody in the room, for the audience and the performers and everybody. But I never thought ‘we should be playing yatai-bayashi at this point’. I didn't question what we were doing.”153 Hilgendorf hints that audiences expect TaikOz to play yatai-bayashi under the assumption that it is traditional, even though yatai-bayashi’s many traditions do not operate, produce or attract meaning, in the ways audiences suppose.

Masae Ikegawa commented about Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky programs, “I'm not sure if we ‘sound Australian’, but definitely members are either percussionist or drummer. So probably if all percussionists formed wadaiko groups they'd sound similar to us!”154 If place matters less than experience, what other factors could define their sound? Ikegawa, like Cleworth, immediately mentioned: “Different body shapes. Yeah, they look different. But I don't know if their appearance is affecting the sound or not.”155 And if their appearance does not affect sound, what does appearance affect: their attitude, their choreography? Ikegawa laughed and added, “I think there is an Australian character. Probably, I've been in the group for thirteen years now, so I'm feeling purely not Japanese either. I've got used to Aussies.”156 For many listeners, pinpointing which elements are Australian or Japanese is important. Ikegawa explained why some rhythms ‘sound Japanese’: TaikOz use other percussion instruments [and] time signatures. [Most people cannot] compose in 11 or 9... They're not common. Always 4 or 3, natural counts. It's really TaikOz. [Cleworth]'s music is hard for me to learn because it's not in my body.

152 Ibid. 153 Graham Hilgendorf, interview with the author, October 24, 2012. 154 Masae Ikegawa, interview with the author, October 24, 2012. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid.

207 Soloing in 11 or 9 is a little bit tricky. You have to count so hard… It sounds really ‘Ian’ to me.157

Kerryn Joyce thought that TaikOz’s Australian sound came “internally from our personalities... [Australianness is more mindful than bodily.]”158 I asked her how players’ physical bodies affected sonic capabilities and whether a consciousness or mental process impressed on this. Joyce answered, “There are so many layers to that question. I think you become efficient at a style or skill base. Even the body types of TaikOz members vary widely and our skill sets too, and the ways we schedule to train our bodies... Mentally you may not be able to achieve what you perceive as physically possible.”159 Too many variables combine in individuals, and each sub-group ensemble formation of TaikOz, and sonic combinations in composition, to define where identificatory work is happening. Joyce hesitated to say their particular bodies affected the Australianness of their sound and instead suggested that TaikOz’s musicianship and ensemble skills set them apart: Even as I look at groups like Kodo or Ondekoza, I see that there are certain positions that people might play according to their strengths. In Ondekoza I didn't see any women play ōdaiko. It's fairly male dominated... With all my Western knowledge of music... for instance, I love Bach. Wouldn't it be great if I played Bach on the taiko! That certainly influences how I play and contributes to my strengths. That desire to be musical inspires me, but I don't aspire to be exactly like them.160 Joyce suggested strengths are not physically constituted, but are culturally affected, for example in realms of gender normativity (masculine ōdaiko) and heritage exposure (Western musical canon). She implied next that TaikOz’s greatest strength, and differentiating feature, is not their skill at executing any cultural artefact, but sits in ensemble. Joyce said: An ensemble that knows each other inside out: it's musical. It doesn't have to be personal actually. Like sport, once you're out [on the field] you've got to do it together. Off-stage too, it's a pretty big thread, from the dressing room or the practice room, that's where it starts... It's not just on stage… [and to ‘hold space’ or ‘confer ensemble’ requires practice, like music or sport]… When you play taiko you exude something. A keenness. So I think [our Australianness is our ensemble-dynamic, and]

157 Ibid. 158 Kerryn Joyce, interview with the author, April 13, 2013. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid.

208 that means connection.161 These subtleties fall outside Cleworth’s definition of music as sound, though clearly underlie the success of TaikOz. Joyce added: There's a lot of belief around us. People think we're coming from a legit place. An audience can sense that. Yes, we divide audiences but [those who enjoy us] can see we are genuine. [The qualities that divide an audience have more to do with] their perception than anything we’re doing. [Once on tour in Tokyo I overheard] someone say, ‘I wasn't sure about this Australian group, but they can really play the taiko!’ So their preconception was challenged. And that kind of attitude could stop an audience from coming.162 TaikOz are continually marked as peripheral by their bodies, art, interests and musical products. This periphery tends to be characterised by distinctions between Japaneseness and Australianness, though these categories are broad, murky and largely unsubstantiable. Each TaikOz member has independently identified that their public judge them on criteria that are not musical. Their commentary fulfils my research aim by problematising why TaikOz are simultaneously successful and despondent about their impact. Further, the complex state of misunderstanding evidenced can implicate ways to interpret TaikOz’s future output. TaikOz incorporate feedback and sculpt future artistic expressions in response to criticisms, and in this, the ways they identify affect the music they produce in public. When most interpretations are faulty, and TaikOz respond to inaccurate condemnations, their responsibility and agency within their own artistic method are compromised. Yet when TaikOz cast aside this noise to be themselves authentically, their expression falls into a discursive space that fails to accommodate them. TaikOz undermine their own mastery, renounce their own responsibility as creatives, by responding to the market that does not comprehend them.

Conclusion: Differing responses to Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky In Shifting Sand, Graham Hilgendorf combined his nostalgia for Australian beach culture with taiko sounds in a theatrical, costumed, concept work. His second movement drew on two unrelated traditional pieces of the same name, Yatai-bayashi, to hint at Japanese festival

161 Ibid. 162 Ibid.

209 excitement. This Scene II, O-matsuri did not attempt to equalise the unrelated Yatai-bayashi traditions combined. Hilgendorf threw them together to be significative only. Despite Hilgendorf having studied several yatai-bayashi types in Japan from cultural custodians and professional taiko stars, and his compositional process being near identical to those taiko players who went before him and who pioneer beside him, his process has been seen to adjust and assimilate cultural material that is assumed not to belong to Hilgendorf. What could make Hilgendorf belong to his art? Is this about bodies and race? Though drum bodies are suited to different things (little drums are responsive to fast playing, while big drums need time to echo) it is considered imprudent to suggest a Japanese mindset or Japanese body could exclude those who fit other categories.

TaikOz fans and other informants I interviewed thought Shifting Sand looked imitative, or ‘tried to be Japanese’ rather than accept its Australian hybrid identity. I have assessed why this work, comprising the same tropes, same sub-genres of taiko, same cast of players, and same performance venue culture as Toward the Crimson Sky, appeared to be doing different cultural work, or appealed to different tastes.

Meanwhile, the Crimson Sky program, which ran simultaneously with Shifting Sand, marked where TaikOz ‘found their voice’ according to many community members. Crimson Sky excited inner echelon fans but was unpopular with critics. Outsider witnesses found Cleworth’s composition too complicated, too quiet, too melancholy and without the right chutzpah. Crimson Sky proudly presented TaikOz members’ identities as Australian classically-trained musicians who are also exceptional taiko players. Lacking rampant thumping expected from taiko, Cleworth’s Toward the Crimson Sky instead prioritised stillness, modal melodies, atmospheric moods, and self-expression. Without tokenistic didgeridoo, and instead featuring bass koto, some witnesses mistook it for an adaptation of taiko, an assimilation into classical music. These witnesses wanted pithier, more reliable binaries to categorise TaikOz’s work asking questions like ‘is taiko music Japanese?’ and ‘did TaikOz make an Australian second-rate version?’

Since inception, following each production TaikOz have consolidated appraisals and formulated new modes of communicating themselves most truthfully. Both Shifting Sand and Crimson Sky explored what it means to be Australian musicians playing taiko, and the resultant criticisms could not have been more divergent. One project was too Japanese,

210 another not Japanese enough. This indicates TaikOz were engaged in multiple forms of identity construction and artistic endeavour, and further that respective projects rarely encompassed the whole being of the ensemble (or institution) at any juncture. Their art was greater than any single staging, it instead resided in their far-ranging mission and activities.

In Crimson Sky TaikOz expressed Australianness by doing ‘their music’ and it was received as not Japanese and not taiko, while in Shifting Sand TaikOz used images and ideas of Australian landscapes to produce something that was their own, and this was received as imitative or even mocking of contemporary Japanese taiko. TaikOz explored their plural identities publicly. Media and community responses, and TaikOz’s reactions to their publics’ responses, indicated that tastes had already been formed, conditioned and confirmed, and that TaikOz were bound by their past works – their group’s existent tradition – to make art that their audiences could recognise. Their brand had become more important than ‘what taiko is’ and ‘what looks authentic’, but TaikOz would still receive criticism about those popular discussion points rather than about their brand identity.

Taiko performances in Australia elicit enactments of alleged Japanese culture. These meetings have been between multiple, incongruent, and often noncomplementary worlds. Drawing on the concept of performativity, I have argued that when TaikOz intersect with witnesses, complex questions arise about identity, subjectivity, and agency, and this requires ethical and political negotiation from both parties. To tie this conclusion to Australian themes prior, TaikOz’s student offshoot group Taiko no Wa won an International Taiko Competition by learning an artform they had never engaged with previously – they learnt to read Western scores, attempted to think of rhythm in terms of ratios, and staged a contemporary version of wadaiko in a foreign land. Their product was celebrated, not for being or looking Australian, but for typifying ‘a future Japanese tradition’ as defined by manufacturers of Japanese cultural products and instruments sold internationally. When Taiko no Wa entered the contest in 2011, they practised a tiny chunk of music but achieved a lot in that process. They attempted a completely foreign musical culture to the one they learned in TaikOz’s school. Taiko no Wa tried to be percussionists due to the ethos of the Japanese taiko competition. Their win may not have been a ‘token’ – they may have played better than all other entrants – but it was in the interest of the competition’s philosophy to commend a version of taiko that was professional, suitably serious, well structured, reverential of pre-modern Japanese ideals, not-too-flashy, and militantly and unflinchingly grimaced (in contrast to the image of popular

211 taiko which is ‘for everyone’, joyful and appropriatable). The competition reified a staged version, asserting that elite taiko is commendable, traditional, worthy, culturally significant, too special to be adopted by just anyone, and extremely Japanese even when performed by ‘foreigners’. There is a dysphoria in taiko, where how things are, and what they are made to mean, rasp and rattle like the shonky monorail. In cyclic tension between what is allowed, and how far antithetical permissions extend, this world phenomenon calls itself art. Yet not all artists are created equal. TaikOz are at the forefront of world taiko.163 Every TaikOz production (or exploration of taiko frontiers) – whether filmic, orchestral, electronic, meditative, modal, edgy, incongruous – evolves the genre with appropriate seriousness and lightness.

This chapter has argued that those aspects of taiko deemed traditional rarely are (in the ways claimed, though possibly by other criteria), and that designations of Japaneseness frequently have an inverse relationship to the actual thing they mark.164 TaikOz ‘look too Japanese’ when they place taiko inside Australian landscapes; TaikOz ‘sound Australian’ when they collaborate with Japanese traditional instruments like koto; Taiko no Wa won by trying percussion, which was a stage TaikOz passed through in their infancy, but one they renounced as inauthentic (both to taiko genre and their own art). Many other paradoxical examples have been cited, and these combine into a composite picture where taiko is a global trend being constructed ‘on the fly’ by actors who prioritise myths of antiquity and convention, even where ‘real’ traditions do exist. Factual and fictional histories both justify the tradition, but these discourses only partially relate to the implied practice. And yet these are highly valued, but detrimental to innovation by artists like TaikOz, even though innovation is at the core of taiko values generally.

TaikOz identify as classically-trained musicians who play taiko and enact staged-music. They compose for taiko and interpret scores. They study a handful of traditional Japanese drumming, dance and flute cultures rooted in matsuri to authenticate their intentions (not actions) to stage a culture which many witnesses identify as non-local, or even assume to be

163 Yosuke Oda, Kodo member, “Email Questionnaire,” October 15, 2012. 164 Taiko (kumi-daiko) originally imitated Hawaiian pop; Eitetsu Hayashi made taiko famous by staging it with orchestras internationally; Japanese composers appealed to ‘universal music principles’ because of Western classical music’s dominion in Japanese thought; matsuri drumming cultures are Japanese (though not all are recognised as traditional in Japan). And these do not intersect or relate directly to staged taiko.

212 Japanese. TaikOz’s relationship with this process of authentication muddies as their lifework becomes habituated passion. They love what they do and appear to make decisions that honour their passion over business strategy. They associate this (perhaps to negative consequences) with being ‘real artists’. If Australia has accepted its own multiculturalism, with all its “self-doubt, white guilt [and] cultural cringe,”165 then has the time come for TaikOz to be more than “high-octane yuppie music for the politically correct?”166

TaikOz wish their witnesses to see through those qualities which distinguish them from other players in the Australian contemporary music scene – the perceived Japaneseness and physicality of their performance – and instead recognise what TaikOz believe to be an individuated hybrid. TaikOz’s hybrid contains the already hybridised taiko, and has come from their decades of participation in many musical domains. In this sense, TaikOz’s authenticity relates to their own integrity as contemporary artists, and not their action of transmitting Japanese-looking drumming. Appearing authentic has been not just important in order for the TaikOz brand to survive and flourish, but critical to the pleasure and value members of TaikOz derive from their art. Authenticity is part of artistic excellence as they become the premier global exponents of their art form. When TaikOz do brand themselves as Australian, it is by comparison to collaborators, and tends to be no more or less effective than any other claim.

165 Shirley Apthorp, “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo - Multiculturalism is alive and well in Australia,” Financial Times, 1 March 2000, 9. 166 Ibid.

213

6. Pericles and Chi Udaka: Theatre’s Kaleidoscopic Dirt

Media responses to theatre stages Reviews of two TaikOz collaborative projects typify regular criticisms, and special critics bring distinct perspectives on TaikOz’s social aesthetics. I assess Bell Shakespeare Theatre Company production Pericles (2009) and Chi Udaka (2012-2020) with Lingalayam dancers, cello, shakuhachi and vocals. Pericles critics reviled the ‘pan-Asian’ mix of cultural-icons, while 2014 Chi Udaka sparked discussion of hip-hop battles, fusion and globalisation. Responses reveal how TaikOz have explored multiple identities and methods, and how journalists have assigned meaning to each. I assess ways these discourses relate to the phenomena that inspired them, then assess how important is it for reviewers to ‘understand’ what TaikOz are doing. In line with thesis aims I research what TaikOz’s artistic goals were for each project then determine the degree to which TaikOz succeeded at correcting misconceptions arising from past projects. I also assess the degree to which their operations confused their public. Just as media about pulse:heart:beat routinely cited ‘kaleidoscopic’ themes, the dirt on Pericles and Chi Udaka is multifaceted and a fertile ground for discussion.

Pericles: Bell Shakespeare & TaikOz Director John Bell employed TaikOz in 2009 for Bell Shakespeare’s Sydney production Pericles. Incorporating themes of fate, voyage, fantasy and exoticism, the play called for an ‘other’ aesthetic. Bell turned to Asia for design and theme, to much chagrin from Australian media. Bell harnessed TaikOz’s aesthetic, versatility and skill into enthralling theatre and not for a development of taiko culture or TaikOz. Bell considered TaikOz “vital and picturesque”1 because they “not only play [music], they sing and dance, and they have great martial arts skills. Pericles is the perfect vehicle for all that because it's an adventure yarn.”2 The cast of ten actors and six musicians created a shared physical language, as Bell explained: “We’re trying to avoid being faux Japanese and at the same time we can't just walk around like people in tracky-dacks.”3 To tell stories through theatre, Bell insinuated symbolism, tokenism and communication via body language are essential.

A descriptive journalist called it “magnificent fusion of East and West… [uncluttered] visual spectacle enhanced by TaikOz, musicians inspired by ancient Japanese instruments. These

1 John Bell quoted in “Drumming up a hero.” Melbourne/Yarra Leader, August 5, 2009. 2 John Bell quoted in Ian Cuthbertson, “How to get the drum on Shakespeare.” The Australian, July 1, 2009. 3 John Bell quoted in Jo Litson, “Bell's big bang theory.” Sunday Telegraph, June 21, 2009. 209

performers beguile the ear with everything from warlike percussion to a celestial rendition of the music of the spheres.”4 Australian Stage’s Vanessa Lahey commented:

Flamboyance and flavour never associated with Shakespeare before... Percussion sensation TaikOz (which is in itself a fusion of traditional Japanese music with an Australian translation) [adds an exciting] element… An oriental inspired stage [alongside TaikOz lends] association with the ancient Japanese ‘Noh’ and ‘Kyogen’ theatre traditions… Ian Cleworth creates an aural emotional complexity to equal the sentiment being acted out… [Fluting creates] a spectacular atmospheric effect… the perfect soundtrack.5

Herald Sun perceived “the backdrop sports a circular sun, reminiscent of the Japanese flag.”6 Bell confirmed, “It has a Japanese aesthetic [because TaikOz] influenced the set and the costumes... [Yet] we're not trying to be Japanese.”7 Bell noted, “[the drumming] gives a fantastic energy and focus... very disciplined… quite robust and strong for the storm scenes, the banquets, the jousts and all that sort of active stuff. But they also can play very melancholy, low-key underscoring for all the romantic scenes and more serious stuff.”8 Ian Cleworth agreed: “Our performance [is] full of contrast, [we] generate this enormous energy on stage but it's also very delicate.”9 A Melbourne paper described Bell’s design as “oriental mystic [to fit] TaikOz.”10 Bell told them, “I'm always keen to use more Asian in our design work in Australia, we should [promote] more business with Asia [via] cross-cultural things.”11 This reviewer implied TaikOz should be treated as exotic. Bell discounted that ‘oriental attributions’ applied, instead naturalising the presence of Asian cultural artefacts in Australia, advocating international trade and avoiding discussion of culture, social- theory or complex philosophy.12

Bell justified his work differently in another media interview the same week. He perceived a parallel: “TaikOz people live a Buddhist existence and there's a lot of Buddhist philosophy evident in Pericles.”13 Whether ‘TaikOz people’ are Buddhist or even do Buddhist things, as Bell suggests,

4 Cameron Woodhead, “Bell at its best for Pericles' odyssey,” The Age, August 10, 2009. 5 Vanessa Lahey, “Pericles,” Australian Stage, July 3, 2009. 6 Nicky Park, “The bard with bang,” Sunday Herald Sun, July 19, 2009. 7 Ibid. 8 John Bell quoted in Nicky Park, “The bard with bang,” Sunday Herald Sun, July 19, 2009. 9 Ian Cleworth quoted in Nicky Park, “The bard with bang,” Sunday Herald Sun, July 19, 2009. 10 “Drumming up a hero.” Melbourne/Yarra Leader, August 5, 2009. 11 John Bell quoted in “Drumming up a hero.” Melbourne/Yarra Leader, August 5, 2009. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 210

his comment implies he chose these musicians based on their religion(s). Bell interpreted Buddhist leanings in the character Pericles' worldview, which he used to justify a Japanese (but not Japanese) aesthetic. He said, “There is a sense that every hardship passes, just as the seasons pass... It's about having the patience and strength to cope with those losses until everything is restored.”14 Interview based reviews were largely complimentary, painting an exotic spectacle.

Not all criticism was so positive, informative or neutral. Some reviews accused Pericles of cultural essentialism. Matthew Clayfield, Sydney based academic derided: “Bell's decision to represent this fairy-tale strangeness as oriental otherness is deeply problematic. Visually and musically, the production is rooted in an antiquated idea of Asian exoticness, with allusions to various far-eastern cultures that are ill-judged and occasionally offensive… Indicating that a scene is set in a brothel by throwing up a couple of Chinese lanterns is only the most obvious example.”15 Clayfield found, “Involvement [of] TaikOz seems tokenistic. Its rhythmic, powerful drumming is certainly impressive, but its role in the production seems limited to providing the story with an oriental soundtrack.”16 Clayfield did not criticise TaikOz for participating, but disagreed with grouping of so many disparate Asian icons into one blundered basket. Journalist Jason Blake similarly criticised Bell's Asian vision: “It takes a big stick to whack a dog's breakfast such as Pericles into shape and you might imagine that sticks as big as those belonging to the drum corps TaikOz would be sufficient. Not so. This quaint exercise in orientalism plays like a cross between The Mikado and The Adventures of Sinbad.”17

These two high-brow objectors criticised genericisation of Asian cultures, yet praised TaikOz's independent involvement. They both identified TaikOz’s extreme care in presenting windows into Japanese-inspired Australian art. They placed value on TaikOz’s care for cultural sensitivity, but also for their excellence as represented through training, discipline, sculpted bodies and visual precision. TaikOz signified with their practice what Bell’s tokenistic symbols could only allude to. Such complimentary apprehension differed in the next project’s criticisms. In TaikOz’s 2013 pulse:heart:beat critics found filmic elements detracted from visuality of the performers’ bodies and embodiments, and for Chi Udaka critics required ‘ferrymen’ (mediating parties) to bridge perceived cultural asynchronies.

14 John Bell quoted in Catherine Lambert, “Zen and now,” Sunday Herald Sun, 29/7/2009. 15 Matthew Clayfield, “Asian flavour does this Shakespeare few favours,” The Australian, July 6, 2009. 16 Ibid. 17 Jason Blake, “Hooray for the band for drumming up interest,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 2, 2009. 211

Chi Udaka is not fusion: media voices from theatre Chi Udaka juxtaposed TaikOz’s taiko with Lingalayam Dance Company’s blend of Bharatha Natyam and Kuchipudi dance, Riley Lee’s shakuhachi, John Napier's cello and classical Indian vocals by Aruna Parthiban, on a theatre stage designed by Bart Groen and lit by Karen Norris.18 Within Chi Udaka, contextual difference between the culture of each performer was marked through costuming: TaikOz wore haragaki (Japanese workman’s aprons), Napier his concert blacks, Lee a Japanese linen outfit, the dancers were adorned in henna and colourful skirts, and singer Parthiban wore a sari. From theatre ceilings saris hung bringing colour, vibrancy and symbolic, imagined nostalgia for ‘other-placeness’ within the constructed auditoria.19 Herein TaikOz made music, but also at times danced with their instruments, for example in a scene choreographed by Anton Lock using gestures reminiscent of Onikenbai.20 Conceived in 2010 and workshopped in 2012, Chi Udaka premiered at Sydney Festival in 2014, then toured Australia and India in 2016, and was scheduled for 2020 in Melbourne. Showreels and behind-the-scenes videos abound on Vimeo, YouTube and via venue websites.21 Media reception of Chi Udaka is markedly different to media about Pericles (or other TaikOz ventures like pulse:heart:beat, concert hall shows, or Shifting Sand) because it comes from theatre and dance reviewers, not musicians.

Chi Udaka was first publicised as “a rattling percussion and dance spectacle… a dynamic, cross- cultural partnership [where] the vocabulary of both companies steeped in history and tradition, now come together with their respective Japanese and Indian practices to break new ground… At turns delicate and dramatic.”22 Inspired by the forces of nature, Chi Udaka was described as a meeting of the deep earthiness of taiko drumming (Chi – Japanese earth element) and the flowing sensuality of Indian dance (Udaka – water in Sanskrit).

Lingalayam’s director Anandavalli Lingalayam (hereafter referred to by her professional name Anandavalli) explained Chi Udaka’s ideology: “Earth and water form the core theme of this collaborative partnership, where separate entities are formed and transformed, creating a kaleidoscope of aural-visual energy, which can be identified as moving configurations. These constantly changing formations create lines and shapes of movement vocabulary that synthesise to

18 TaikOz, “Chi Udaka – ‘Designing Chi Udaka’ (04a) - Bart Groen and Karen Norris – 2016,” TaikOz Vimeo. 19 David Kary, “Chi Udaka: Dance, Music, Sydney Festival.” Sydney Arts Guide, 19 Jan 2014, http://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/chi-udaka/ 20 This collection of dances is discussed in Chapter 7, Onikenbai: dancing with philosophical demons. 21 TaikOz website, TaikOz Vimeo, TaikOz YouTube Channel. 22 Sydney Festival publicity 2014, http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2014/Music/Chi-Udaka/. 212

form music-in-dance or dance-in-music.”23 Just as when water and earth meet they do not ‘become’ the other simply by touching (they retain their essences), each is changed in their union. They may form a murky paste, carve the other, glisten or rise, but their components are still separable and unlike each other even upon combination.24 Chi Udaka, while received as a merging of Indian dance with Japanese drumming, was not conceived this way. It was designed with modernist and post-colonial ideals (though using more vernacular terms) that challenged the ubiquity of ‘globalisation’ as a blanket approach to normalising the foreign. The two companies constructed their hybrid modernity in the margins of their respective traditions and those of the staged cultures they assumed as part of 2014 Sydney Festival.

It was not euphemistic when TaikOz and Lingalayam simply transplanted the buzz-word ‘dialogue’ for ‘fusion’, nor that their reviewers adopted this language. The concepts these words denote are underpinned with markedly different ideologies. As Stuart Hall has said, globalisation “cannot control or saturate everything within its orbit. Indeed, it produces as one of its un-intentioned effects subaltern formation and emergent tendencies which it cannot control but must try to ‘hegemonize’ or harness to its wider purposes. [Globalisation] is a system for con-forming difference, rather than a convenient synonym for the obliteration of difference.”25 On this principle, but not using this language, Chi Udaka assessed globalisation’s clutches, and defied its hegemonising tendencies, through performance.

This work was not invented to permit an audience to perform cultural tourism, or to perform colonialism from their seats. It was a radical repositioning of disparate performative ecologies side- by-side, with their accompanying values and histories, to dispel notions of diversity, to dispel syncretism and interchangeability. When difference is reduced to equivalence, it tends to come along with a levelling subversive sub-alternity that is indiscriminately attributed to any and all.26 And this is what Chi Udaka battled – that its component parts were so ‘equally distinct and peculiar’ that they could (or should) merge, unify and homogenise because while they physically appear different, they operate within a similar plain, their cultural functions seemed to equate. And

23 Anandavalli’s website, Letter to audience about Chi Udaka, http://www.lingalayam.com/node/134. 24 By this conception, water is not earth, and earth cannot be like water. Geo-technical engineers, however, do conceive of the fluid dynamics of sand or ceramics. 25 Stuart Hall, “Conclusion: the Multi-Cultural Question.” Unsettled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Estrangements, Transruptions. Ed Barnor Hesse. London: Zed, 2000: 215. 26 Revathi Krishnaswamy, “Mythologies of Migrancy: Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and the Politics of (Dis)location,” A Review of International English Literature 26:1 (1995): 129. 213

further, that things ‘could merge’ has implied that they should then match when they fuse. These dirty concepts of equivalence became apparent and were cast aside by Chi Udaka. Critic Amanda Card offered a sophisticated review that addressed some of these issues, discussed later in the chapter.

Notably, TaikOz’s collaborations with other musicians, for example in pulse:heart:beat with Synergy Percussion) ‘did not fuse’, and neither did films with taiko there. But in Chi Udaka dance did appear to equate. Which equivalents between TaikOz’s music and Lingalayam’s dance permitted ‘a match’ that was not present in other sonic (Pericles, pulse:heart:beat) or visual (pulse:heart:beat, Origin of O) artistic media? The discourse that allows Chi Udaka to relate to globalisation and modernity seems to mark TaikOz as non-musicians, but instead artists who work with movement and sound. Once again, the most defining parameter for meaning construction relates to whether TaikOz ‘are’ musicians or ‘do’ music, as discussed regarding Onikenbai and spiritual associations.

Chi Udaka Publicity TaikOz publicity of Chi Udaka pointed to fusion where traditions met, and defined their differences, but that the work co-produced was dialogical, responsive and fresh, and intentionally not something entirely new, but rather an intersection of discrete possibilities between changeable yet distinct forms. It would be emergent, synergistic. This was stated clearly in many places; but this publicity did not then lead witnesses to directly receive what TaikOz wanted. Alternate interpretations abounded.

In publicity, Anandavalli said Chi Udaka was designed to “stir the soul and bring a smile to the face... I hope the audience have a sense of joy seeing two traditional languages come together with such strength.”27 Anandavalli blended description and vision delightfully, blurring the ideological geography she purported: “We [Lingalayam and TaikOz] have met head on... Neither of us has compromised. It comes from the soul and it brings out the best in both companies. It is amazing to see how the Japanese and the Indian rhythms complement each other. I couldn't believe my dancers could move their legs so fast!”28 She used emotional hooks and positive language to describe combative meetings. An international newspaper announced “the Chi Udaka team often step out of their comfort zones to create something new and original,”29 implying that the main ‘work’ of this

27 Anandavalli quoted in Blake, “Festival Diary.” 28 Ibid. 29 Sadaf Vasgare, “Complex rhythms,” The Hindu; Chennai, November 29, 2016. 214

artistic process is in fact for its actors (musicians and dancers), and any impact on witnesses is secondary to the achievement of ‘cultural awareness’ brought to the project’s participants.

Their venue, Seymour Centre, advertised Chi Udaka’s 2014 run independently of Sydney Festival. Venue director Tim Jones spruiked works in a short video called “Festival Thinking.”30 Alongside Othello: The Remix a Chicago based hip-hop team’s take on Shakespeare in prison jumpsuits; Ockhams Razor’s aerial acrobatics; Samuel Beckett play All That Fall; and Lao Qiang – the rock and roll of ancient China; Chi Udaka was presented as “The World Premier” among Jones’ program.31 Chi Udaka assumed the position of local work, relative to the four international touring productions, and may have ticked boxes for diversity and Asian content.

On tour regionally in Australia during 2016, most promotions referenced TaikOz’s popularity the last time they were in town.32 In Brisbane, media focused on Chi Udaka’s ‘Carnatic musical content’ and the fact that TaikOz would run community drumming workshops as promotion and community outreach.33 Parramatta readers expected the ensembles to “mesh with exhilaration and stamina… [Here] both performance styles fuse… A heart-thumping barrage of virtuosic drumming with the sinuous beauty of Indian dance… a dynamic, cross-cultural theatrical partnership [between] robust Taiko drums and sensuous, graceful, fluid dancers.”34 Opposition was gendered in some reports: “[Taiko is] a ‘dynamic and physical way of playing drums’ which complements the all-female dance.”35

Anandavalli explained to media, Chi Udaka blended wadaiko with honkyoku (Zen flute breath meditation) with elements of “jugalbandi, but it isn't a formal jugalbandi.” 36 Anton Lock similarly described identity formation and meaning: “We had to study Indian rhythms even though we don't play them... We have been searching for our [distinct] sound [since TaikOz’s beginning]. We can't be Japanese. [Now] no one else is doing [taiko] the same way as us’”37 By positioning TaikOz as humble, totally themselves, and attuned to a ‘root culture’, they appear sensitive and responsible.

30 Sydney Festival 2014 promotional video with Tim Jones, see Chi Udaka at 1:03mins on YouTube, accessed October 6, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beu vohvPlo; and at Seymour Centre publicity, accessed May 8, 2015, www.seymourcentre.com/festival-thinking-seymour-program-2014. 31 Ibid. 32 Vickii Byram, “Glasshouse magical launch of 2016 season,” Port Macquarie News, January 29, 2016. 33 (no author), “Gourmet Garden,” Courier Mail, Brisbane, 5 August 2016, 70. 34 Dancer Ritika Ramaswamy, quoted in “Drumming and dancing in fusion,” Northern News, June 21, 2016. 35 Nadine Morton, “Cultures converge at show,” Western Advocate, Bathurst, July 13, 2016. 36 Anandavalli quoted in (no author) “Things to do in Mumbai today,” Mumbai Mirror, November 29, 2016. 37 Vickii Byram, “Pulsating rhythms and cultural dancing,” Port Macquarie News, July 15, 2016. 215

Publicity during the India tour in November 2016 told additional history of Lingalayam’s two main dance traditions and stressed gender-normativities within taiko. Cleworth found creative ways to sexualise marketing in Mumbai: “Chi Udaka [brings out] the raw sensuality that celestial water nymphs (Apsaras) in Indian mythology exude.”38 Indian journalists used taiko as a site to expand local permissible feminine roles: a Chennai paper wrote “Taking pride in the fact that women drummers are part of TaikOz [director] Ian says, ‘Taiko by its nature is a very physical… Some styles in Japan [were] men-only but it's changing. A lot of women are playing taiko now... It's important to have that balance between male and female energy. Women play just as powerfully as men’.”39 We see TaikOz performing cultural work around gender while touring internationally, if not self-led, then harnessed by writers’ agendas for local change following foreign influence. This process accentuates cultural differences off-stage.

A Sri Lankan journalist travelled to Chennai especially to see Anandavalli and TaikOz.40 Her article included a brief history of the dance cultures, which echoes taiko’s history and professionalisation. Her journalism was informative, personable and contextualising. She clearly stated her relationship to the performers, to the culture transmitted and the superlative age of the traditions in question.41 Traditional materials in Chi Udaka could now attempt perfection on elite stages, having survived cultural upheavals.42 Like taiko discourse, in which taiko cannot be traditional and staged simultaneously (without loosening definitions), criticism about traditionalism associated with past versions of lived cultures are each fed by all contemporary iterations of that culture. Thinker Lawrence Kramer summed: “when we interpret a text or image, we inevitably add to and alter its

38 Ian Cleworth quoted in (no author) “Things to do in Mumbai today,” Mumbai Mirror, November 29, 2016. 39 S.B. Vijaya Mary, “Chi Udaka,” The Hindu; Chennai, Kasturi and Sons Ltd, December 2, 2016. 40 Radhika Coomaraswamy, “Rhythmic Bharata Natyam,” Daily News (Sri Lanka), November 30, 2016. 41 Coomaraswamy beamed: “My cousin Anandavalli has made Bharata Natyam blossom in Australia… Tamil art and culture is very much a part of my identity… Bharata Natyam is the world's oldest dance-form dating back to 300 BC. Expressive and most subtle, with countless mudras and eye expressions... [its] intricate foot movements keep audiences enthralled. This combination of facial expression and rhythm […attracts] scholars all over the world… By the sixteenth century [Bharata Natyam] became the exclusive dance form of temple courtesans who, like the ‘Nautch’ Kathak dancers of the North of India, became the centre of music and dance. In 1892 British missionaries and British Colonial Officers, aided by socially conservative Hindus started the anti-dance movement. In 1910, Bharata Natyam, this most beautiful of dance forms was banned in the Madras Presidency. Southern Indian nationalist movement advocates including Rukmini Arundale and dancer Balasaraswathi kept the dance-form alive by taking it out of the temples and into the mainstream. In the North, Mirnalini Sarabhai formed Darpana, but was often booed and even stoned [by conservative Hindus]. Today ‘Bharata Natyam’ [is again a status symbol for middle-class girls] and… dancers can push all its boundaries. Today’s Bharata Natyam superstars [spellbind you with] discipline and perfection. They also meet dancers from other traditions on a complete basis of equality. Some [connoisseurs] argue that their impeccable technical perfection has taken away from the soul of the dance.” Radhika Coomaraswamy, “Rhythmic Bharata Natyam,” Daily News (Sri Lanka), November 30, 2016. 42 Ibid. 216

specific significance,”43 and this process is always political and cumulative.

In Chi Udaka each component, taiko and dance, refers to previous forms from which cultural objects become recognisable (tradition), but this moment of art (Chi Udaka) is not those forms. It is a synergy that is both separate and connected, but not only that – it is the space between the elements. It is and has ma (Japanese aesthetic concept of ‘the spaces between’). Ian Cleworth recounted to me, “Chi Udaka is Chi Udaka. It's not Japanese drumming fused with Indian dance. It's Chi Udaka. I argued with the marketing people over the term Japanese drumming, because it's not even that, it’s taiko. I'd prefer they use the tautology of ‘taiko drumming’ than to designate it as Japanese. Anandavalli had the same complaint because though her work appears to involve 'Indian dancing' this particular project explores the meeting ground where we intercept.”44 Cleworth implied that these collaborators did not aim to define their individual art forms as the central goal of juxtaposition. Instead the metaphorical child eclipsed its parents (who looked on enthusiastically from the wings). This was itself.

This turn to modernist co-production was new in Cleworth's discourse about musical philosophy (though not new in his lived practice). Until this project, he had focused on separating taiko from an idealised Japanese history, separating TaikOz from taiko, and separating TaikOz from other local- musics. He had clung to defensive, positive, apologetic descriptions of TaikOz, asserting their unique selling points and autonomous artistic pursuits. This project marked a maturation (by their apparent value system), where an autonomous selfhood was believed already to be existent by TaikOz, and thus it no longer required definition during the artistic process. TaikOz could do TaikOz (not taiko) here, and that product stood beside and mixed with the (non-static or predetermined) dance that Lingalayam divulged when they met.

During generating Chi Udaka, Cleworth simultaneously composed Toward the Crimson Sky, a modernist ‘classical’ composition including taiko, synthesiser and bass koto,45 which was interpreted mostly as a failure of generic, booming taiko ‘tradition’. Evolution of thought through both projects shows how complex ideology and artistic endeavour expressed in different forms through a similar period, but how reception to these works responded to ‘acceptable discourse’ and not directly to the works themselves. Both pieces used synthesised sounds and mixed rhythmic cultures. In our interview, Ian Cleworth recounted his then revelation about selfhood: synthesised

43 Lawrence Kramer, Interpreting Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011: 7. 44 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, July 17, 2013. 45 Towards the Crimson Sky is discussed in Chapter 5. 217

sounds had no more or less value than acoustic sounds, and afforded great expressive freedom.46 In “non-fusion” with Anandavalli, like in Toward the Crimson Sky, Cleworth employed electronics to bridge sections. Through this process he came to realise that the sound world he created with non- acoustic and not-simply-amplified sounds was the memory of his experience being a symphonic percussionist: it was the sound of that privileged space of hearing an orchestra from within the orchestra. And it was his own career he references to authenticate his musical product – the orchestra defined him and his approach to taiko and later collaborations. Chi Udaka was not trying to prove Cleworth’s taiko was ‘real taiko’, he began to communicate himself – his experience – through the music that was marked both as non-Indian and as pseudo-Japanese. His decades of osmosis in classical music (immersed on stages) conditioned his sensibility for musical climaxes reachable also through synthesised sounds. He was himself.

Several incompatible forces align here in my story-telling, making my account an equalising, postmodernist, fix-all narrative. I have interpreted that Cleworth was free to express himself, his artistry, his taste, because Chi Udaka was not his project alone: he gained ‘permission’ from Lingalayam’s participation. Additionally, the run would be commercially successful as part of 2014 Sydney Festival, relieving commercial pressures: when it was no longer about earning legitimacy, freedoms were afforded. Here Cleworth let go of pleasing everyone because his role did not demand it. Chi Udaka’s subsequent success as a touring production generated interest and financial support in other ways, which undoubtedly affected TaikOz’s identification in ways undiscussed. Chi Udaka marked a stage in Cleworth’s career, and TaikOz’s, where they could be themselves because they did not have to prove who they were while they were doing their work.

Cleworth in 2016 explained how the Chi Udaka creative process was remarkably similar to the inception of TaikOz itself – care was taken to be honest and local, to avoid rampant appropriation – and that ultimately permission to fuse, blend or merge came from an individual agent fluent in the material being ‘absorbed’: “[Regarding taiko] I couldn't transplant Japanese music into Australia… that would be kind of false, it was part of their culture and didn't relate to ours. Then I met Riley [Lee] who said we could actually take the instruments and the influence and all of the knowledge and expertise we’ve learnt from the Japanese masters and make something new out of that which reflects who we are as contemporary Australian musicians, so that's kind of had us start TaikOz.”47 With Anandavalli’s permission, TaikOz could ‘make something new’ alongside Indian dance.

46 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, July 17, 2013. 47 Ian Cleworth quoted in Vijaya Mary, S B. “Chi Udaka,” The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 218

Implied is that TaikOz could not innovate this way without permission from outside themselves, by their own limiting world views, in response to their critics.

As mentioned, Chi Udaka was Anandavalli’s idea but became real in conjunction with TaikOz. Thus this project was not the practical outcome (performance interface) of TaikOz's changing philosophy as the ensemble’s identity matured independently so much as that of working with another artistic force which embodied those non-fusion values already. TaikOz had seeded this philosophy individually, but not manifested it on stages recognisably until Chi Udaka. Until then, TaikOz’s self-discoveries through other projects had set them on paths towards this liberating philosophy. TaikOz could embrace this practical eventuality because their philosophy permitted experimentation and change, but they did not invent the state or stage on which to change – that was responsive to Anandavalli. To relate hackneyed, new-aged, yoga-panted wisdom: ‘their teacher appeared when they were ready to receive the lesson’. TaikOz already knew, and now they could do. It was an arrival of sorts, but one still contingent on permission from an external power.

Timelines and Business

Anandavalli first heard Riley Lee play shakuhachi at the Art Gallery of NSW in the 1990s, but waited twenty-two years to work with him.48 Sri Lankan by birth, she cut her teeth in dance in Europe and migrated to Australia in the 1980s but found Australia “a barren and deserted land with no clue of [progress for her] dancing career.”49 A Chennai interviewer reported, “After an amazing dancing career in Europe, moving to Australia wasn't a particularly exciting experience for Anandavalli… Slowly the Indian community got to know [her]. After numerous choreographies of episodes derived from mythology and epics, Anandavalli was ready for collaboration to enhance her art… [She was] blown away by the purity and magic of [TaikOz’s] instruments and the idea to collaborate took shape.”50

On first hearing Riley Lee, Anandavalli interpreted him as soulfully non-Australian: “My senses were mesmerised. His virtuosic handling of this ancient instrument, and the hypnotic clarity of the music that ensued, was not something I could either place or associate within the Australian artistic scene, of that era.”51 She expressed bafflement that Lee’s subtlety should match with local drummers: “I was very intrigued to discover that Riley actually played with taiko drummers. Now

48 “Things to do in Mumbai today,” Mumbai Mirror, November 29, 2016. 49 Anandavalli quoted in Vijaya Mary, S B. “Chi Udaka,” The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 50 Ibid. 51 Anandavalli’s website, letter to audience about Chi Udaka, http://www.lingalayam.com/node/134. 219

how does a musician who caresses you with his music translate those notes to resonate with the powerful rhythmical sounds that emanate from taiko drums? - well it was a perfect partnership, one that honoured and respected the traditional roots of their music while still allowing their individual artistic practice to grow.”52 So it was that Lee’s and TaikOz’s abilities to collaborate their unrelated Japanese traditions together attracted Anandavalli towards them.53

Cleworth explained in mid-2013 that Anandavalli dealt with the business planning, grant applications and reporting, and TaikOz was paid a set fee for artistic development: “Anandavalli was really on top of the OzCo [Australia Council] funding processes and was clear, that was how she wanted to work. We got funding [twice, each] for a two-week period. It required a lot of work before we got to the point of ‘creative development’. You couldn't really start kicking around ideas with 13 people in the room: dancers and TaikOz members.”54 At that stage, Cleworth feared Chi Udaka would not be performed due to financial constraints: “Budgeting: this is my problem. My ideas tend to get big. I really love collaborating with other artists of other disciplines. That means more bodies and more time.”55 Cleworth described how he felt he would produce Chi Udaka – a personal burden and creative output. This led me to investigate ways these projects were financed because resources affect ideologies and output.

I interviewed TaikOz's then general manager, David Sidebottom, about artistic and business drivers culminating in Chi Udaka. I questioned whether TaikOz had planned a similar work before Anandavalli approached them, or whether she came coincidently with a fully-formed project idea. Further, I sought to find whether Anandavalli conceived the work in response to available grants, or planned the work before seeking financial support. Sidebottom explained: “Anandavalli, the lead dancer, rang up and asked us to be involved. It interested us artistically so we agreed. Because it's dance, there is funding for creative development. All the live music grant programs, they don't recognise creative development.”56 While TaikOz operate more like a dance company, in that they generate and workshop original work specific to their company's participants, it is because they are treated as ‘musicians’ that their process of development is unrecognised, or unrewarded by funding avenues available to dance companies. For TaikOz to rebrand as a dance company may afford them

52 Ibid. 53 While transverse flutes and drums feature together in Japanese musical history, shakuhachi with (post-)festival drums are not a traditional combination. Riley may have pioneered this with Ondekoza and now it is normalised in world contemporary taiko. 54 Ian Cleworth, interview with author, July 17, 2013. 55 Ibid. 56 David Sidebottom, interview with author, June 16, 2013. 220

more public funding, but could distort their identities and audience conceptions further.

While many Australia Council music grants exist, for example, to bring senior teachers or performers from Asia, or to tour Australian acts in Asia, local music is treated as static, institutional, old-world art. Sidebottom affirmed that the Australia Council “helped us to go over to Asia. There are some composition grants but there is no creative development money. Anandavalli took the lead in applying for the grant to help support that development which we couldn't have funded.”57 Sidebottom assured that funding opportunities were pursued once creative buds had formed: “It's an artistic [driver]. I don't know how detailed Anandavalli's plan was... Unless there was an essence of what the collaboration would be, then they couldn't articulate it in a grant application, so it would never get off.”58 He volunteered more insight: Occasionally we'll get an email... say for an Indigenous community's [artists]... when there's a grant funding closing soon, and somebody asks ‘why don't we do something?’ at the last minute. Well, we don't do that because currently we have no dance project on the boil. We could put in an application, but it wouldn't get through because we'd be pretending... and rightly so. If you try to change your artistic model or business plan or creative program to try to get a bit of money to use for something else, it’s a huge waste of time. The grants boards can see straight through that... It’s their job. I’m not saying people don't do that, but it might mean they don't deliver which would seriously impact their chance of getting another grant in future. Synergy and TaikOz have an excellent record with the grant people in terms of delivering and acquitting.59 A laudable approach, this directly contradicts TaikOz’s acceptance of corporate clients’ funding, as demonstrated in Chapter 8 regarding TaikOz's 2013 military stint in Abu Dhabi. The only distinction being that in the Middle East TaikOz accepted private funds not a public grant.

When Anandavalli proposed a joint project to Cleworth in 2010, she found Cleworth “more than a little sceptical… What surprised Ian most about my proposal, was that I had a very clear visual picture of the artistic vocabulary of this collaborative partnership.”60 Following many discussions, in 2011 the first stage of creative development, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, saw Chi Udaka “merge pan traditional Asian performing arts.”61 Arts New South Wales funded the groups $29,702 in 2012, financing creative-development that would facilitate “a blending… matrix

57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Anandavalli Lingalayam quoted in “Dance and Music Initiative Results.” State News Service, June 2, 2011. 61 “Dance and Music Initiative Results.” State News Service, June 2, 2011. 221

of vibrant sounds arising from... synthesis… shap[ing] this hybrid.”62 By late 2016, Chi Udaka had received an ‘Australia-India Council grant offer’ for $50,000 and the total project value was $354,370 according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.63 TaikOz’s sources of income affected their identificatory processes around Chi Udaka.

Reception of Chi Udaka The usual evocations of cultural difference through repertoire, costuming and staging appear, but particular to Chi Udaka’s Australian media reception was that reviewers had backgrounds in theatre and performance studies. These writers detailed themes and ‘problems’ with cultural representation that tend not to feature in music media contexts, for example the concert reviews of TaikOz by Beethoven experts who see only “Asian art practices that seem designed to civilise our baser instincts… [where] beefier members of [TaikOz] biff things: think of Gauls and Romans in Asterix comics.”64 The buzzword for Chi Udaka was ‘dialogue’.

Some respondents noticed contradictions about what is and is not traditional, or fusion, when things touch. Sydney ArtGuide explained Chi Udaka’s directors “sought to develop a sense of surprise and exploration through dialogue between the at-first seemingly mismatched groups, with glimpses of parallels, symbiosis and apparently discordant clashes that actually work magnificently.”65 Elissa Blake used familiar terms to describe Chi Udaka’s synthesis, saying “Two cultures meet and merge, fusing.”66 Her focus was on Chi Udaka's ‘world premiere’ (an oft-touted accolade in Australian media) and the origins of each group. Blake stressed how both groups formed between 1996 and 1997: “Lingalayam is focused on appreciation and knowledge of South Indian classical culture and the unique role of women in dance in India. TaikOz, established in 1997...”67 Both emerged in the same place and time with similar concepts for preservation and innovation and thus enact similar processes despite different thematic content, and for this reviewer this implicated both as Australian in their ideals (not simply by location).

Reviewer David Kary remarked on contrasts: “Each separate group has a solo showcasing their massive talent but the work is also a dialogue between disparate elements blending fierce

62 Trade and Investment Arts NSW, “2012 Arts Funding Program,” 41, accessed June 19, 2017, www.create.nsw.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2012-Arts-Funding-Program.pdf. 63 Jhuny-Boy Borja, “Australia: Chi Udaka India Tour (99AIC grants 2016), Asia News Monitor; Thai News Service Group, Bangkok, November 17, 2016. 64 Peter McCallum, “Dance and song tones the muscles,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 23, 2009. 65 Sydney Arts Guide, www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/chi-udaka/#more-4181. 66 Elissa Blake, “Festival diary - News from around the venues,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 17, 2014: 17. 67 Ibid. 222

drumming, complicated Indian rhythms and delicate shakuhachi deliciously. Musically it ranged from explosively joyous and powerful… at times atonal, others lyrical, to the soft, haunting ‘new age’ finale.”68 Kary perceived symbolism and deduced that ‘everything meant something’: “A mesmerising duet was performed where two of the dancers were like darting fish with rippling arms and wonderful dappled lighting. Every mudra or step meant something and was finely controlled.”69 Kary referenced here yet another repurposing of TaikOz’s piece ‘Resounding Bell’ which featured in many concert programs during this period, and on TaikOz recording ‘Daichi... Big Earth’.70 He later summed, “Chi Udaka is an explosively energetic blending of colour, rhythm, dance and music... the traditional elements of fluidity, solidness and separation shape and form the world in constant movement… The show fuses several worlds.”71 Theatres were transformed, marked as other by trimmings; performers’ bodies were marked by symbolic dress, and these further situated Chi Udaka as a place where juxtapositions would annunciate edges. In a more nuanced piece for The Conversation, Amanda Card, a Senior Lecturer and Chair of Department of Performance Studies at University of Sydney, also reviewed Chi Udaka favourably. She summed this project's ambitious and frequently ill-defined cultural territory for ‘non-expert’ media-consumers:

Cross discipline and cross-cultural engagements have been the site of the some of the most powerful (and painful) experiments in art practice for quite a few decades. At worst these exchanges are meaningless – a fusion of elements that miss the efficacious potential of rattling the cages of audience expectation. At their best these negotiations between form and practice have produced performances that astound, move and challenge local audiences... [Chi Udaka] is not a fusion. It is not a combination of forms melded to make something new, but a juxtaposition of expertise that affect each other as they work together.72

Print media about Chi Udaka 2014 appeared in dance review segments rather than music pages. This may reflect Sydney Festival’s media arrangements and promotional structures.73 Venue, Seymour Centre’s publicity advertised Chi Udaka as powerful, intricate, historical, traditional and

68 David Kary, “Dance, Music, Sydney Festival: Chi Udaka,” Sydney Arts Guide, January 19, 2014. 69 David Kary, “Chi Udaka: Dance, Music, Sydney Festival.” Sydney Arts Guide, January 19, 2014, www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/chi-udaka. 70 TaikOz, Daichi... big earth (CD). Stanmore, NSW: New World Music, 2006. 71 David Kary, “Chi Udaka: Dance, Music, Sydney Festival.” Sydney Arts Guide, January 19, 2014, www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/chi-udaka. 72 Amanda Card, “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka,” The Conversation, January 17, 2014. 73 Michael Bodey, Iain Shedden, Rosemary Neill, Matthew Westwood, Michael Bodey, Iain Shedden, Rosemary Neill, Matthew Westwood, Sharon Verghis, “All-round review,” The Australian, December 14, 2013: 8. 223

innovative.74 Reviewer Lloyd Bradford Syke75 described Chi Udaka as “a fusion that’s characteristically brave; one that, for the most part, works sublimely well… deeply theatrical... Even the set-up of the drums on stage is masterful: the instruments themselves are objects of imposing, masculine beauty, as well as aural drama.”76 His gendering of the objects is uncharacteristic of theatre-criticism, where such designations are debated or avoided. Of Chi Udaka, Syke commented: “TaikOz doesn't sit still onstage or off,”77 demonstrating his familiarity with their coterminous projects, taking “Anglo-Japanese hybrid music to still other territory via Lingalayam.”78 Like Card’s reflections, Syke feared for the worst upon reading a description of Chi Udaka: “It’s precisely the kind of thing that could’ve gone horribly awry: really, on paper, it’s a recipe for disaster; but the outcome is quite the opposite. Perhaps this is at least in part thanks to the collaborative experience of both groups.”79 He specified, “From the first, consonances and dissonances between the two traditions (and, arguably, others) are apparent. No attempt is made to gloss over this: there’s no faux obsession with fusion. Rather, it’s a platform for comparing and contrasting, with probably as much of the crossover being ‘spiritual’, as musical, or physical.”80 Syke used culinary analogy to pepper his brash historicising of both art-forms' origins, saying “Both classical Indian dance and taiko’s roots, of course, reach back, deeply, into the annals of time. So, there’s richness: the sharp simplicity and elegance of sushi, side-by-side with an aromatic and spicy subcontinental banquet. The two could be served as separate courses, but here TaikOz is as choreographed as Lingalayam, so the boundaries of two highly-distinctive heritages are blurred.”81

Syke drew conclusions from scanty historical hyperbole amid description: “Epic in scope, almost symphonic; it’s astonishing what depth, breadth, light, shade and intensity is communicated in a tight hour… The voluminous scale of the instruments and their martial heritage [imply] vitality and kinetic energy.”82 He pinpointed a moment when TaikOz drummers descended from their platform to dance and drum on Lingalayam’s stage-section. Syke saw “the resultant jocundity to be almost entirely spontaneous and sincere. It might be drawing a long bow, but the scene recalled drum battles or dance competitions (for example, in the hip-hop realm), where each takes their turn to

74 Seymour Centre publicity, http://www.seymourcentre.com/events/event/chi-udaka, accessed February 13, 2014. 75 The same reviewer to mistake both City Jungle and TaikoDeck for theatre (not music), discussed in Chapter 1. 76 Lloyd Bradford Syke, “Chi Udaka Review, Sydney Festival,” January 28, 2014. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 224

impress with their best, in a mutually supportive, sportingly combative environment.”83 Amanda Card drew exactly the same association saying, “For my money, this was every bit as exciting as a well-staged hip hop battle between opposing crews.”84 From this association, Syke concluded, “Despite being, essentially, a series of atomic vignettes, [Chi Udaka] has an affecting, holism. It holds the attention, uplifts and inspires.”85 His role as reviewer required him to form connections and associations on behalf of a readership who may not have witnessed the production. By associating hip hop teams’ clashing, though unwarranted and arguably inaccurate, Syke (like Card) effectively communicated a ‘spirit’ of that moment's merging. Still, his conflation via verbiage adds layers of abstraction without bringing a reader any closer to TaikOz (the way that just witnessing TaikOz might do).

Amanda Card acknowledged hard-to-substantiate-histories when she drew a parallel to ‘battlefield energy’ by saying, “There is speculation that the taiko drum was first used by soldiers in battle. At its best, Chi Udaka recalls the ritualised diffusing of that battlefield energy, transferred, tamed and controlled (even made useful) through art.”86 Then she contextualised this discursive connection between battle and ritualised art, broadening the geographic scope of cultural analysis to a globalised and insignificant degree, by mentioning that “it’s a process also found in martial arts as performance – from contemporary Brazilian based Capoeira to the practices of China’s Shaolin Monks.”87 In naming these associated processes, which take comparable forms, Card normalised Chi Udaka's form, positioning it in a longer, deeper synchrony with human activity. By naming specific cultural practices, she argued for processual universality. This is not Japanese and/or Indian because, while Capoeira was/is Brazilian and Shaolin Monks did/do exist, all these processes are expressions of human behaviour and are not therefore culturally exclusive. Card themed her review, and coincidentally theorised Chi Udaka as a “cross-cultural engagement [in which] the potential of battle is turned into a field of vibrant exchanges: respectful conversations, dynamic dialogues, and exhilarating competitions, some executed with a touch of tease about them.”88

Card’s review opened: “Chi Udaka isn’t a ‘fusion’ show, it’s a performance in which intercultural exchange flourishes.”89 She quoted the artists when asserting this: “Anadavalli does not like the

83 Lloyd Bradford Syke, “Chi Udaka Review, Sydney Festival,” January 28, 2014. 84 Amanda Card, “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka,” The Conversation, January 17, 2014. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 225

word fusion. Trained and influenced in and by multiple Indian dance styles, she considers her use of various forms in dance as a bringing together of vocabularies ‘onto the same platform’... This is not a fusion… but a juxtaposition.”90 For Card, this process fell into a longer history within the ensembles’ respective processes with assimilation and creation. She noted, TaikOz “engages regularly in cross disciplinary collaborations [like] the recent Origin of O (2013) with media and sound artist Tokyo Love-In, and local contemporary dancers.”91 Beyond this and from this, Card endorsed: “Such examples of intercultural exchange can offer contemporary models that mark out, at least in the safe space of a performance space, a place where cultures – their people and practices – can come 'together in difference'.”92

For Card, Chi Udaka’s non-fusion worked because of the ‘lubricating parties’ – cellist, singer, flautist – who marked a third, non-taiko and non-Indian-dance, other. Card explained: “Negotiation [was] brokered by other artists [John Napier, Aruna Parthiban and Riley Lee] who act as conduits, translators, and buffers in this exchange. Together these musicians/singers reminded me of a ferry master (or the ferry itself), carrying and stabilising us, the audience. Giving us time to pause and recalibrate, even catch our breath, as each section of Chi Udaka engaged us in a new conversation between drummers and dancers.”93 Card obliquely equated Seymour Centre’s York Theatre with Ancient Greek theatres where “different practices met, their rhythmic similarities and contrasts negotiated.”94 Theatre’s relationship with legality and government segued into her internal battle about generating audience interest: “How do you bring an audience along with you, an audience perhaps aware of none, or at best only one, of the forms of practice that have made up this collaboration?”95 She affirmed, like a Greek chorus, “You do, I think, exactly what Anadavalli and Ian Cleworth did: you offer ‘ferry-masters’ to engage us and give us pause. You present a means of framing or translating the work of the major contributors, so we can bring our emerging understanding of those principles with us at the peak of the performance.”96 Card landed upon TaikOz’s same approach – passive affirmation of mythology – where artists ‘give them what they think they know’, to help them along to novel ways of thinking.

Card’s implicit stance is that there could be two dominant opponents because there were impartial

90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ien Ang quoted in Amanda Card, “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka.” 93 Amanda Card, “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka.” 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 226

others to frame the fight, to smooth and mediate the ‘unmatching’ bits. Her assessment hinges on successful collaborations matching, even when parties other than the dominant ones do the fusing. Almost like an ideal religious marriage, where the couple loves ‘their god’ more than each other, there is always a third (a ferry-master) to absorb shock, to defer the uncomfortable importance of love’s bind. Ideologically, Card’s need for a homogenous leveller speaks subtly of a conflict- resolution culture to which she (perhaps unconsciously) belongs. Why should the cello, flutes and song seem secondary and functional? What conditioned these reviewers (Card and Syke) to see two-party political battles in a work with far more than two influences? Syke saw “creative courage in the very attempt to enmesh [the cacophony with] the delicacy and intricacy. One wonders whether and how these modalities could possibly find compatibility and happiness, yet they do… The fact there aren’t clashes or conflicts is a tribute to the collaborative sensitivity of both groups.”97 While the discourse generated by Card and Syke enhances awareness around TaikOz’s ideology, practice, philosophy, creative process and evolution, it too is biased towards smoothing, normalising, and ‘making nice’ what seems not to be able to speak for itself.

Chi Udaka in India

Print media in India detailed ‘the music’ more than Australian media. The Hindu reported, “Anandavalli introduced Cleworth to [particular] Indian [musical] concepts and rhythmic configurations, which he then studied for Chi Udaka's composition. Through absorbing some of the south Indian sounds and phrases, Cleworth create[d] something new on the taiko. He, at the same time, retained the integrity of both traditions. Inspiration comes especially from mridangam, an Indian percussion instrument that makes him hopeful that the Indian audience will appreciate the familiarity and difference of the performance.”98 Cleworth’s process was to study South Indian rhythms first, then compose in that idiom: “I notated that [dance music] in my western musical notation, checked out phrases that work well for taiko drums and came up with an 80-page score.”99 Cleworth explained for Chennai, “Chi Udaka is more than a blend of dance and music: the work is not just a series of performance items, but a whole unto itself.”100 Two elements have been brought together through a synthesis of dramatic beats, ethereal dance and brilliant staging, lighting and audio design.101

97 Lloyd Bradford Syke, Chi Udaka review (Sydney Festival), January 28, 2014, https://dailyreview.com.au/chi-udaka-review-sydney-festival/2698. 98 Sadaf Vasgare, “Complex rhythms,” The Hindu; Chennai, November 29, 2016. 99 Riley Lee quoted in Vijaya Mary, S B. “Chi Udaka,” The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 100 Ian Cleworth quoted in Sadaf Vasgare, “Complex rhythms,” The Hindu; Chennai, November 29, 2016. 101 Ibid. 227

Invisibilities were made visible in Indian media regarding staging too. Chi Udaka Producer, Lee McIver, noted the challenges “to make people understand… it had to be a trust game.” McIver said of presenting the staged action well, “The production’s small tender moments weren't being properly framed in theatrical sense so [needed unobtrusive enhancement by] lighting and design.”102 Elsewhere Chennai read, “Chi Udaka is a co-production… that celebrates life in its truest sense… from the faint breeze in the morning and the noon sun to the ecstasy of midnight.”103 This review used term ‘kaleidoscopic’ to designate cultural work happening in Chi Udaka, in common with reviews of pulse:heart:beat and Origin of O.

Anandavalli told her fans, the result of their collaboration had “inspired a choreographic vocabulary like you have never seen Lingalayam deliver!”104 The collaborative process generated a new course for Lingalayam’s expressive language, setting Anandavalli’s company on an inevitable trajectory to unknown territory. Additionally, Anandavalli found working with TaikOz gratifying: “There are many facets to Ian [Cleworth]: a highly skilled musician and a technically brilliant composer, with that rare ability for creating a score perfectly suited to the artistic work at hand. Most importantly he has instilled his innate passion for percussion, and especially taiko, in his company of drummers.”105 For Anandavalli, Cleworth’s greatest virtue is attitudinal and motivational – it is his ability to adapt and inspire continuing art practice locally.

One perceptive Australian writer noted “the performers rehearse walking onto the stage and placing their instruments because it is all part of the show.”106 It may seem like an unnecessary detail, not warranting comment, but is the key to TaikOz’s seamless stage-presence and attention-economy. The action of stage-setting and scene changes are the music. Also noticing the harder-to-perceive, writer S B Vijaya Mary told Chennai, “Riley Lee who can create the loudest impact with his sublime silence… looks like he's meditating but [is] set to create a storm any moment,”107 and quoted Lee saying: “Music touches humans in a way that transcends our everyday experience… In this lifetime I can never become an Indian musician, but I can share my music [here].”108 This writer demonstrated how the musicians engage with their music and their public, subtly

102 Lee McIver quoted in S.B. Vijaya Mary, “Chi Udaka,” The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 103 Sadaf Vasgare, “Complex rhythms,” The Hindu; Chennai, November 29, 2016. 104 Ibid. 105 “Dance and Music Initiative Results.” State News Service, June 2, 2011. 106 Vickii Byram, “Pulsating rhythms and cultural dancing,” Port Macquarie News, July 15, 2016. 107 S.B. Vijaya Mary, [“untitled”] The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 108 Riley Lee quoted in Vijaya Mary, S B. [“untitled”] The Hindu; Chennai, December 2, 2016. 228

manipulating the perceptions of witnesses through flattery, validation of local attitudes and stories (for example, rebirth), and memorable, quaint oxymoron (loud silence). This writing is mutually descriptive, interpretive, functional and productive of meaning.

Theory, practice, observations of Chi Udaka

In many theoretical formulations – whether speaking of nationalism, modernisation, Westernisation, imperialism or other – postcolonial conceptions of hybridity and cosmopolitanism harmonise the universal and the particular in ways that work against all forms of homogenisation. Since the 1980s, intellectuals have tried to reposition globalisation more as a break or even a transcendence of modernity, than as its continuation. Thinkers including Homi Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai and Stuart Hall have challenged ‘dependency theories’ of Western cultural imperialism by pointing to the disjuncture between the political, the cultural and the economic. In doing so they marked the consumption of modernity in the margins as an active process through which postcolonial subaltern subjects construct their own hybrid modernities.109 It is what we make, and what we make of it.

With poststructuralist ideas of decentring and difference, and yoked to postmodernist notions of fragmentation and multiplicity, postcolonial content is strategically marshalled by many theorists to represent the emerging global order. This order is “a deeply disruptive yet ultimately enabling condition that unleashes subaltern resistance and enables creative adaptations in the margins.”110 TaikOz and Lingalayam, through Chi Udaka, survive in the margins of their respective practices and those practices that frame them, and (by their own conceptions) disrupt norms in music and dance performance spheres.

That each actor or witness arrives at this cultural artefact with particular knowledge is essential and unavoidable, but what is interesting is the dynamic relationship that arises at their intersection. In this way, the relationships between the Indian, Japanese, Australian and classical-music elements that meet in Chi Udaka are more important than (the distinctive qualities of) any of the component elements. The twentieth-century architect and designer Buckminster Fuller had a pithy explanation: “Specialization’s preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.”111

109 Ibid., 70. 110 Revathi Krishnaswamy, “Globalization and its Postcolonial (Dis)contents: reading Dalit writing,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 41:1 (2005): 70. 111 Richard Buckminster Fuller and E.J. Applewhite, “The Wellspring of Reality,” Synergetics: Explorations in the 229

TaikOz are professional performance-artists who engage in many forms of representation, many forms of music, many types of collaboration and many philosophical explorations. They have moved, over the years, from assiduous copiers desperate for validation, to self-actualised doers comfortable in the liminal spaces between traditions or definitions. The conditions that aligned for this transition happened over a much longer scale than just the life of Chi Udaka. To rehash Brian Eno, “It is like a crystallization point where you cannot detect any element having changed… fruit takes a long time to ripen but it drops suddenly.”112 And yet, more detail reveals deeper simplicity. Subtlety reproduces. Knowledge acquisition is fractal and non-directional: while Chi Udaka is an end, it is not the end. For TaikOz, who continue to perform today, this arrival that Chi Udaka afforded conceptually, is just another margin on the next production.

Concluding themes of Pericles and Chi Udaka Neither TaikOz nor their witnesses misrepresent TaikOz’s art alone, but the effects of discourse co- produce future projects and future discourses. Media responses have sought to accurately represent the worlds they describe but, as shown, comparisons have turned analyses into mere descriptions: a levelling process has occurred when ‘looking across’ this discourse whereby ontologies have been as site-specific as the events with which they interact. Therefore, like academia, it matters less what witnesses actually describe, than which questions brought them to their conclusions.

By enacting ethnography113 and media scrutiny for Pericles and Chi Udaka, I have uncovered how TaikOz as diverse artists have engaged in music production in theatrical projects. TaikOz have explored renewed identities and methods, and journalists have assigned meaning to these in evocative ways. These discourses have tackled TaikOz’s representation with creative metaphors (like hip hop) and have revealed how writers invented sense-making-machines, both reminiscent and imaginative, to understand and to convey their understandings to others. This has shown that the social aesthetics that determine relationships between art and critic are separate from those between critic and reader, and artifice resides in every space.

My comparisons between discourses have, rather than producing judgement, rendered my findings

Geometry of Thinking, New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978, 2. 112 Brian Eno in conversation with John Cage, interview published on More Dark Than Shark, www moredarkthanshark.org/eno int musician-sep85 html, accessed June 11, 2020. 113 Field work for Pericles involved attending Bell Shakespeare rehearsals pre-production, but I excluded this to focus only on discourse. My findings in the field bolstered my claims, even though they did not make the final thesis cut. 230

descriptive. This is the consequence of information’s life-cycle: fact is redundant because it obliterates space for further investigation. Description seems a starting point, but is ultimately one of three continuously looping states (describe, analyse, compare) that keep scholars engaged. And thus my history of TaikOz in vignettes is both the starting point (the question) and the conclusion. I have addressed research aims by writing on who TaikOz are, how they collaborate and why, and by questioning whether their self-identification effects their musical output. I have interrogated in which situations TaikOz’s complex relationships are able to be considered ‘music’ and where the limits of ‘sonic energy’ or simply ‘manipulable sound’ lie, and then whether meaningful parallels and comparisons can exist across genres, projects, discourses and histories.

This research has shown that TaikOz continuously reimagine themselves in response to collaborators and to shortcomings of past projects. TaikOz enter collaborations carefully to manifest their philosophies and hopes for the future of music’s meanings. The ways TaikOz identify their roles within these collaborations effects the material success of said projects and the success members perceive in their emotional relationship to their work. As such, the ‘music’ TaikOz make reaches into interpersonal professional relationships, engagements with the market, with journalists and with discourses, because it is not the sounds they make as musicians that alter their reception, it is images and associations pinned to TaikOz, usually by comparison, that shape their public ‘persona’. Their technical proficiency, musicality, dedication, creativity, inventiveness, ensemble- tightness, publicity and marketing strategies are predominantly overlooked in reviews. Instead reviewers construct TaikOz’s place by linking and through contrasting the aspects that differentiate them from collaborators, colleagues and competitors.

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6. Dancing with philosophical demons – Onikenbai

Art impulses are more primitive, or more innate than those of morality. The appeal of art goes more directly into human nature. Morality is regulative, but art creative. The one is an imposition from without, but the other is an irrepressible expression from within. Zen finds its inevitable association with art but not with morality. Zen may remain unmoral but not without art.1

Finding art over morality Taiko seems spiritual, ritual and traditional, whether on stages or in festival contexts, and this thesis problematises these assumptions. TaikOz’s artistry and morality are questioned in Australia because readings of their music are coloured by popular discourses which favour such associations. This situation makes TaikOz members query who they are, what they do, if they belong, whether they are pretending, and what is real. TaikOz’s brand of taiko looks especially spiritual, ritual and traditional, given strong aesthetic choices pertaining to fervent application of foreign materials, coupled with concert hall formality. TaikOz’s artistic decisions sometimes confuse witnesses and critics who perceive in their work something like ancient transcendental universalism. Contemporary staged taiko is not justifiably that, yet stories with this bent stick to and propel the popularity of taiko. In their ever-responsive process of identity-discovery and formation, TaikOz have sought Japanese traditional art forms that are spiritual, ritual and traditional, so that TaikOz can do the things their witnesses wrongly presume them to be already doing. Onikenbai, a collection of vigorous dances from Iwate Prefecture, have afforded TaikOz a platform in which to know themselves, participate in present-history, and expand their artistry not only of music but of living well. Onikenbai is a collection of dances involving Buddhist demons, katana (swords), fans, masks and other props. Onikenbai is danced by combined regional communities at an annual matsuri (festival), in which TaikOz have visited, studied and participated.

A common misattribution in TaikOz media is ‘Zen’, the term now meaning several things, from unflappable to Japanese Buddhism. Though Zen, the philosophical system, flourished in

1 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and its influence on Japanese culture, accessed February 15, 2016, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/, 21.

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Japan, taiko generally relates more to Shinto practices. Shakuhachi, the instrument mastered by Riley Lee, is a tool for Zen meditation used to facilitate breath awareness.2 Yet, in Japan shakuhachi rarely, or never, traditionally sounded beside taiko until Lee combined them in professional taiko troupe Ondekoza in the 1970s. Contemporary staged taiko routinely pairs shakuhachi with taiko, possibly following Lee’s innovation, or evolving parallel in other taiko cultures simultaneously, fuelled by reimaginings of Japanese history and traditions.

TaikOz play taiko as art, as music, focused on aesthetics and form. They do not aim to juggle cultural acquisition or morality during their acts of playing, though these judgements adhere. The opening quote by Zen scholar, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, captures TaikOz’s plight, using central principles to Zen, even though these ideas merely correlate to TaikOz’s artistry and predicament. TaikOz’s creed signals that the spirituality they enact is embodied: “[TaikOz] beat with every muscle, bone and sinew in our bodies, with an open and joyous spirit.”3 The creed mentions effort and feelings, but not aesthetics and form. And like Zen practices, where life is distilled into simple, elegant, curated morsels of symbolic action, TaikOz’s work is not causally related to Zen principles. Assumptions abound nonetheless, with artistic and moral implications.

Faced with Zen ascriptions, TaikOz have engaged with musical and dance cultures from Japan that are founded in the types of spirituality, ritual and community ceremony that TaikOz’s witnesses misattribute to TaikOz. Without cynicism or opportunism, TaikOz’s engagement with traditional custodians of the regional dance/music Onikenbai, is founded in respect for Japanese traditional cultures, and peoples, as well as a formal musical interest in this living artefact. A biproduct is that TaikOz appear more so to be spiritual, do ancient things, and transmit Japanese cultural capital for an Australian market.

TaikOz may have bolstered their legitimacy in Australia by associating with this Japanese tradition which contains taiko instruments, and allegedly predates contemporary staged taiko by millennia. Ian Cleworth explained Onikenbai’s value to TaikOz’s public image: “It's really old. Taiko is a bit hanging-around-the-edges, 1960s onwards, but Onikenbai is unequivocally

2 Lee’s doctoral dissertation detailed transmissions of Zen pieces through various lineages. See Riley Lee, “Yearning for the bell: a study of transmission in the shakuhachi honkyoku tradition.” Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1994. 3 TaikOz creed, quoted in Joni Scanlon, “Spirited beat on show,” Canberra Times, September 4, 2012: 21.

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an old form of dance and music.”4 The dance’s Buddhist roots are important to its practitioners, who embody their philosophies in ‘doing’ Onikenbai. When adopting Japanese contents, TaikOz attract interpretation as appropriators who benefit commerciality from power-imbalances. Through their practice of Onikenbai, TaikOz do art with innate (to TaikOz, not Onikenbai) Zen-like attitude. TaikOz thus fully embody the universal thing they appear to be tokenistically borrowing for a foreign market, and they are not merely garnering improper material for the tastes of misinformed customers.

TaikOz became interested in Onikenbai through their present-day relationship with professional taiko performers Kodo (previously called Ondekoza), as Kodo had already forged a relationship with Onikenbai custodians over previous decades. TaikOz members did not expressly scour regional Japanese festivals to find an iconic and exotic expression of old- world culture for commercial appropriation, but instead were invited by stage-stars Kodo to co-participate in Onikenbai workshops on Sado Island, where Kodo practiced Onikenbai outside its traditional setting, with permission. Kodo established relationships with members of Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai5 (Onikenbai Appreciation and Preservation Society of Iwasaki) and earned consent to dance and play the music. TaikOz have similarly fostered a relationship with Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai. With permission TaikOz started a Sydney Onikenbai Club where they ‘share’ (but do not teach) a few foundational dances from the repertory, along with the drumming and fluting accompaniments. In 2013, TaikOz brought several members of Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai to Australia for workshops and a concert hall performance called ‘The Spirit Dancer’.

I danced Onikenbai for three years in TaikOz’s Sydney Onikenbai Club. With that community I participated in 2013 workshops with Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai, and danced Ichiban Niwa (the first dance) in the aisles of City Recital Hall for the scheduled encore to ‘The Spirit Dancer’. In that program TaikOz situated Onikenbai alongside their more contemporary and eclectic taiko genres. Concert excerpts are viewable on YouTube and may help the reader to quickly visualise these sources.6

4 Ian Cleworth interview, Ultimo, March 5, 2013. 5 While Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai is one of many real and traditional practicing Onikenbai clubs in Iwate, they have documented their club’s activities since 1732, verifying their legitimacy. 6 TaikOz, The Spirit Dancer (Best Of), Hospital Hill Films, YouTube, accessed March 1, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg64ol9s9Fo.

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This chapter examines Onikenbai’s history, the types of spirituality and spiritualism that coalesced in its form and mythology, how that mythology has been co-opted over time and how Onikenbai is danced today. As for structure, after an anecdote about marketing, I introduce a chronology of Japanese belief-systems to contextualise philosophical ideas underpinning Onikenbai. I then describe the dance’s culture in Japan today, how TaikOz connected with custodians, and how TaikOz have transplanted it into their Sydney community and concert culture Australia-wide. Choreography from Onikenbai has informed future TaikOz projects,7 fostering a physical language indigenous to their stages. Above all, participation in Onikenbai has changed the way TaikOz ‘do’ community.

Spiritual nourishment, not music

TaikOz have troubles with marketing that cites spiritual claims. When assessing the Australian taiko scene I highlighted differences in discourses regarding spirituality using publicity of Queenslander Motoyuki Niwa.8 Next, a story of TaikOz’s involvement at Canberra International Music Festival in 2013 encapsulates common misconceptions. The festival’s director, Chris Latham, hosted an evening of ‘spiritual music to lift the soul’. While recruiting performers, Latham told TaikOz “You guys are kind of Buddhist, you can do some Buddhist stuff.”9 Ian Cleworth politely disagreed, “Well, no, not really. But I can see where you’re coming from, Chris. Certainly Riley [Lee] could easily fit into that. He could play some honkyoku [Zen shakuhachi breath meditation music].”10 Upon second thought, Cleworth told Latham, “Look we have got something that springs from Buddhism. It's lovely, it's got great flute and drum music. It's terrific. It's got costumes, a nice visual element... called Onikenbai.”11 Onikenbai directly translates as demon (oni), sword (ken/kem), dance (mai/bai) but its name denotes a whole greater than the sum of its parts.12 TaikOz were booked and when Cleworth received the preliminary program it labelled their act, ‘Onikenbai – sword dance’. Concerned Cleworth called Latham to ask what had happened to the ‘demon’. Latham had deliberately removed it. Compound word Onikenbai means more than its components – much the way ‘rainbow’ cannot be substituted by ‘bow’ or ‘rain’. Cleworth informed Latham the name change was inappropriate, but Latham explained ‘demon sword

7 Chi Udaka, discussed in Chapter 6. 8 Chapter 2, Australian Taiko Scene 9 Chris Latham quoted in Ian Cleworth Interview, March 5, 2013. 10 Ian Cleworth Interview, March 5, 2013. 11 Ibid. 12 Also called onikembai or kembu.

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dance’ “might be off-putting to those concert goers who were coming to the event for spiritual nourishment, not as a musical experience.”13 Cleworth then agreed, the demon part would be totally misunderstood. Cleworth requested Latham “take out the ‘sword’ as well.”14 Realising the defensiveness of this fix, Cleworth resolved to print no translation, but to write an explanatory program note. He used this as a case in point: “That's part of our educational role.”15

Just as reviews and publicity of TaikOz’s electronic music program Origin of O mentioned “Zen,”16 “Holistic performance as spiritual,”17 “Digital shamanism,”18 and “Chakras… a journey for the mind, body & soul,”19 one review also claimed it mapped “grand notions of orbits, galaxies and the universe.”20 Other TaikOz reviews over the years have referenced spirituality overtly in titles like “Zen and now,”21 or “Trip the light monastic,”22 and more subtly in “Sweet purity,”23 “The exotic and quixotic,”24 “All God's chillun got rhythm,”25 and “Powerful blessings.”26 These divine hints suggest a non-tangible specialness, but like Latham’s blunder, they slap an abbot’s hat on some slippery slop. A Sydney review referencing Onikenbai was titled “Australian artists let in on ancient demon dance,”27 implying membership in a prestigious custom akin to cloaked masonry. Sometimes claims about antiquity strengthen associations of religiosity, or societies’ secrets.

13 Chris Latham quoted in Ian Cleworth Interview, March 5, 2013. 14 Ian Cleworth Interview, March 5, 2013. 15 Ibid. 16 TaikOz performance archive, Origin of O, accessed July 11, 2015, www.taikoz.com. 17 Angela Stretch, “Review – TaikOz presents ‘ORIGIN OF O’,” Alt Media, April 21, 2013, accessed March 12, 2017. 18 ‘Origin of O’, Bookings via City Recital Hall, accessed March 18, 2017, https://tickets.cityrecitalhall.com/single/psDetail.aspx?psn=1652. 19 Origin of O publicity, Origin of O Facebook Event Page, reproduction of Burnie Arts & Function Centre publicity, posted September 25, 2015, accessed March 16, 2017, www facebook.com. 20 Janine Phillips, “Origin of O takes you on a digital journey,” Burnie Arts and Function Centre Press Release, September 9, 2015, accessed January 29, 2017, www.burniearts.net/About-Us/Media-Releases/Origin-of-O-takes-you-on-a-digital-journey. 21 Catherine Lambert. “Zen and now.” Sunday Herald Sun, July 26, 2009. 22 Bryce Hallett. “Trip the light monastic.” Sydney Morning Herald, September 11, 2010. 23 Harriet Cunningham, “Sweet purity: Eitetsu Hayashi with TaikOz.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 2006: 19. 24 Harriet Cunningham, “The exotic and quixotic from man with big ideas.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2008. 25 R.W. Murray, “All God's chillun got rhythm.” Australian Financial Review, July 27, 2007. 26 Penny Thow, “Powerful blessings,” Hobart Mercury, November 13, 2010: 47. 27 Adam Fulton. “Australian artists let in on ancient demon dance.” Sydney Morning Herald, April 25, 2011.

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A little history of Onikenbai mythology Onikenbai does not have a distinct relationship to Zen, though one of its origin stories cites En no Gyōja (known by many names),28 founding priest of the shugendô sect of Buddhism, who performed it for the opening of a temple. Onikenbai originated during the Taiho period (CE 701-704) when, according to the official literature of Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai: Priests of Mt Haguro-san disseminated Onikenbai, and farmers of the Waga region have continued this tradition to the present day in the form of three basic dance themes: Akuma-Taisan (Devil Protection), Shujo-Saido (Human Salvation) and Gokoku-Hojo (Bountiful Harvest).29 Just as notable historic figures like prophets can acquire adjacent miracles or attributes in the writing of histories, En no Gyōja may have been appropriated as the originator of Onikenbai because of his weighty significance. 30 If this is the case the story may only have been attached to the dance centuries later, upon classicist revision, whereby symbolic meanings were also consolidated.31 The age of the dance is important to its practitioners and their beliefs are essential to Onikenbai culture. Paramount is that the dance is practised today by thousands of Iwate’s people (and others) and that these folks venerate the dance’s antiquity and the historic stories.

TaikOz regularly mention Shinto associations when dancing Onikenbai, while also explaining the dance is Buddhist. Not so contradictory as it first appears, Shinto (Way of Gods) is an indigenous ‘religion’ of Japan, though has no founder, no written scriptures, no explicit philosophy, no specific moral code nor any religious law. Instead Shinto manifests through worship of natural objects, energies and heavenly bodies. Shinto fosters rituals including festivals, that have crystalised further into theatrical forms like kagura. By the time Mahayana Buddhism entered Japan, Buddhism was already a ‘world religion’ with a thousand-year history.32 Unlike Shinto, Buddhism brought an elaborate body of doctrine, an enormous canon of religious literature, well-organised priesthood, and dazzling religious

28 The ascetic monk, En no Gyōja, was also known as En no Ozunu; En no Shōkaku and En no Ubasoku. See Mark Schumacher, “Path to Mystic Power via Ascetic Practices,” Japanese Buddhist Statuary: Gods, Goddesses, Shinto Kami, Creatures & Demons, www.onmarkproductions.com/html/shugendou.html, accessed February 20, 2016. 29 Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai’s official information leaflet, quoted in TaikOz ‘The Spirit Dancer’ Press Release, 2013. 30 Mark Schumacher, “Path to Mystic Power via Ascetic Practices,” Japanese Buddhist Statuary: Gods, Goddesses, Shinto Kami, Creatures & Demons, accessed February 20, 2016. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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arts.33 Buddhism took root in Japan in the Nara (CE710-794) and Heian periods (CE794– 1185). Zen was not introduced into Japan (as a separate ideology from Buddhism) until the Kamakura period (CE1185-1333) when spiritual leader Nōnin established the Daruma- school34 following Chinese excursions.35 Images from Shugendō proliferated, especially among temples of Esoteric Tantric Buddhism strongly influenced by asceticism in the Ōmine mountains. When Buddhist ideas met Shinto, it was “those aspects that best suited Japanese tastes”36 that took hold. Zen was transported to Japan from outside, and Japanese people adopted it only where seasonable. Likewise, it is those aspects of TaikOz’s work that best suit local tastes that meet praise or seem appropriate, as exemplified in the anecdote about TaikOz removing the title translation of Onikenbai from a concert to better suit Australian proclivities.

Shugendô is considered a Heien period (CE794-1185) amalgam37 of Shinto practices with newer Buddhist ideas. If these dates are accurate, En no Gyōja’s original Onikenbai prototype predates this period by several pre-modern lifetimes. To explain, while Shugendô’s founder En no Gyōja lived in the late seventh century,38 his legacy is associated with later periods.39 Considered a manifestation of Hōki Bodhisattva,40 En no Gyōja stories have themes of ‘choosing earthly service over enlightenment’ and sorcery involving demons.41 His two demon attendants have come to represent polarities.42 Reinterpretations of their myth during

33 Paul Watt, “Shinto & Buddhism: Wellsprings of Japanese Spirituality,” Asia Society's Focus on Asian Studies, 2:1, Asian Religions, 1982, 21-22. 34 Vincent M N Breugem, “From Prominence to Obscurity: A Study of the Darumashū: Japan's first Zen School,” (Thesis, Leiden University, 2006), 39-60. 35 Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol 2 (Japan: World Wisdom Books, 2005), 7-8. 36 Paul Watt, “Shinto & Buddhism: Wellsprings of Japanese Spirituality.” (1982): 23. 37 Ibid. 38 During Asuka and Nara periods. 39 Centuries later En no Gyōja’s legend was still praised and used allegorically: in 1799 Emperor Kōkaku gave En no Gyōja the title Shinben Daibosatu (Miraculous Great Bodhisattva). 40 A Bodhisatva can reach enlightenment (become a Buddha) but delays due to compassion for the suffering of living beings. 41 In CE699 En no Gyōja was falsely accused of demon sorcery and exiled by Emperor Monmu to Itoshima Island, according to most Shugendô legends. It is told that he captured two demons in the Ikoma Mountains who thereafter served him. En no Gyōja set his demon-attendants four verses to praise Buddha – ‘verses with power to grant salvation and to raise up an enlightened heart’ – and through regular recitation the two demons became humans. Once transformed, Sekigan was renamed Zenki (Front Demon) and Kōkō became Goki (Behind Demon). Upon becoming human, their names denoted their past demonic nature. Other accounts claim their human names were Otomaru and Wakamaru. See Mark Schumacher, “Path to Mystic Power via Ascetic Practices,” Japanese Buddhist Statuary: Gods, Goddesses, Shinto Kami, Creatures & Demons, accessed February 20, 2016, www.onmarkproductions.com/html/shugendou html. 42 Several artistic depictions of En no Gyōja feature these demons, husband-and-wife Sekigan (Red Eyes) and Kōkō (Yellow Eyes), who are interpreted to represent Yin and Yang.

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the Edo era, circa 1672, by Buddhist priest Sōryojōen, saw the pair respectively epitomising approaches ‘through wisdom’ and ‘through logic’. Significant for my interpretation of Onikenbai, these demons were both spirits and humans simultaneously, traversing realms, because neither state could exist absolutely.43

Though tangential, this history demonstrates how mythology has evolved and been repurposed in the quest for contemporary spiritual systematisation. Artistic renderings of En no Gyōja myths (for example his yellow-eyed Yin she-demon) have subsequently represented abstract concepts (righteous learning through logic).44 When observing Onikenbai it is worth noting the ways this mythology has moved geographically, become localised in each setting, come to mean something entirely different upon classicistic revision, and how artistic renditions have simultaneously represented, expanded on, and rewritten the mythology’s symbolism. While the origin stories of the supposed founder of Onikenbai cannot completely stand for the dances’ stories in following centuries, I have established how loosely yet artfully these attributions bring meaning to their future performable iterations.

Onikenbai form and function

The Japanese Traditional Culture Promotion and Development Organization (JTCO) describes Onikenbai as a Nembutsu-odori (folkloric dance involving Buddhist chant) with “rolls of drums and gongs,”45 connecting these dances with other ritual dance expressions. While the masked-dance’s name mentions a sword, the style is characterised by a two-faced, blue, vermillion and silver ogi (fan) and the congozue (finger decoration symbolising an itinerant’s walking stick). A costumed dancer also wears kosa (a decorative panel over the buttocks) and a representation of armour on his46 arms. A Sydney reviewer of a 2009 TaikOz performance described Onikenbai as “a slow, stylised martial display [where] brightly dressed warriors with samurai swords, and arms clad in fishnet stockings, uttered muffled oaths beneath angry masks.”47 He was excited by “moments when an evil spirit emerge[d] and cause[d] the dancers to shudder and shriek.”48

43 Mark Schumacher, “Path to Mystic Power via Ascetic Practices,” accessed February 20, 2016. 44 Ibid. 45 Japanese Traditional Culture Promotion and Development Organization (JTCO), accessed May 26, 2017, www.jtco.or.jp/en/japanese-culture/?act=detail&id=106&p=0&c=21. 46 Traditionally danced by men only but now danced by all. 47 Peter McCallum, “Dance and song tones the muscles,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 23, 2009. 48 Ibid.

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Onikenbai is the most popular home-grown cultural expression of Kitakami, Iwate, Japan and is celebrated during the Michinoku Geino Matsuri and in daily life. Kitakami’s official tourism site claims this ‘Demon Dance with sword’ has enjoyed a long history “dating back 1,300 years.”49 Since 1732 participation has been documented by Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai, founded that year.50 Currently, there are twelve Onikenbai teams in Kitakami, two designated as ‘significant intangible folklore cultural assets’ of Japan.51 Each year the tradition is continued it gains more reverence with its practitioners: the depth of the cultural expression and the relevance of continuing the practice are both directly related to the length of its history. Amateur Onikenbai groups are also found outside Kitakami in areas such as Sapporo, Niigata, Sado Island, Tokyo, and Kyoto52 and these are light-handedly presided over and endorsed by Kitakami’s Onikenbai practitioners.53

Every year before festivities open, the hundreds of Onikenbai groups assemble at the local castle in full costume, whereupon one performer dances Hitori-kago, a solemn and spectacular solo dance, in a symbolically rich display of cleansing.54 During the parade, all Onikenbai groups process down the main street to the accompaniment of Tôri (Passing or Procession). Later, once the sun has set “the atmosphere is charged with the sight and smell of fiery cauldrons lining the street, as well as hundreds of eagerly expectant onlookers, and Ichiban-niwa (the primary dance) is danced by hundreds in unison. The colourful costumes, spectacular headpieces and fearsome masks create a uniquely dramatic display.”55

There are eighteen Onikenbai dances, learnt sequentially. Each has unique movements and music but draws from a central vocabulary. Hand gestures, acrobatics, and plate-juggling feature. Many forms of Onikenbai exist throughout Iwate today, each has distinctive and idiomatic movements or timings. Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai’s ‘style’ can be identified by soft, flowing movements that are grounded upon strong leg positions. A typical performance

49 Deep Japan, “Dances with Demons #4382” posted April 19, 2016, accessed February 24, 2017, www.deepjapan.org/a/4382. 50 This is the group with whom TaikOz have formed a relationship, travelled to learn, and brought to Australia for workshops and concerts. 51 Deep Japan, “Dances with Demons #4382” posted April 19, 2016, accessed February 24, 2017. 52 Yoshikazu Fujimoto in group class conversation at TaikOz Intensive, January 2011. 53 Without approval from Kitakami cultural custodians, the non-local clubs would not be permitted to use the name Onikenbai. While no regulatory repercussions for appropriation exist (to my knowledge), the social ramifications of misuse are deterrent enough to disincentivise ethically ambiguous copy-cats. 54 “‘Hitorikago’ and ‘Katana-gurui’,” TaikOz Blog entry, October 15, 2014. 55 Ibid.

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requires performers to dance bravely and move their heads and waists vigorously.56 The legs maintain a heaviness as though the dancer’s feet were sticking in the mud of a rice paddy. TaikOz member Anton Lock recounted that “one dancer from Iwasaki described it as a ‘hip dance’,”57 though the hips lift and lower in squatting lunges, and do not sway side to side. Ichiban-niwa, the first of eighteen, contains the essence of all Onikenbai dances.58 A later dance, Katana-gurui has elaborate and masterful movements for the head, hands and fan but also employs arresting katana manoeuvres (sword-play).59 Other popular dances in the lineage are titled Ogi-awase, Zen Mai (dance with tray-balancing) and Hachinin-kago.

The dances are typically performed in groups of eight, uniformly with power and cohesion. Each dancer is dressed elaborately in straw sandals, split-toe socks, gaiters, stockings, ‘armour’, a thick wooden mask, tall sprouting horse-hair wig, ogi (fan), katana (sword), kosa (buttocks-flag) and a vajra (Buddhist ritual object). After a study trip to Iwasaki, TaikOz members reported back to Sydney Onikenbai Club (discussed later this chapter) details of the ‘extremely traditional’ wig-making process. While the wig-maker uses age-old artisanal techniques, he sources his best quality, authentic, appropriately coloured and strong horsehair from eBay.60

The dancers’ masks – white, red, green/blue and black – represent the seasons and cardinal directions, dictating the position of the dancer in the group and their hierarchy of experience. The white-mask wearer (shiro-men) is always the leader and the most experienced dancer. There are multiple explanations and interpretations, but Kitakami’s official tourism site insists: “These four colours [of masks] also depict Buddha (the wisdom king) as the one who saves people from demons. Therefore, it is said that the dancers represent Buddha and not actual demons,”61 even though they take demon-form to quash other vengeful demons by henbai (stomping) and the chanting of sutras.62 Several kagura fan-dances – accompanied by drums, flutes and clanging cymbals – also feature demon figures, but typically these demons are horned and ‘evil’, while Onikenbai’s non-horned demons are seen as incarnations of Buddha.

56 Kitakami-Kanko, “Onikenbai.” 57 Anton Lock, Interview, February 13, 2013. 58 “Tori – Ichibanniwa” TaikOz Blog entry, November 27, 2013. 59 “‘Hitorikago’ and ‘Katana-gurui’,” TaikOz Blog entry, October 15, 2014. 60 Shared in Sydney Onikenbai Club, 2013. 61 Kitakami-Kanko, “Onikenbai.” 62 Japan-Iwate Tourist Information Site, accessed June 30, 2016, www.Japan-Iwate.info.

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The Music of Onikenbai

Onikenbai dances are accompanied by three or more musicians singing nembutsu (Buddhist chant), playing okedo (rope-strung taiko), kenbai-shinobue (transverse bamboo flute specific to Onikenbai) and the tebira-gane (steel hand cymbals). The music and dance are inseparable: the two flow seamlessly between one another and therefore all musician- participants must have an intimate knowledge of every musical part. Additionally, musicians are not allowed to train in the singing or instrumental accompaniment until they can successfully perform the dance.63 Once they specialise in music though, they tend not to dance any more. Rhythms are transmitted using vocables, but because musicians have internalised the musical material while being dancers, a process of transmuting physical understanding to conceptual understanding of rhythm, pulse and time, tends to be less theoretical than experiential and embodied. While the drums keep time and accompany the dance, they are more interactive with the dancers than metronomic.

Typically the drummer kneels behind the okedo-drum which is placed horizontally on the floor so each skin surface is accessible by its corresponding drumstick. The drummers’ arms flap to the sides in flight-like motions and during slower segments, like the introductory material to Ichiban-niwa, the drummer emphasises pauses between sounds by holding each non-sounding stick palm-up above the drum. In terms of ensemble and direction, neither the dancers nor the musicians lead. Neither follow. They work together to perfectly place the sounds and steps together, relative to the steps and sounds that have gone before. This horizontal approach to meter is common to much Japanese music.64

High flutes (fue, shinobue, kenbai-fue are names used interchangeably) soar above the drum pitches. Often more than one flautist plays, and timing and tuning are not synchronised in homophony, without concern. Melodies are mostly pentatonic but the finger-patterns are unlike other Japanese festival fluting methods because instead of having three fingers on the top hand, and three on the bottom hand, kenbai-fue uses only two on the top hand, and each subsequent finger moves up by one hole position. Those sonic patterns that typically arise

63 Yoshikazy Fujimoto, (Kodo member and licensed dancer of Iwasaki Onikenbai who runs Sado's Onikenbai Club), in group class conversation at TaikOz Intensive Training Weekend, January 2011. 64 William P Malm, Traditional Japanese music and musical instruments, Tokyo; London: Kodansha International, 2000.

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from comfortable finger twiddlings are substituted with less familiar intervallic relationships and help to produce Onikenbai’s distinctive sound.

Shinto, Shugendō, Buddhism, Zen and Onikenbai

TaikOz is not Zen, taiko is not Zen, and Onikenbai is not Zen. But given the prevalence of Zen designations to TaikOz, I investigate it. According to legend, Onikenbai’s founder En no Gyōja65 was an itinerant, ascetic mystic of Shugendō, who “practiced Nenbutsu-odori (a Buddhist dance) to relieve people [and] excommunicate evil spirits. Traces of this [story were] transmitted from Nara and Kyoto to Kitakami via mountainous areas [and] took root [as a] requiem of the spirits of the Fujiwara clan and their retainers who were destroyed.”66 Shugendō is a bridging ideology between indigenous Shinto and Buddhism (including Zen) introduced via China. Stories like En’s are noteworthy in the evolution of Japanese Buddhist thought because they highlight constant re-purposing of narratives and particularly allusions.

Zen proponent, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, says “Zen has entered internally into every phase of the [Japanese] cultural life of the people”67 over its 800 years. One influence of Zen Buddhism is an almost psycho-therapeutic training concept, shugyo: where discipline in the exercise of one’s craft, and discipline in the more parochial task of being a decent human- being are honed. Shugyo is a part of monks’ training, martial arts training, and performing- arts even today, extending as far as Australian TaikOz’s aesthetic convictions, and clouding boundaries of tradition. While TaikOz did not seek out Onikenbai as a psycho-therapeutic discipline to sharpen their skills at ‘looking Japanese’, it has benefited them thus by immersion, and resonates with their creed.

The concept of Buddhist demons may seem at odds with Buddhism’s intellectual and mystic traditions. ‘Asian demons’ hold centrality in Buddhist history and are “primarily the powerful, ancient spirits of nature, who require recognition and appeasement.”68 These mystical forces, creatures or energies (rarely taking definitive form, and when they do illusive, transitory or ephemeral) were assimilated into Buddhism from indigenous spiritual

65 Soumu, “Stories of Iwate,” accessed June 4, 2020, www.soumu.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/17hisaichi/hp/douga/iwate08.html. 66 Ibid. 67 Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and its influence on Japanese culture, 21. 68 Gail Hinich Sutherland, “Demons and the Demonic in Buddhism,” Oxford Bibliographies, accessed February 9, 2016, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393521/.

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systems like Shinto. When missionaries brought Buddhism to Japan, they successfully accommodated local beliefs, absorbing those resident convictions into a newer Buddhist discourse, thus conquering through sympathetic persuasion.69

Regardless of differing origin claims or spiritual evolutions, sources agree that Onikenbai is intended to be transformative. When dancers don their masks, they become demons. It is a vigorous and fatiguing endurance-test and is treated as a ritual meditation, or even prayer. For the dancer Onikenbai is a path to self-knowledge and ultimate illumination, an enlightenment by physical challenge. What then can a contemporary rendition of Onikenbai mean in isolation? The intersection where TaikOz meets this dance may not be any less philosophically significant than those times when Onikenbai practices and myths adapted in the past. Tangentially, while Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai co-opt TaikOz into their dance by this same sympathetic persuasion, a sort of reciprocal interest exists between the groups that meets both parties’ needs: for TaikOz validation (authentication) and for Iwasaki Onikenbai visibility and appreciation.

Japanese philosophical concepts of ‘being’, Zen after Heidegger

The meanings of TaikOz’s work have been hard to characterise. Most current discourse adds layers of abstraction, regardless of whether voices are expert, professional, inexperienced, passionate, embodied or some other quality. Media and TaikOz juggle perceived communicative inadequacies. TaikOz have repeatedly connected their ‘inabilities to belong’ with challenges such as lack of Japanese language fluency, lack of Japanese indigeneity, or shaky selfhood in uncharted hybrid territory. While I mention the existence of Japanese concepts of ‘being’ as heavily tied to language, I do not link these Japanese concepts’ existence to TaikOz’s autonomous path to similar ideas, but reveal recurrent thematic parallels. TaikOz members have not mentioned to me an interest in or persuasion for this type of philosophy, but they do enact some of these concepts through their playing and public engagement. The following philosophical discussion is included to reveal how irrelevant and yet still pertinently applicable discourse is: just because it fits does not mean it belongs. Concrete and abstract meanings of TaikOz’s musical work differ but tend to be treated as interchangeable.

69 Ibid.

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For language, and for music, two simultaneous things inhere – each is both ‘what is said/heard’ (message) and the ‘action of saying/playing’ (medium). Dual realities emerge: “the objectifiable reality of things out there that can be counted, narrated, and judged; and a complex action in which a series of relationships between subjects, objects, and environments results in an expressive act.”70 Steven Feld contributed significantly to musicology’s equivalent discussion71 in the 1980s and Georgina Born has elaborated since through relational musicology.72 When analysing TaikOz, I press that their medium is their message: that they exercise freedom by ‘being themselves’ even when misread. This aligns with Judith Butler’s contribution to discussion about performativity – where identities are created in doing, and exist only in motion and a social context.73

Academics have frequently observed parallels between Eastern and Western philosophy and ways these have influenced one another. Differing modes of ‘being’ are crucial in the study of Japanese thought, and of paramount importance for an understanding of ‘the ontological difference’ after Heidegger.74 Tezuka Tomio (1903-1983), a Japanese scholar of German literature, visited the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in Freiburg in 1954. He was fascinated by ‘being’ and differences between German and Japanese equivalent concepts.75 Reportedly, the two thinkers discussed ambiguities where “the thingly component of kotoba [language] was a poietic ‘act’ that has the power to create a reality by transforming the named thing [word] into a real thing [object].”76 Similar to the way in Islam, the God exists in recitation of words, and only in that live manifestation; the site of meaning is tied to being alive, present, in action, engaged, transmitting; and the receiving of God or godliness does not exist in any silent, waiting stasis.77

Onikenbai is a site for its traditional custodians and TaikOz to ‘be in the dance’, to embody

70 Michael F Marra, “On Japanese Things and Words,” Philosophy East and West 54:4 (2004): 556. 71 Steven Feld, “Communication, Music, and Speech about Music.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 16 (1984), 1-18. 72 Georgina Born, “For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn.” Journal of Royal Music Association 135:2 (2010): 205-243. 73 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997; and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. 74 Marra, “On Japanese Things and Words,” 557. 1 75 Koto and mono can both mean ‘thing’ or ‘thingliness’. These ‘being’ definitions are scattered through Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927). See English translation: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 76 Marra, “On Japanese Things and Words: An Answer to Heidegger's Question,” 556. 77 Navid Kermani and Tony Crawford. God is Beautiful: Aesthetic Experience of the Quran. Cambridge: Polity, 2015

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another reality and set of meanings during the doing. Yet unlike ‘pretending’ or ‘ritual’, where the thing is done, but abstractly, during Onikenbai TaikOz are entirely themselves in action. The ‘another reality’ TaikOz engage in there is one separated from their reception. Their dance then has a physical and metaphoric existence, which each interact constantly when witnessed. A site of work for a dancer, it is a site of entertainment for an audience, a lived historical artefact, a dry-cleaner’s sweaty dream, an expression of beliefs. Gods and demons reside within the act of dancing and externally to it, in acts of comprehension or remembering. Meanings reside in association, not only in the dance. As Heidegger argued influentially in Contributions to Philosophy, “True godlessness is not the absence of gods, but a state in which their presence or absence makes no difference to us.”78 So it is, then, that TaikOz’s engagement with Onikenbai brings them a sense of valid identity, because they perceive their own doing as real.79

Dance as a metaphysical manifestation: fluctuating states of being

Onikenbai is a transformational dance. Dancers do not merely portray good demons when they dance, they ‘become’ the demons. Their becoming calls on and then transmits spirits. As scholars of Asian belief-driven rituals denote, the “skillfulness, compassion, and attainment of the practitioner [or dancer, will] determine the outcome of the encounter.”80 When the dancer dances well, the spirit is more powerful and the effect more pronounced. This notion validates TaikOz’s predilection for doing taiko well. When they hone their skills they increase their enjoyment of the activity.

Onikenbai retains its foundational Buddhist moral system, wherein exists ‘the truth of’ the interdependence of all beings and all phenomena. As there can be no absolute good or evil by this conception, different hells entail different punishments and different demons who administer them.81 Some non-horned good demons are representations of natural bounty, mystery, and fertility, but such demons also threaten to exceed and overturn the human order because of their karmic upward-mobility (they can outperform fellow humans in next

78 Quoted in Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 152. 79 On a side note, reviewers of TaikOz who voice concern over appropriation (where appropriation constitutes non-being and non-belonging), are published by individuals who rarely express self-awareness of the ‘beinghood’ from which they speak. The effect of this ambiguity is a sense of truth-building that survives only under certain ontological conditions. This is to say, mythology perpetuates independently of evidence. 80 Kasahara, Kazuo, ed. A History of Japanese Religion. Translated by Paul McCarthy and Gaynor Sekimori. (Tokyo: Kōsei, 2001). 81 Sutherland, “Demons and the Demonic in Buddhism,” accessed February 9, 2016.

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incarnations). Hence demons “must be controlled, and yet they must be respected, since they are an inevitable feature of that oscillating order [between worlds or states of existence].”82 Because these demons are “troublesome but not catastrophic; [oni] are obstacles to be overcome through ritual action, offerings of appeasement, and meditative detachment,”83 they both exist and do not exist when danced – they are transmitted to afford some benefit, and the dancers both undergo transformation and witness the arrival of the demons. The dance is an artifice which proves the humanness of dancers who cross between a spiritual and a real world, neither of which they belong to in either state. By donning the masks and ‘armour’, TaikOz dance between states of being and belonging as musicians who engage in material that seems non-indigenous to them, and do so well. TaikOz’s process of adopting this material matches its content, doubling their gratification.

Zen and the art of TaikOz’s maintenance

Now I show parallels between Zen’s adoption within Japan and TaikOz’s adoption of taiko. Zen was widely adopted by Japanese people of various demographics because the exemplars of Zen – monks – held privileged positions in society. As recipients of international knowledge and cross-cultural opportunity, the aristocracy valued monks.84 Aristocrats and the politically influential classes of Japan were patrons of Zen institutions and willing to submit themselves to the discipline of Zen. Thus Zen worked “not only directly on the ‘religious’ life of the Japanese but also most strongly on their general culture.”85

A constant in TaikOz’s volatile state of being, is their unwitting membership in the elite institutions of concert hall music. As privileged recipients of public funding, educational resources and inter-cultural exchange opportunities, TaikOz both receive patronage and shape their patrons’ tastes. The ‘general culture’ that TaikOz then influence is not necessarily about the sonic experience of music (which TaikOz prioritises nonetheless). TaikOz’s in- betweenness renders them as doing the social work of figure-heading notions like multiculturalism when they believe themselves only to be aestheticians. Moreover, TaikOz receive grants due to their professionalism (and not content); and they hold space in the taiko genre which is not entirely music, dance, theatre or the combination of each. They lead, but only in their own corner.

82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 During the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, Zen monasteries were the repositories of learning and art. 85 Suzuki, Zen Buddhism on Japanese culture, 22.

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That TaikOz’s ‘Japanese’ product is necessarily always imperfect and incomplete, also finds parallels with Zen. Suzuki posed that when Japanese artists create imperfect objects (he referred to ‘formal asymmetry’ in design), they might ascribe their art-motive to moral asceticism.86 Suzuki implied that asymmetrical Japanese art replaces symmetry’s grace with other charms. These attractions are not strictly logical or derived from too many layers of abstraction – their ‘truth’ comes ‘purposefully accidentally’ (not accidentally on purpose) from nature or other forces. For this reason Suzuki suggests “The Japanese are often thought not to be intellectual and philosophical.”87 The most conspicuous characteristics of Japanese art, Suzuki says are “poverty, simplification, sabi or wabi, aloneness… [and] all those emanate from one central perception of the truth of Zen which is ‘the One in the Many, and the Many in the One’.”88 In this space, the general and the specific appear interchangeable. If applied to TaikOz, it should mean that for Japanese aesthetic appeal, TaikOz’s art ought not to be Japanese, not too close as imitation, not too perfect in rendition nor too connected to their sources; it may only allude to those potential perfections.

Another quandary regards the artifice of interpretation: to be Zen is to observe without thinking, but the only way to arrive at pure observation (unadulterated reception of phenomena) is to cultivate ways of thinking about perception. This logic, like its explanatory content, is flawed but it is still able to bring illumination, so it is kept despite its fault. Its artful utility is valuable (just as origin myths about Onikenbai are valuable to practitioners). It works like the ‘this statement is false’ paradox, proving itself by disproving. This too is how TaikOz’s public interface functions: they require rebellion against various attributes to define themselves. When TaikOz perform, they are percussionists, but not only percussionists. When they indigenise their taiko culture, they are ‘not Japanese’ but they do something that appears so, but arguably is not Japanese. (But, of course, taiko is Japanese: think of all those festivals!) TaikOz construct an intricate web of impossibilities that become the mythology they both propagate and refute. By residing in the spaces between concrete attributes TaikOz can be artful even when functioning commercially, and Zen can slide on and off their actions.

Amid this relativity, we begin to see the value in age-old tradition. When nothing is

86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., 21. 88 Ibid., 22.

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inherently valuable, it can only matter that the activity (the doing) continues to be done. All Onikenbai teams are real, but only some are recognised as having a legitimate history. These relationships are not antagonistic even when competing claims about originality arise. Here lived history imbues origin with meaning. Shinto’s focus on re-occurrence within nature, like Suzuki’s Zen appreciation for ‘the unbalanced that continues to re-appear or to persist despite impracticality’, are instances of ‘the one in the many, and many in the one’ concept that frees up all versions of a general expression. Everything that could be considered Onikenbai exists in each performance of Onikenbai, and each performance contributes to the whole that is a recognisable natural phenomenon, so each dance is a proof of the rule while also going beyond it. This logic empowers artists to be entirely local, embodied, both the exemplar of a style and the progenitor of a specific freshness, and it justifies why dancers from Iwasaki believe themselves to be the direct line of tradition-bearers from an historical figure who may not ever have crossed paths with their ancestors.

Knowledge of these accompanying beliefs is at once pivotal and irrelevant when the dance is in action. Do modern practitioners, including TaikOz members, believe they become demon- transmitters when they dance? If not, are they doing Onikenbai? Their beliefs must both exist (somewhere, even if not consciously in the individual) and not matter, as described by Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai members.89 There is a dualism between the thinking and the perceiving of what is happening and, according to these Zen and (other) Buddhist concepts, ‘understanding and belief’ are as inter-related as the universal and the particular.

Doing and being: TaikOz’s introduction to Onikenbai

“It is an amazing experience to watch someone whose body moves in perfect balance and harmony with itself.”90 Balance and harmony, not with history or tradition, not with myth or criticism, but with oneself. TaikOz’s interest in Onikenbai dates back over a decade. TaikOz’s Anton Lock first danced Onikenbai under Kodo’s apprentices and Yoshikazu Fujimoto on Sado Island in 2006. Yoshikazu had started learning in his Ondekoza days with Riley Lee, and received a performer's license from the Iwasaki Onikenbai Grand Master in 1998 after more than twenty years of cultural exchange. Performance licences are easier to attain than teaching/sharing

89 Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai members quoted by multiple TaikOz members in interviews. 90 Anton Lock quoted in 'TaikOz Onikenbai Club' information sheet. Email to TaikOz students, February 2011.

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licences.

Under Yoshikazu Fujimoto’s mentorship, TaikOz travelled to Iwasaki in August 2010 to deepen their understanding and technique of the art form. TaikOz is the first group from outside that region of Japan (let alone from abroad) to be permitted to study Onikenbai in Iwate.91 Yoshikazu’s introduction was imperative for TaikOz to make contact with Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai. Had TaikOz done poorly in Iwasaki, it would have reflected badly on Yoshikazu, so TaikOz felt a great responsibility to commit completely in this endeavour. After many weeks of intensive training, over several years and multiple trips to Japan, the masters of Iwasaki Onikenbai granted TaikOz permission to perform the dance in Australia. This was the first permit of its kind issued. TaikOz have visited Iwate often and invited members from Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai to Australia. A 2013 TaikOz newsletter reported on Onikenbai goings-on, “As is now customary, the experience was incredibly rewarding: a heightened mixture of friendship and collegiality, intense concentration, an overload of information, incredible challenges and straight out good fun… not to mention sore muscles!”92

Learning Onikenbai

A central aspect of learning Onikenbai is collegiality, as TaikOz have absorbed on their many trips to Japan. Collegiality is helpful when accepting ‘practice for practice’s sake’.93 Lock explained, “Onikenbai’s primary goal is not so much performance... Practice undertaken together is the essence of Onikenbai and it is wonderful to see people getting together after school or work to practice the music and the dance every day.”94

TaikOz’s Japanese teachers stressed that TaikOz could not adapt, nor modify, Onikenbai. Rather than restricting creative freedom, Ian Cleworth saw opportunity: “We're not allowed to change Onikenbai, but what we've learnt from it in terms of movement and cultural understanding feeds into other aspects of our performance.”95 To ‘do’ Onikenbai correctly and respectfully, TaikOz have been advised to copy models diligently, to delight in practice,

91 'TaikOz Onikenbai Club' information sheet. Email to TaikOz students, February 2011. 92 “Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai - for the first time in Australia” TaikOz Blog, Nov 7, 2013. 93 This attitude may be traced to Zen Buddhist thinking. See Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation practice, edited by Trudy Dixon. New York; Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976. 94 Anton Lock quoted in 'TaikOz Onikenbai Club' information sheet. Email to TaikOz students, February 2011. 95 Fulton, Adam. “Australian artists let in on ancient demon dance.” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2011.

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and to welcome the idiosyncrasies that TaikOz’s bodies and musical cultures introduce into their renditions. TaikOz’s bodily accent is unavoidable and it personalises their lived art.

Over the years, TaikOz have excitedly reported on their developments in Onikenbai through newsletters. They wrote of firsts – of learning, participating, being invited to perform in traditional contexts, of blessings from their mentors – sharing gaffes and miscommunications. Cleworth especially has described how learning Onikenbai has been at times humbling or humiliating, but that he values this transmission above an easier route.96 He learned through confusion, asking for help,97 translating media via several notations (lingual and musical)98 and then by positive emotional response.99 And Cleworth wishes to share this growth with his students at TaikOz’s school and in Sydney Onikenbai Club via challenging transmission. He said he encourages imitation, but also a hybrid learning style from the Japanese transmissions he received.100

Belonging to the club

That transformational nature of Onikenbai is working on TaikOz. They are growing through the immense exertion of the dance, and by feeling a part of something authentic. Member, Kevin Man, said he loves Onikenbai: “Playing taiko in TaikOz is my job, that's just work, but Onikenbai, I do because I love it.”101 Celebrated TaikOz dancer Anton Lock said his best

96 He felt embarrassed making errors while drumming in Iwasaki in front of everyone waiting to dance. The Niwamoto (head of the group) repeatedly asked Cleworth to play from beginning to end, without explaining where or what the error was in a way Cleworth could grasp. Instead Niwamoto drummed a three minute sequence beginning to end, hoping Cleworth would absorb the lot. 97 Cleworth asked his co-founder Riley Lee for help, and Yoshikazu Fujimoto who had accompanied them to Iwasaki. Yoshikazu showed Cleworth a hand-written transcription in of vocables in katakana, from which Cleworth deduced a rhythmic pattern that broke the sense of metre Cleworth had imposed when listening. 98 Cleworth revealed, “The pattern is in what I would transcribe as 4/4, but in that section, the pattern knocks one beat off but just continues. So when one beat gets sliced off, the first beat changes... It’s exactly the same rhythm but displaced by one beat. That's looking at it from an intellectual perspective.” This device of 'knocking a beat off' is a common compositional technique used in taiko repertory to make 'simple' rhythmic phrases edgier, and while Cleworth already knew intellectually that this is a Japanese folk compositional technique, it was hard to conceive of in the moment of learning. After his 'eureka moment', Cleworth ruminated “There was a long process before I got it. And the process to get there was much better than the process of reading and understanding intellectually first.” 99 Cleworth learned the music using his body, his intuition and his intellect in such a way that ‘information passed through him’. His process of transformation imbued the knowledge with a value greater than the information inherently held. Cleworth now values his understanding because it was harder to arrive at. 100 Cleworth said “We actually give far more instruction in our classes than Japanese teachers would, both in terms of technique and in musical instruction, because their way is nearly always pure imitation. We give a lot of verbal explanation. We instill an intellectual appreciation of what's going on.” Ian Cleworth, conversational interview, September 8, 2010. 101 Kevin Man, quoted by Ian Cleworth Interview, July 12, 2013.

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‘taiko moments’ are associated with feelings of belonging, especially during Onikenbai.102

At first Onikenbai did not belong in the Synergy and TaikOz’s mission. A TaikOz Board Chair opposed its practice because it seemed contradictory to the ensemble’s role as purveyors of contemporary Australian music. Regardless that Onikenbai framed taiko as ancient and real by association, if TaikOz diluted their dominant message promoting taiko’s contemporaneousness, they could weaken their brand. Their investment of resources into this seemingly unrelated pursuit was challenged.103 Onikenbai could “Send conflicting messages… Is this demon thing actually traditional? Who is it all for?”104 Cleworth justified it to the board in terms of physical development – the dance would increase participants’ body awareness, instilling better rhythm, pulse and proprioception. This was not disputed but the question remained, why should TaikOz do Onikenbai or run a club (when they could physically train at gyms, or a specialist dance company might be better equipped to master these dances). Cleworth rationalised that TaikOz needed to continue growing their skills, and affirming public beliefs even when these beliefs were questionable. He said “When you don that costume and play the music it's unambiguously Japanese and a Buddhist tradition. So it has spiritual overtones. It screams that, but your average Australian audience has none of that depth of understanding. It doesn't mean anything to them.”105 Cleworth was battling his perennial marketing problem, one epitomised in the anecdote about 2013 Canberra International Music Festival previously.

Connecting: Sydney’s Onikenbai Club

In Iwasaki, during many study trips, TaikOz gained insights into the Japanese notion of a club. With approval, TaikOz started an Onikenbai club in Sydney. Early on, unlike regular TaikOz community classes, Onikenbai Club was free (no fees) to join. Membership was open to anyone currently paying to study wadaiko with TaikOz. It was advertised to “make you

102 Lock said “I connect with Onikenbai… Living in [multicultural] Sydney I often feel everyone that comes from somewhere else has a strong culture that they bring [and identify] with… and I often feel envious because I don't... I actually do. I really feel special every time I hear the opening introduction music to Onikenbai just before I'm about to dance.” Anton Lock, Email Questionnaire, November 15, 2010. 103 She suggested Onikenbai’s inclusion would be costly financially and logistically as the already limited dojo-timeslots (moments when noise was permissible and hence taiko training possible) would be reallocated to dance. Trips to Japan for multiple TaikOz members to study ‘appropriately’ would be an enormous outlay. 104 Ian Cleworrh, interview with the author, March 5, 2013. 105 Ibid.

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fitter and stronger… develop spatial awareness: it requires you to move freely within your position in a group.”106 I was a member of this club for several years, rehearsing on weekends.

In line with the notion of a club, there was no ‘teaching’ because no one had earned that title. To teach Onikenbai one needs authorisation from an original Onikenbai team, such as Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai, which can require a lifetime of study. In the beginning TaikOz members directed sessions or a student would coordinate, but everyone helped everyone else. Resources like DVDs and music-recordings were made available to members of the club for 'outside' practice. In conversation with Cleworth in March 2013, I expressed benefits for TaikOz’s school drummers, such as helping adult music-learners to conceptualise rhythm – to understand the space between time – to know to put their foot down later than they want to because that's where the drum beat falls. Cleworth responded: “Onikenbai brings enormous value to our school. More than twenty-five people do it; love it; get involved. That's reason enough.”107 I had focused on levelling-up my class-mates’ skills, by the standards of my Western rhythmic training, and Cleworth redirected me to see the Zen perfection in purely doing.

After a few months TaikOz introduced a fee for Onikenbai Club. They justified it by the little-known ancient Japanese master-student financial arrangement called orei, explained next. Participants remembered Iwasaki Onikenbai Hozonkai’s directive not to teach, and saw charging a fee as incongruous with ‘sharing’. Riley Lee was summoned to the club one Saturday morning to give a long inspirational speech that would endear everyone to pay for something they had until then received at no cost. Some define orei as ‘a gift of appreciation for a favour’ while others call it “sanctioned bribery.”108 Reverend Mas Gassho elucidates (emphases added):

The difference between membership-dues and the traditional system of orei? ...Is attitude. The character for rei was originally a pictograph of a man kneeling and placing an offering on a table. It is a word meaning: propriety, good manners, ceremony, politeness, thanks, acknowledgement… Orei is an expression of gratitude.

106 TaikOz community internal email, “Introducing Onikenbai Club,” February 7, 2011. 107 Ian Cleworth, conversational interview, September 8, 2010. 108 Wayne Muramoto, “Orei: Giving thanks or sanctioned bribery?” The Classic Budoka BLOG, 18 July 2012, https://classicbudoka.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/68-orei-giving-thanks-or-sanctioned-bribery, accessed May 22, 2016.

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Quite different in attitude is the payment of dues or fees. When one pays dues or fees, the natural question to ask is ‘What do I get for this?’ [Fees are] an agreement between giver and given, almost contractual. Orei is giving as an expression of thanks. There are no conditions placed on this giving.109

Cleworth explained “Onikenbai Club has been a new challenge because of the tradition itself. The goal is to show... It's on the understanding that we are not certified, we are not masters of anything.”110 He continued:

For me Onikenbai Club is really important to the community aspect of TaikOz. Riley was insistent that the concept of orei be observed. In some ways, Riley didn't really care what happened to the money after it had been received. The important part was people showing that gratitude. Money is a place-holder for value. It's symbolic. Riley has a very deep understanding of that concept. It was not a concept as well understood by the rest of us, so that's part of what he brings to the group.111 By my reckoning, respect and value in Sydney Onikenbai Club did not increase with the introduction of fees, and TaikOz members’ understanding of orei did not demonstrably change in the period following. A pseudo-spiritual device was used by TaikOz to authenticate their practice, their self-value, and to create a sense of exotic tradition.

One of TaikOz’s integral reasons for starting the club was to foster community, and it worked. Cleworth learnt from the Niwamoto (head) in Iwasaki that Onikenbai is more than a dance, and Onikenbai happens outside of performance or even practice. Onikenbai is just the medium through which people come together, be human in amity. Cleworth shared germane discernments from Iwasaki:

Niwamoto said to us ‘You can start an Onikenbai club in Australia, but professional performance is not the most important thing. The most important thing is people sharing and joining in’. In Iwasaki we had one really big party on the Saturday night and everyone had to get up and do something, perform, so there was a lot of silliness and carrying on. Everyone ended up dancing Onikenbai using chopstick or toothpicks as swords. At the same time that it was a bit silly, it was totally imbued with commitment and seriousness. You have fun with it but it’s deadly seriousness too.

109 Rev. Mas Gassho, “So what’s the difference between dues and Orei?” Prajna, 168:7 (2012): 2, www.senshintemple.org/prajna/Jul12Prajna.pdf, accessed May 22, 2016, 110 Ian Cleworth interview, July 17, 2013. 111 Ibid.

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Niwamoto was saying ‘that is Onikenbai’.112 Reinforcing the multiple spaces in which Onikenbai transpires, Cleworth learned more about its meaning: During the street festival, ‘that is Onikenbai’. When all twenty-one teams perform on one stage at the massive performance, ‘that is Onikenbai’. When we went to the local junior school and performed for the kids and they performed for us, ‘that was Onikenbai’. So, you can't say it's just this, or just that. It's not so confined. It has multiple expressions. And the festival, the two-day event is only 50 years old, but that's just another expression of that dance, I think. These are, again, my opinions that have not been taught to me, but that I have just picked up.113 Onikenbai then happens through the act of dancing, or coming together, and is not its form.

Onikenbai Community in Sydney

Most founding-students of Sydney’s Onikenbai Club were women by a ratio of 7:1, so we cheekily coined the portmanteau “onna-kenbai” (women's sword dance). Club members did bond in ways previously unthinkable within the TaikOz community. Alongside dance- sessions students initiated yoga, slack-lining and café lunch dates. A fledgling belly-dance troupe also emerged. Each of these expressions of physicality was about mateship as much as cross-training. Unlike Iwasaki’s many Onikenbai expressions, where a singular form of dance served many cultural/relational purposes, in Sydney many dances (or activities) strengthened Onikenbai collegiality: the one in many and many in one.

In its second year, Sydney Onikenbai Club expanded its repertoire from primary dance Ichiban-niwa to include Katana-gurui. Some members became so impassioned they made independent trips to Iwate for pleasure. Many group members purchased from Japan masks, costume parts, and imitation katana – stage swords without sharp blades – and amusingly, extreme caution was required while carrying these swords in public. Swords had to be bagged and disguised because New South Wales has strict laws about concealing weapons, even when they are fake. Once Anton Lock was practising peacefully in a public garden near his home and was tackled and arrested because someone had assumed he intended to harm other park-dwellers with his Buddhist dance.

112 Ian Cleworth in conversational interview, September 8, 2010. 113 Ibid.

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Conclusion

TaikOz have devoted themselves to authentic study of Onikenbai, and respectful relationships with its custodians, for which they have been rewarded through participation. A corollary between the vacillating state of the dancing demons and TaikOz appears when TaikOz fluctuate endlessly between doing, being, becoming, and belonging fully as taiko drummers and purveyors of Japanese traditional arts and their offshoots. TaikOz dance between being professional musicians, concert-hall players, humble students, art practitioners, Japanese culture-enthusiasts, corporate performing monkeys, Australians. The identities they construct always arise in action – whether in learning, in performing – but this self-building performativity seems to matter less to TaikOz than the performative processes enacted in being witnessed. Their witnesses render TaikOz passive, so TaikOz have said. And this loss of power accounts for why validation or authentication from outside themselves is attractive.

While TaikOz want validation that their chosen art is worthy, the authentication-stamp they seek cannot come from non-experts (like majority Australian audiences), or ‘by Japan’ because neither the whole population nor a single representative could be certified to give it. The affirmation TaikOz want, they believe can only come from a specific group of Japanese people doing a Japanese thing – it is the one in the many and many in the one, a sort of lived synecdoche. Because the appeal of art goes more directly into human nature, and morality is regulative but art creative, Zen finds its inevitable association with art but not with morality.114 Through their moral quest for authentication, TaikOz found an art of living, an art of community, an art of belonging, and an art of being. These art impulses have been more primitive and more innate than those of morality. And because Zen may remain unmoral but not without art, it might just apply.115

Reviewers of TaikOz cite Zen commonly, perhaps colloquially to mean calm, disciplined, otherworldly, relaxed, oriental or something else, rather than referring to the Japanese philosophy. Regardless, these constant assumptions have spurred investigation into origin myths about Onikenbai in the hope concrete links emerged. This has revealed overlapping and contradictory lore and interpretations which cite historic figures, Buddhist demons, and derivative myth. While these tie to Shugendō figure En no Gyōja, the dance cannot seem Zen.

114 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and its influence on Japanese culture, 21. 115 Ibid.

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TaikOz’s involvement with the collection of Onikenbai dances, and relationships with its traditional dancers, has challenged several aspects of the group. For example, it has tested their mission or purpose, their modes of learning and transmission, their beliefs about how traditional Japanese traditions are (this legitimately old practice recontextualises some taiko cultures that masquerade as ancient), their awareness of differences between what they perceive and project, their willingness to submit to the labels pinned to them. For TaikOz, doing Onikenbai affirms contemporary taiko mythology, and legitimises TaikOz as purveyors of musical culture that is perceived as Japanese, spiritual and historical. Through this process TaikOz have succeeded in their quest, obtaining something transformative that transcends affirmation.

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8: Ancient Drums, War and the Oldest Profession

Sex sells, weapons thrill and age matters. This chapter investigates public perception of taiko as ‘Japanese war drumming’ and how TaikOz passionately refute this association while capitalising on the misconception when financially expedient. It also scrutinises body fetishization, sexualisation of musicians and the marketable aspects that sell. Commercial factors that impact TaikOz’s acceptance of this military myth are explored through discussion of TaikOz’s 2013 performances in the Middle East, told from participants’ and administrators’ perspectives. This research aims to explain who TaikOz are by investigating what they do. An apparently simple inquiry, this reveals entanglements of motives and identifications.

First this chapter considers war myths in taiko discourse. Second Australian media talks about taiko and war, showing tendencies to link drumming with the ritualised violence of sport. Third I recount a TaikOz performance in Abu Dhabi where musicians were hired to ‘look Asian’ at an international arms fair. This anecdote allows for discussion of commercial realities that capture TaikOz in cycles of misrepresentation then explanation. Fourth, I present further quotations from Australian media to show how body fetishization, sex appeal, sport, martial arts and war discourses have failed to evolve over TaikOz’s twenty-year career, even when TaikOz members have redirected interviewers. I conclude that TaikOz may not easily ‘correct’ their public persona given their inconsistent presentations through incongruous commercial projects.

War Myths Throughout this thesis I have evidenced mythology about taiko’s age and historic purposes. Taiko specialist Paul Yoon wrote for Grove Music in 2014 (the first entry on the topic):

The taiko is variously spoken of as an instrument once used in Japan to drive away pests or for encouraging troops engaged in battle. Village boundaries were said to be demarcated by the point at which one could no longer hear the taiko... These statements, whether history or fable, offer important characterizations about the taiko that remain true today... It is also closely associated with community… Increasingly,

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1 taiko is being paired with other musical genres.

Yoon’s overview expresses the lack of evidence about antiquity and suggests that links between history and mythology are not causal. Instead, what matters in taiko communities, is constant innovation and recognition of different musical purposes.

A connection between drumming and war of the West is well established in colonial memory and literature, as in ‘Marching to the drums: a history of military drums and drummers’ by John Norris,2 though I focus exclusively on taiko. Taiko researcher Shawn Bender devoted an entire chapter of Taiko Boom: Drumming in Place and Motion to unravelling the misconstrued war myth.3 He found during Japanese fieldwork with taiko groups that “none of the amateur or professional taiko players with whom I initially spoke located the goals or the origin of their performance in military activities or interpreted them as martial. In fact, most expressed surprise at the suggestion of such a connection.”4

Most cursory internet searches about taiko will, within the first paragraphs, mention militarism, though increasingly this is contextualised as ‘a precursor’ to contemporary taiko.5 Actually, the war most oft mentioned in recent taiko scholarship is World War II because the contemporary taiko genre emerged post defeat, as Japan directed former military might into cultural pursuits and identity construction.6 Bender unveils intricate contradictions within Japanese ‘war taiko’ discourse that I do not cover extensively, given his publication.7 I observe instances of military and martial arts associations made by Australian media in TaikOz reviews to demonstrate that, while baseless, these associations are unquestioned and accepted by witnesses.

1 Paul Yoon, “Taiko,” The Grove Dictionary of American Music, published January 31, 2014, accessed March 17, 2017. 2 John Norris, Marching to the Drums: a history of military drums and drummers. Stroud: Spellmount, 2012. 3 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 173. 4 Ibid. 5 “Centuries ago, taiko was used predominantly in the military arena.” Stanford Taiko, https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordtaiko/cgi-bin/history html, accessed February 21, 2020; Wikipedia “Taiko: Use in Warfare” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko#Use in warfare, accessed February 21, 2020. 6 “The development of wadaiko into a performance-art rather than a religious rite occurred largely in the post war period. Japan was undergoing a cultural resurgence focusing on the unique and beautiful aspects of Japanese culture rather than the previous focus on military power… Much of the movement and form used in wadaiko is drawn from the martial arts, festival dances and movements of everyday life, such as planting rice, hauling fishing nets, pushing a cart, bowing in prayer.” Stonewave Taiko website, https://stonewavetaiko.com/about-stonewave/what-is-taiko/, accessed February 21, 2020. 7 Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 2012.

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Bender's chapter on militarism explains that a push towards a cohesive origin myth for taiko was driven by those with “ideological attitudes toward Japanese culture, who [saw] Japan's martial past in contemporary taiko.”8 However well-intentioned this centralising process (conveniently right at the point of accelerating globalisation), drumming lifted from particular places was set in motion, re-contextualised. This transformed local distinction into variation, and distilled idiosyncratic playing styles into generic patterns onto which military myth could be placed.9 As the local was made universal, the specific came to stand for the generic (and vice versa). Bender’s quest for military narrative-history inquired into Nippon Taiko Foundation, the organisation that published stories of taiko's origins to legitimise taiko as a commodifiable and exportable performance art in late twentieth century Japan.10 The foundation drew on stories from parties including Oguchi Daihachi, who claimed his form of kumi-daiko was inspired by sixteenth-century martial music played to commemorate the soldiers who had been killed. Bender found, however, no evidence that a linear tradition was sustained for four and a half centuries, and Oguchi himself claimed to ‘compose’ the piece 11 that his group named after these warriors.

The origin story of war taiko tends to be obscured when TaikOz (or other contemporary performance groups) attempt similar transformations to those made by figures such as Oguchi Daihachi. TaikOz feel they are judged differently to innovators like him, or Kodo. This double-standard renders TaikOz as imitators or appropriators while reserving ‘purity and authenticity’ rhetoric for an illusory original that inspired Japan’s twentieth century revitalists. Although post-modernist attitudes to originlessness prevail in our digital-lives, TaikOz continue to feel umpired by formal and modernistic configurations. When TaikOz reject war myths, they seem to be obfuscating ‘obvious’ history, and become post-colonial thieves synthesising foreign material without conscience. Meanwhile, when they advantage by war myths they are simply late-capitalists. TaikOz feel that when Japanese taiko players enact the same processes, less judgement is read into interpretations of those groups’ intentions.

8 Ibid., 170. 9 Ibid., 170-179. 10 Ibid., 170. 11 Ibid., 171.

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By collating anecdotal evidence from local sources, my research claims taiko discourse often does not match taiko in action. In the absence of formal or quantitative data, my use of stories conforms to the medium with which taiko generates meaning – mythology. Witnesses draw correlations between taiko, sport, art and unrelated entertainment. Themes of sensitivity, misinformation, cultural policy, bigotry and racism emerge. I tease out examples where team- mentality, and ‘being guns for hire’ devalue TaikOz members’ spirits.

Australians versus war-drums Bender’s war chapter quoted an Australian media example where a traumatised veteran saw taiko performers’ tabi (toe-separated indoor slippers) and related these with enemy combatants’, saying menacingly, “I’ve seen those shoes before.”12 This anguished witness saw a memory in the present, and his association arguably coloured his reception of taiko. In 1999 the opening ceremony of Melbourne Festival was to be held at the Shrine of Remembrance, but was cancelled after veterans’ groups complained about the planned use of taiko drums in the event. The Australian (newspaper) evocatively titled “Veterans win fight to silence drums of war,” relayed:

The drums, which were once used to welcome home Samurai warriors, were scheduled to lead the crowd from the shrine to the arts centre... But festival organisers scrapped the ceremony yesterday only hours after Prime Minister John Howard waded into the debate, saying he ‘didn't think shrines should be used for anything 13 other than remembering the dead’.

This instance raises questions about legitimate ways to commemorate the past, and particularly how to honour deaths in the name of nationalism. Music’s role in these socio- political transactions does not seem to relate to sound or aesthetics so much as what that music has come to represent for some witnesses. The opening ceremony’s artistic director had not intended to distress any party with her planned entertainment. It was set to feature an 800-voice children's choir, bag-pipers, Australian military bands and buglers. Pains were taken to represent a majority of the community in the ceremony's program. Had a Japanese element been omitted altogether, the public uproar for skewed representation might also have been loud.14 Her inclusion of Japanese Australia Professional Exchange Program (JAPEP)

12 Veteran quoted in Shawn Bender, Taiko Boom, 173. 13 Misha Schubert, “Veterans win fight to silence drums of war.” The Australian, August 7, 1999, 5. 14 Ibid.

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Wadaiko Drummers caused the controversy - a group of forty taiko drummers, thirty Australians and ten Japanese participants. JAPEP Wadaiko Drummers’ manager said the group was very disappointed to miss out:

It was just a shock when I heard them on talkback radio describing our taiko as war drums because traditionally taiko have been used for festivals and ceremonies... I do sympathise with the former Prisoners of War, it's a very emotive issue, but these drummers aren’t from the armed forces, they are musicians... I don’t want any part of our community to feel upset about this... [The proposed event] was about 15 reconciliation and the future.

This public division within the 1999 Melbourne community points to reticent racism that appears to derive from the memory of long-past war-time adversaries, but also to the ways Australians commemorate some Anzac stories, some Anzac cultures, and not others.16 Importantly, it is the framing of taiko as war drums and Japanese that makes the instruments unsuitable, though these two premises are both retrospectively attributed and misrepresentative. Several cultural territories intersect here: war memory, musical discourse and public ritual each rely on their respective norms and standards, and each dictates the levels of nationalistic and iconic representation permissible at such an Australian civic event. Given my account does not belong to any of these parties, tidy consensus of categorisation is not my goal.

Playing with war myths At several points in my taiko playing, fieldwork and academic research, people have asked about the connection between contemporary taiko and Japanese war drums as though the connection between these was important and widely known. While literature mentioning this connection abounds, evidence that militarism influences contemporary taiko directly is sparse. Assumptions or associations of war are ubiquitous – just as children ‘play with’ noisy pots and pans (rather than sonically fight), the taiko community play with (and on) the idea that taiko is somehow representative of combat. Now that the sound and sight of taiko yields this public imagination, proponents of taiko play and fight with these visions.

15 Sue Nattrass, quoted in “Veterans win fight to silence drums of war,” 5. 16 Alistair Thomson, ANZAC Memories: Living with the Legend. Melbourne, Monash University Press: 2013.

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While taiko drummers worldwide espouse and refute war myths, for many groups war myths are detrimental because they detract from spirituality associated with taiko’s place in Japanese belief-systems and culture. Yet war associations benefit many taiko drummers even here in Australia, TaikOz included, especially in conjunction with sports. Australia's National Rugby League (NRL) employs drummers of various denominations to drum rugby players onto the field at significant matches. Drums are specifically chosen to reinforce the warlike association of competition. ‘Aussie Rules’ (AFL) Richmond Football Club in Victoria has a similar culture, engaging with Wadaiko Rindo routinely.17 Several taiko troupes in Australia drum at such games, as discussed in Chapter 2.

In 2015 TaikOz and affiliates drummed at the NRL State of Origin in warlike configuration. Footage is available on YouTube, “State Of Origin Intro - The Rock - Drums - We Can't Be Beaten - 2015 Game” at 2:30 minutes.18 The drummers, though miked, look and sound tiny in the stadium’s grassy void. Drummers’ faces are painted blue or maroon to correspond with the opposing sporting teams; they play katsugi-okedo in a squatting stance reminiscent of a hakka (a common sight at New Zealand rugby matches). They bang out simple antiphonal passages with mounting energy. It does not look like TaikOz's usual artistic output, nor like kumi-daiko, it is like a conversational battle. It appears ‘invented by committee’ according to a client’s brief. Though performed well, it is not engaging like regular TaikOz repertory.

When TaikOz capitalise on war associations, whether in the sporting arena or at a

17 Alex Darling, “Of Tiger lovers and Taiko drummers,” The Footy Almanac, May 15, 2016, www footyalmanac.com.au/of-tiger-lovers-and-taiko-drummers, accessed February 15, 2020. “The players step onto the MCG and assume their positions. From the very beginning, they captivate fans through their powerful attack, majestic movements and disciplined, cohesive playing as a team. And the match hasn’t even started yet. Wadaiko Rindo have been electrifying Richmond home game crowds with their brief yet mighty pre-match performances… Taiko drumming originated as an art form some 1400 years ago in Japan. Used at religious ceremonies and on the battlefield, it set a marching pace for warriors, motivated them and struck fear into the hearts of their opponents… The Richmond/Rindo connection began in 2013. “I don’t know how they heard about us or why they were interested,” Toshi says… The Tiger’s marketing department recruited [Rindo] to emphasise the tribal feeling of the club’s fan base… But if a Taiko ensemble in full flight is visually striking, their sound is even more impressive. The “BOM-bom-bom-bom” beat hits your ears and body like a passing freight train… [After] the thunderous noise finally subsides, it’s replaced with the sound of long, rasping gulps of air, as the visibly exhausted drummers retire to the floor. Like the footballers they introduce, these players train hard to be ready for the MCG stage. Perhaps this athletic angle is what has allowed native Japanese drumming to thrive within the context of native Australian sport, when it’s such an unlikely combination on paper… Taiko drumming evokes passion and solidarity among its partakers.” 18 Promotional video available on YouTube (NRL: Sydney), “State Of Origin Intro - The Rock - Drums - We Can't Be Beaten - 2015 Game.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgksCn-thIs, accessed July 12, 2015.

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professional performance, their appropriations are often treated as insults upon, or departures from, a genre that is falsely imagined to be whole, unified, definable and verifiably old. I do not mean to justify TaikOz’s exploitation of the war myth by demonstrating how others have done the same, but instead hope to show reasons why TaikOz debunk this myth at every opportunity in their quest to produce an artful version of taiko – one they believe derives from a solemn lineage of cultural expressions (that is not necessarily Japanese or old) – and yet they simultaneously choose to profit from this popular misconception in exceptional circumstances. The mercenary, the meretricious and the merited: some TaikOz gigs are for money, some are for others, and some are for art.

The Mercenary Certain TaikOz gigs are about producing art now while others finance future art. Data about TaikOz’s income ratios from public funding (grants), corporate shows, main-stage performances and education programs are publicly available via annual reports online. I have assessed these, but instead of presenting those here, I prioritise accounts from TaikOz, their business team and community. TaikOz’s General Manager at the time of their Abu Dhabi arms fair performance, David Sidebottom, described the group’s versatility:

We offer two or three similar programs as corporate gigs. For example a drum fanfare [to open] a conference. It’s 5-10 minutes to give it that oumph, that wow factor. It could be a Mercedes showroom, at Dalton House [heritage building] on the water, or at Darling Harbour [entertainment precinct], [or] a dinner with an interval. It's tied to how much money and how many performers. In terms of business development, it's my role to focus on major performances. [Another staff does] the education programs and corporate programs. She develops those markets and responds to queries and 'closes the deal'. Availability, program, budget, whatever.

Sidebottom explained how TaikOz’s corporate appearances affect their concert stage impact: It's not a core element artistically that we should do corporate performances but it is audience building. It taps us into new communities that may never have considered coming to a TaikOz concert. It generates a little bit of income for the company and a 19 more regular income for the performers as well. While TaikOz’s organisation identify as artists, their business operates as entertainers too.

19 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013.

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In 2013 TaikOz accepted an invitation to perform in Abu Dhabi at ‘a conference’ which was later revealed to be the world’s largest arms fair, the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, IDEX. There TaikOz’s daily outdoor arena performances were set to the backdrop of armed vehicles jumping and looping in a dust-pit and fighter planes zooming acrobatically low overhead. TaikOz’s performances were dwarfed by the scale and noise of the motorised displays. One participant shared, “In Abu Dhabi Ian [Cleworth] told us: ‘If you make a mistake, don't worry about it, just try not to make the same mistake tomorrow. It's not like you're the aerobatic team’.”20 This musical encounter proved TaikOz’s great adaptability but also exemplified the futility of their efforts. From the audience’s view in the grandstands, drummers’ bodies were not easily visible, but were projected on screens.21 Despite the screened close-ups TaikOz were not so captivating given the scale and distance of the artillery. Relative to the action beyond, organic bodily exertion seemed insignificant. Taiko is impressive at close range, where the viewer can empathise with performers’ physicality. Like military pawns, TaikOz expended themselves in sonic combat with unbeatable adversaries.

Some TaikOz members objected to the arms fair on ethical, not aesthetic, grounds. While financial pressure forced their acceptance, TaikOz concealed their involvement to their community and public initially. Participants at Abu Dhabi were given the directive not to post photographs of taiko with tanks or any other weaponry on social media, though they could post pictures of camels and desert-clothing. TaikOz were concerned with potential reputational damage the performance might cause among Japanese mentors and colleagues. A participant explained:

TaikOz were afraid of offending the people in Japan who had taught them – people like Kodo and Eitetsu [Hayashi] – for projecting the taiko as a war drum. Taiko is so far from that in so many respects, it's really a sacred thing. Even though it has been used in warfare, that's not its main purpose. That image has been projected on it. Ian [Cleworth] didn't want to damage any ties he had with his Japanese mentors. I think that's a very important value to uphold. You could say that omitting pictures of taiko with tanks is ‘hiding what happened’, but more than that, I think it was a gesture of

20 Cleworth quoted in anonymous interview, July 29, 2013. 21 “Taiko Beats, IDEX Fair 2013,” YouTube, published February 20, 2013, accessed June 25, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPzYpYk4JDE.

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respect for the instruments and their traditions.22

This interviewee believes taiko is Japanese, is spiritual for its enthusiasts, is venerated and protected by stage performers like those stars who first recontextualised taiko for international audiences, and that continuing a contemporary culture of respect for the new tradition is a worthy pursuit.

Like many in TaikOz's community, I was invited to perform in Abu Dhabi. Cleworth phoned me and explained the preliminary booking: for a large group of drummers, around twenty, who would perform at a convention each day for a week. Another phone call brought further information: the client called for ‘war drummers’ of which more than half must ‘look Asian’. On these grounds, I declined the invitation to perform. A group of TaikOz associates was amassed, some ‘Asian-looking’ players drawn from interstate, and away they went. Afterwards I interviewed several participants, some members of the TaikOz community who had declined to perform, and some who were not directly involved but cared to comment.

After this performance, my interview with David Sidebottom also contextualised how the gig came to TaikOz, how TaikOz were received, and generally how the experience went in personal, artistic and business terms. Sidebottom explained “A business development network [agent] we did a small corporate gig for quite some time ago suggested the gig to us. Initially he said ‘it's modelled on the Edinburgh Tattoo’. It's in an arena and different groups will come in, do a thing and leave the arena. That sounded doable for TaikOz.”23 After many conversations it crystallised that it was for the largest armament trade exhibition and conference in the world. Sidebottom said:

Defence organisations and weapons systems manufacturers [were] buying and selling. As soon as I found out who the organisation was I immediately informed the performers saying, ‘This is the client. If anyone has a problem with it please tell me now so we can make other arrangements.’ All along I discussed with Ian [Cleworth] whether he would support it. He had personal reservations about the organisation, but so far we have never really discriminated against an audience or client, and that set a precedent that everybody was uncomfortable with. So we opened the choice up to

22 Anonymous Abu Dhabi participant, personal communications, July 29, 2013. 23 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013.

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24 individual performers. Anton [Lock] declined on ethical grounds.

For five days TaikOz performed a four-minute set in the arena before a tank demonstration. Sidebottom, focusing on the positives, stressed, “It was a commercial gig, fully funded by the client. We got no grant funding, not even for transport. It created a great opportunity: Ian [Cleworth] wrote a new piece that we can use in our repertoire.”25 The piece Cleworth composed for this illustrious gig had been an etude previously taught at a TaikOz Intensive Summer Camp. It very closely resembles two other works by Cleworth, so the 12/8 pulse and resultant rhythmic idiom were familiar to many of the students-cum-Arab-superstars. Sidebottom insisted upon IDEX’s value to TaikOz: “It gave us repertoire, money, more experience for the players in a different environment: several associate players were involved, so the more advanced players from the school felt included.”26 And regarding future business: “The client was very happy so we're looking at future opportunities back in that environment again. Maybe not at armament shows, but there are other trade fairs in the Middle East like that, and in Asia. There’s a commercial network.”27 To my knowledge, no commercial networking advantage has come of TaikOz’s IDEX opportunity.

David Sidebottom had not found the unofficial YouTube footage of TaikOz at IDEX Fair when we talked. He was surprised, and requested to see a link.28 I pointed out the voice-over as TaikOz entered saying ‘taiko is war drumming from Japan’ and other sensationalised factoids.29 These descriptions contradict TaikOz's mission and selfhood. Plenty of taiko groups in the world who ‘look Asian’ do embody such myths, so TaikOz’s selection was surprising. TaikOz were invited instead for their contacts, professionalism and visibility. The myths TaikOz attempt to dispel in Australia were precisely those they accepted and benefited from in Abu Dhabi. When asked whether TaikOz would have accepted a similar gig in Australia, Sidebottom sidestepped: Well, it was that context... We gave a briefing and it was a line... I got an email from Australian [diplomats who] would be there… and they were very supportive. Another

24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 “Taiko Beats, IDEX Fair 2013,” published February 20, 2013, accessed June 25, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPzYpYk4JDE. 29 David Sidebottom, interview with the author, June 16, 2013.

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email [came] from the Australian Consular General saying that [the voiceover did not] mention TaikOz are Australian so I immediately requested that... We always try to have sign-off on printed material but it's harder to control audio. But this Abu Dhabi 26 gig wasn't a full-on performance. It was more of a demonstration.

A demonstration of what precisely? It was not a performance of ‘TaikOz’, but a collection of drummers working according to a brief. Sidebottom concurred and recontextualised:

If Ian's happy with it, then I am. It does not show the ethic of TaikOz but it's another example of the breadth of TaikOz's flexibility. What's the difference between that and going to Folk Festivals where people are drinking and taking drugs? I think so long as TaikOz are engaging with an audience, I don't have a problem with it. If that builds the audience so eventually we can put on a full theatre show in Dubai, then it has served its purpose. If one is strict as says ‘we don't do that type of thing’, then that's 30 not the commercial reality of artists.

Indeed by Sidebottom's reckoning, the commercial reality of artists is innocuous prostitution.

TaikOz run a Sydney taiko school that encourages community engagement. Consequently, fans and participants emotionally invest in the group and form strong opinions about its presentation. I relayed some students’ concerns regarding integrity to Sidebottom. Many of my informants were pleased that TaikOz does not regularly ‘sell out’ ideologically by putting on flashy shows to fill concert halls. Fans recognise that TaikOz generally stick to a multifaceted but consistent self-image. TaikOz’s community largely perceived the Abu Dhabi gig as an incongruous and hush-hush money-spinner. Sidebottom responded:

Those commercial gigs are the reality. From the musician's perspective, we're constantly reminded that [TaikOz players] are freelance. This generates business development and funds for the company so we can give [players] some sort of measured guarantee for basic income. We have to have gigs. It's unrealistic to say someone is going to give you a living salary with only a very niche type of gig and only an artistic thing. It's not the real world. So if you want the company to support you on a more permanent basis, where most of your income comes from TaikOz then that's all part of it. Australia is a very small market. We cannot do every week a

30 Ibid.

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TaikOz gig and expect to fill a concert hall in Sydney. We have to broaden out. It's the current business plan.31

Sidebottom’s comments regarding support for musicians led me to investigate TaikOz’s finances via public documents. I studied government grants TaikOz received and TaikOz’s annual reports which broke down capital-streams and spending. Research supported comments of one Abu Dhabi performer who told me musicians were not paid a wage.32 At IDEX, TaikOz members who performed may have been paid as usually contracted, but guests from TaikOz’s extended community who took time away from their careers and lives to participate in Abu Dhabi were paid nothing to perform, though all costs for the trip were covered.

Back in Australia, only the artistic directors of TaikOz and Synergy received wages – the other performers earned money by teaching weekly classes and taking on casual performance bookings. Members of TaikOz indicated non-verbally in our interviews that money was off- topic, so I did not ask them and instead ascertained this information from public documents. TaikOz drummers at this time were paid per performance, while administrative staff held waged positions, which was the condition of TaikOz’s grant allocations. TaikOz commissioned composers from time to time, but did not pay TaikOz members to compose, though composing members of TaikOz did receive royalties when their pieces were performed in alignment with AMCOS and APRA conventions.33 This may have psychologically effected TaikOz performers who were told by their own management that their profession should not afford them a living. Resultant unspoken shame of pursuing a no- win profession might further have contributed to complacency that the deal they currently received was adequate. They appeared grateful to perform as ‘war- drummers’ for a weaponry fair (and rugby match) because the financial transactions affirmed their performerhood in an organisation that paid them only for this status.

TaikOz’s ‘dirty secret’ IDEX gig speaks volumes about the health of Australia’s commercial music scene. Their exuberant and professional performance in Abu Dhabi was cocky and

31 Ibid. 32 Anonymous Informant, personal interview, October 24, 2013. 33 Ibid.

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defiant, almost foreshadowing an inevitable demise (commercially, and in competition with all other attention sinks). They made a powerful statement by dancing before an industry that seems a last resort for patronage. TaikOz were not overtly protesting war by extracting money from the IDEX Fair, but they did war against the arts-industry precisely by taking privatisation’s bait. The very things that could undermine their commercial future – performing a sub-standard version of themselves to please an ill-informed patron – brought them immediate relief with unavoidable yet remarkable short-sightedness. Their choice to accept this income did not, to my knowledge, cause changes to the grant funding TaikOz received from federal or state governments, though these have virtually evaporated in subsequent years.34 TaikOz were dissatisfied with explanations why they should no longer be eligible for triennial funding, previously awarded to TaikOz and Synergy to excellent acquittal records.35 TaikOz are not alone in this shift of public funding; they share the plight with organisations across sectors including arts, environment, higher education, health and more.

Money talks My concern to produce a holistic account of TaikOz’s position and traits has led me to investigate ways TaikOz members feel about their profession, how they interact with their management, how they perform their roles as musicians, how their fans perceive them, how their community engages, and what the results of these multiple processes have on identity construction and musical consummation. While TaikOz’s General Manager focused on commercial gigs and their impact on the organisation, some TaikOz fans were concerned about the brand’s integrity which was so dependent on government funds. A TaikOz

34 Kanika Sood, “One year after OzCo bloodbath, how are arts groups surviving?” Crikey Daily Review, May 11, 2017. Sood reported: “The Australia Council had to turn away more than 100 arts organisations in May [2016], after the federal government slashed OzCo’s funding… Arts organisations are still reeling from the impact… Coalition was hacking $104.8 million off OzCo over the next four years… Working from a shrunken budget, the Australia Council had to reject 138 of the 262 applications… Sydney-based music ensemble Taikoz received operational money from the Australia Council for more than a decade. Its grant had grown over the years and stood at $253,000, accounting for 20% of the organisation’s income, when it was axed last year. Taikoz general manager Lee McIver says the group has gone from employing 11 staff members last year to the equivalent of just 1.7 employees, none working full time… Taikoz had a full season last year with 29 main-stage performances (concert and theatre), but this year, it plans on just five... Taikoz is operating [without] a rehearsal space… Staff cuts and shrinking resources have meant the organisations’ output has suffered.” 35 Deborah Stone, “65 arts organisations lose funding from Australia Council,” Arts Hub, May 13, 2016, https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/deborah-stone/65-arts-organisations- lose-funding-from-australia-council-251271, accessed March 1, 2020.

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community member spoke in late 2013 about the impression TaikOz gave fans regarding grants, private gigs and their clear exposition of their mission:

They can't escape politics so long as a lot of their funding comes from government sources. So long as the tax-payer is paying for it... and ticket purchasers pay twice! It can't be about sending off the right forms and the money coming in. Surely you need to look at how your group operates in public and how these political and financial relationships define your art. Yet, a commission was put in to go and play an arms- show in Abu Dhabi and it was done. Very few [TaikOz affiliates who were invited] didn't go. TaikOz took a lot of people who were not really even drummers to fill up numbers just because they ‘look Asian’. [Some] didn't have the qualms I had. In the end some [participants] regretted taking time off work to play such a high-profile gig 36 for no pay. Those guest players who TaikOz had invited to increase their numbers and ‘Asian quotient’ were not paid to perform in Abu Dhabi, despite TaikOz receiving generous payment from the client. These guests sacrificed their regular income and routines to support TaikOz. Their basic travel costs were covered, but they received no fee for war drumming. It was put down as ‘an experience’. This exemplifies how TaikOz erode their own foundations, by alienating their most devoted fans and acolytes – their most committed financial supporters (even if at a lower threshold than corporate clients) – right at the juncture where community could be built. TaikOz’s ‘Asian looking’ guests agreed to these terms of engagement, admittedly, but the TaikOz brand could have presented more ethical provisions.

That informant later admitted bitterness at declining the invitation, saying “I may always have regrets about not doing it, because as it has turned out, it was probably my only chance to play a mainstage show with TaikOz, which was the carrot for IDP [Individual/Independent Development Program scholarship offered by TaikOz to 3 or 4 students each year].”37 For this informant, musical achievement should come in measurable increments and progressions. This player was upset that spending thousands of dollars to work through the TaikOz School ranks into the IDP scholarship program had led nowhere, with no regular outlet for those cultivated skills. That predicament has befallen many TaikOz students, and also contributes to TaikOz’s diminishing community base.

36 Anonymous Informant, personal interview, October 25, 2013. 37 Ibid.

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Financial pressures have likewise led to personnel changes of TaikOz in recent years, where core members from the past fifteen years have left or casualised so as to secure their incomes outside the TaikOz brand. The dissatisfactions expressed about unmet expectations, financial outlay or job insecurity are not exclusive problems of TaikOz or indeed Australian musical organisations, so my account merely documents TaikOz’s engagement with the problems. Rather, these frustrations are indicative of changing entertainment cultures and markets, consumer priorities and behaviours. The Abu Dhabi IDEX example does exemplify disjuncture within TaikOz branding, however, and disunion between TaikOz performing artists’ culture and the separate culture found in TaikOz’s school. For TaikOz these rifts weaken internal culture and futurity of the organisation in both realms – performing and teaching.

The Meretricious TaikOz can appear to media to allure by flashy spectacle; to be drumming based on Japanese pretence, or cultural insincerity; and to be selling something that does not quite pertain to them. Similar to militarism and claims to antiquity, also martial arts are assumed by many to be incorporated into taiko. Martial associations are frequently attached to TaikOz in Australian media. While members adamantly refute these connections, many taiko players are martial artists and the two broad disciplines share traits. The following pages provide pronounced examples of media discourse insinuating TaikOz are martial, military or overtly physical as well as evidence that these claims are only partially true. These excerpts are ordered vaguely chronologically to demonstrate lack of evolution in discourse. Emphases have been added to highlight sexualisation, cultural assumptions and themes already noted.

One year after forming TaikOz, a 1998 reviewer told how exotic TaikOz and their Japanese- instrumentalist colleagues seemed then:

Monochrome by Maki Ishii [was] a marvellous exhibition… Hard-core drumming was leavened with a koto solo [which] seemed quite out of place… Guitar-like shamisen sounded almost like Japanese country-and-western... Two Australian pieces: David Hewitt's ‘Knots’ and Ian Cleworth's ‘Kenjo’ [impressed with] physical display as the players attacked the drums… [With] grace and athleticism… hand and drumstick seem[ed] almost to melt into each other in a perfect synergy of man and

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38 instrument.” This ‘synergy of person and weapon’ has strong martial implications. In 2000 Financial Times reported on “high-octane yuppie music for the politically correct… TaikOz bash their battery of instruments hard… physical enough to qualify as sport.”39 Another reviewer in 2002 called TaikOz: ‘The Seven Samurai of Drumming’. Half music and half martial art, this is music of such visceral power that you can feel your liver jumping to the beat… [They] conjure miracles of tonal variation and pitch control, even when leaping acrobatically around the stage... [It is] head-banging music, pounding relentlessly on enormous drums with sticks [like] baguettes to baseball bats… Physical-theatre [meets] music.40 A 2003 review labelled TaikOz spunkier than rock-stars: “Players happily [fling] themselves at Japanese drums... a highly physical art.”41 Folks salivated according to The Herald-Sun: “Is it all about – yum, oh yum – muscles? The exquisite definition of these musicians has Musica Viva drooling in a most uncerebral way. The fitness, the concentration of devout meditation gurus… Oh, and the bodies of gods!”42 TaikOz know the gravity of sex and, without exploiting it, costume appropriately, wearing haragake (workmen's aprons) to show skin and move freely.

Courier Mail said TaikOz's strenuous techniques gave off a ferociously ritualistic feel.43 Reviewer James Harper wrote, “TaikOz have cheered up... Gone is the stiff, karate-class seriousness, replaced with an unashamed enthusiasm and energy that makes for a far more engaging performance.”44 He compared TaikOz to the ‘all-singing, all-dancing, all- drumming’ Aly N'Diaye Rose and family from Senegal and jibed, “TaikOz's movement, while energetic, is designed for military precision.”45 In 2004, TaikOz toured with Wadaiko Matsumura-gumi troupe from Japan. Brisbane’s Courier Mail rehashed: “More than just about hitting drums, [power and grace] place taiko-players in the grey area somewhere

38 Laurie Strachan. “Power play Japan-style.” The Australian, January 21, 1998. 39 Shirley Apthorp, “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo - Multiculturalism is alive in Australia,” Financial Times, March 1, 2000: 9. 40 Stephen Whittington, et al., “Fringe.” Adelaide Advertiser, February 27, 2002: 109. 41 Deborah Jones, TaikOz Live at Angel Place DVD review, The Weekend Australian, October 25-26, 2003. 42 Barclay, Alison. “Thunder out of the East.” Herald-Sun, October 17, 2003: 93. 43 James Harper, “The Big Percussion Concert.” Courier Mail, July 24, 2003: 19. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

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between dancers, martial artists and musicians.”46 When TaikOz collaborated with iaido (Japanese way of harmonising oneself in action, often manifested as 'the art of drawing a sword') master Takagi Tesshu in 2004, a clever reviewer noted “Zen is mightier than the sword... TaikOz merges art and action in a Japanese-Australian fusion... The sword-master practices mushintodo, a Japanese art that combines Zen meditation with combat techniques. Dating back 450 years, it was developed as a samurai defensive practice.”47 In this case, a real martial association existed, but sword wielding is not taiko.

Drum-Tao,48 a sensationalised Japanese taiko outfit that tours internationally, use the bi-line ‘Drum-Tao: the Martial Art of Noise’, and claim to “harness energy and transmit it.”49 On Australia tour in 2006 they brought “new life to an ancient form [with] martial arts-style choreography,” member Yoshinori Suito told.50 Drum-Tao succinctly specified taiko looks like martial arts but is not, by employing ‘-style’. Also in 2006, TaikOz participated in Andrea Molino’s Winners project which “[began] noisily enough. The tutti orchestra and TaikOz drummers beat out a martial rhythm, [while] military strategy [was] projected onto a vast screen.”51 In this instance, rhythms acquired martial qualities via pairing with violent images.

After eleven years consistently presenting taiko in Australia, in 2007 TaikOz reviews still focused on anything but their music. The Advertiser wrote that TaikOz blur the boundaries of ‘art music’: Elite gymnast agility. Sprinter speed. Tae Kwondo legs-akimbo stance, gorilla arms… Instead of the smooth, polite, refined fare of Musica Viva's monkey-suited standard string quartets… Seven lean and lithe, barely black-clad bodies created a visual and aural riot out of the most primitive of all noise makers… drums [hit] with precision.52 The same newspaper featured an interview based article, ‘Marching to beat of their own drum’, in which Cleworth told writer Nunn, “I'd like to stress it’s not just loud, pounding

46 Mark Bretherton, “All the grace of a sonic boom.” The Courier-Mail, October 25, 2004: 15. 47 “Drumming up a response with a fusion of art and action.” Sydney Morning Herald, October 7, 2004. 48 Drum Tao website, www.drum-tao.com/main/english, accessed March 1, 2020. 49 “Big beat on taiko track.” The Canberra Times, August 22, 2006: 8. 50 Yoshinori Suito quoted in “Big beat on taiko track.” The Canberra Times, August 22, 2006: 8. 51 Matthew Westwood, “Multimedia forces battle futility of war.” The Australian, July 25, 2006: 15. 52 Elizabeth Silsbury, “Powerful physical riot.” The Advertiser, April 23, 2007: 64.

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drums… our programs are very well balanced.”53 She interpreted, “People tend to associate the Japanese art of taiko drumming with muscle-bound musicians making lots of noise [but] it doesn't have to be that way.”54

In 2009 Sunday Telegraph reported on an amateur training session:

Modern taiko [is] as much physical exercise as it is music… A personal challenge, but a team effort, an exercise in harmony rather than competition… We mime our routine from a wide, low, iron-buttocks stance. It's not all about the arms – in fact, most seasoned [players] have the taut, wiry bodies of martial artists… Taiko emphasises transferring power through the whole body with the muscles loose, then releasing it at speed through the hand, much like a karate punch.55

These two examples show how TaikOz’s bodily attributes seem essential to reporters. The latter even equated his embodiment experience with pacifistic philosophy, while toning glutes.

In their earlier days, TaikOz members worked hard to present ‘more honest’ readings of taiko to their Australian public. In 2000 TaikOz co-founder Riley Lee told media about the link between their music and fitness: “In order for it to be beautiful, in order for us to look like we're dancing with our drums, we have to relax, and the only way to relax [during] strenuous work is to be very, very fit.”56 He continued, “It takes eight men just to lift the 300 kilogram drums and the playing is also tough… [TaikOz have] been rehearsing six days a week for up to 10 hours a day in the lead-up to the performance [with Eitetsu Hayashi].”57 When anticipating brushes with greatness, TaikOz train their bodies and rehearse music even harder than usual. And they tell their public what they are doing. While fitness is vital to elite taiko, it does not come from or relate directly to martial arts. Neither does it necessarily come from doing taiko, for that matter; fitness is often cultivated adjacently and applied alongside taiko training, as typified by TaikOz member Anton Lock who is also a gymnast and martial artist.

53 Louise Nunn, “Marching to beat of their own drum,” The Advertiser, April 18, 2007. 54 Ibid. 55 Dominic Cadden, “Have a go at... Taiko.” Sunday Telegraph, August 30, 2009. 56 Riley Lee quoted in Sharon Labi. “Taiko drummers to open Sydney Festival.” Australian Associated Press, January 5, 2000. 57 Ibid.

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In media, fitness and strength consistently receive more mentions than TaikOz’s music. In 2006 Graham Hilgendorf explained the connections between jazz, classical music and taiko including the ways these three interact, but instead the paper emphasised how TaikOz players are “fit [like] acrobats.”58 The reporter called taiko frenetic and physically aggressive and asked how it could be considered calm, so Hilgendorf replied: “For the music to be effective, there has to be balance between relaxation and power.”59 This diffused the premise that taiko is violent. Hilgendorf’s response could be interpreted as copying the philosophies of martial arts like jiu-jitsu or aikido that deflect attack or use an opponent’s momentum against them. He had to respond to the question rather than tell what he knows about taiko, so he redirected the reporter’s thinking by answering a slightly different question. Likewise, Ian Cleworth has responded to reporters who imagine taiko players ‘take out their aggression on drums’ with practicalities: “If you poured anger into [drumming] you wouldn't be able to keep going for more than a minute or two. The spirit of the playing is in its precision and subtlety and in listening to each other.”60 Townsville read in 2008 that “Cleworth has devoted himself fully [to TaikOz’s] stamina… energetic movement, and immense and diminutive sounds.”61 Cleworth clarified, “I think Australians respond to the athleticism, dynamism and teamwork... like a sport.”62 Again, TaikOz shifts public perception by gently relating interviewers’ opinions with their potential origins, hence showing the edges of such assumptions, and relaying taiko as something else.

Continuing the fitness fetish, a 2009 reporter evoked competitive body-building: “Black leotards cut away to free and show the Mr and Ms Universe upper arms and shoulders... Each stroke demanding an appropriate dramatic pose… Summoning energy up from the big toes to the fists [and mastering] perfect balance when crouching… Agility, discipline, endurance and concentration of these six men and one woman.”63 This reviewer noticed what she considered local qualities: “Cleworth and his muscled-up mates have taken great pains (literally) to absorb the techniques of Japanese wadaiko [slotting in] Australian larrikinism.”64 Another

58 “When east meets west.” The Canberra Times, February 22, 2006: 8. 59 Ibid. 60 Simon Ferguson, “Drum up business – The Gathering.” Daily Telegraph, April 14, 2007: 10. 61 Courtney Todd, “The art of the DRUM.” Townsville EYE, November 5, 2008: 8. 62 Ibid. 63 Elizabeth Silsbury, “Thumping great theatre.” The Advertiser (South Australia), October 12, 2009. 64 Ibid.

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2009 article titled ‘Monkey magic: on the beat with TaikOz’ reported: “Taiko is not simply about wildly beating giant drums, it's also a graceful musical style with influences of martial arts and even a bit of acrobatics.”65

Sun Herald in 2012 said “25-year-old [Anton Lock] looks more like a boxer than a musician and composer.”66 Courier Mail published in 2014, “The stage presence is intense, [athletic… TaikOz] put their entire bodies into beating the instruments.”67 In 2014 TaikOz similarly tried to shift the muscly image: “Powerful, high-energy performance [that] people feel… rather than hear.”68 Graham Hilgendorf told this reporter “We use our bodies efficiently; it’s not all about strength.”69 In 2016 focus remained on muscles as Port Macquarie News espoused: “[Taiko] keeps them pretty fit. [Anton Lock] goes to the gym every day and also does a lot of stretching and core strengthening. Lock says ‘The upper body has to be loose and flowing, but there is a lot of pressure on the wrists, arms and shoulders’.”70

TaikOz members have, throughout the last twenty years, told reporters what is truer about taiko. Depending on interviewers’ preconceptions TaikOz can affirm or redirect attention. In 2012 for The Australian, when war entered conversation: Riley Lee [compared] his experience of learning taiko in Japan with going to war. There was no fighting or death [but] like a soldier, he [said] he learned how one gruelling experience can stay with you forever... [With 1970s Ondekoza] every morning he ran 20km bare-chested through the countryside [through] icy winds [and snow] that roared across the ocean from Siberia... The ensemble[’s] gruelling marathon schedule, [tested] the drummers’ personal limits… The training taught him about effort, self-belief [and] stage presence. Lee said ‘I can overcome any obstacles [and be] charismatic’.”71 Here Lee found a way to incorporate a war story, and made it about self-development or character-building trials. This redirection also aligns with popular impositions of Eastern philosophy onto taiko, where ascetic bodily exposure is considered to produce elevated

65 Melissa Phillips, “Monkey magic: On the beat with TaikOz.” The City Messenger, October 14, 2009. 66 Andrew Taylor, “Drum machines reach for the sky,” Sun Herald, March 11, 2012: 25. 67 Jodie Munro O’Brien, “A Different Drum,” Courier Mail, October 12, 2014. 68 Rodney Stevens, “Beating out the rhythm,” The Northern Star, October 11, 2014: 6. 69 Graham Hilgendorf, in Rodney Stevens, “Beating out the rhythm,” The Northern Star, October 11, 2014: 6. 70 Vickii Byram, “Pulsating rhythms and cultural dancing,” Port Macquarie News, July 15: 2016. 71 Bridget Cormack, “Japanese drums tap spiritual music,” The Australian, August 27, 2012: 17.

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versions of the self who practises. Lee also told The Australian, “taiko is similar to martial arts because it's seen as a path to spiritual enlightenment… The limitations that we have are often self-imposed… Some aren't – we can't jump like Superman. But we can learn to [overcome pain]. It hurts at first but then you go numb, you recover. Humans are extremely adaptable or strong.”72 In this example, a TaikOz member has performed story-telling acrobatics to validate assumptions about taiko, to rehash common themes of might, spirit and human endurance, to tell truths from anecdotes that alter the ‘field of fact’ for taiko fans.

This assortment of voices has demonstrated recurrent themes. Most used simile, metaphor and description to make connections, treating martial arts as something aggressive, but also its antithesis: subtle, disciplined, disabling-tension. Even today, athleticism, muscles and visuality are mentioned frequently. To confuse matters, while TaikOz denounce the relationship between taiko and martial arts, a member in their midst is a martial artist and acrobat, so the TaikOz organisation benefits commercially from his unique skills and model physique. Kerryn Joyce is a dancer, and Ian Cleworth is a Pilates devotee. Young-gun Anton Lock has studied kung-fu since age fifteen and is a practising gymnast. Thus when TaikOz has collaborated with dance and theatre companies Lock’s physique has been featured for his exceptional body-awareness and trained physical abilities. Production, ‘Kaidan: A Ghost Story’, premiered in 2007, featured a solo dance choreographed especially for Lock by Meryl Tankard. Australian Stage called Kaidan “an explosive fusion of art-forms… a ballet as such between taiko drums, a shakuhachi (bamboo flute), six dancers, Régis Lansac’s stunning digital illuminations, and lighting inspired by Henry Plummer.”73 Their writer included a pseudo history of taiko and praised TaikOz over dancers, not realising a member of TaikOz had danced: Origins of taiko drums go back at least 2000 or 3000 years deep into Japan’s prehistory. In some Buddhist traditions they represent the voice of Buddha and in Shinto shrines accompany prayers to heaven. [TaikOz] deliver a magnificent performance, with a sense of theatricality that upstage the dancers [with] divine rumbles... The drums carr[ied] the undercurrent of [the protagonist’s] shifting emotional journey. Use of breath and silence particularly grounded the whole experience, [offsetting] visual stimulation.74

72 Ibid. 73 Sarah Doyle, “Kaidan: A Ghost Story,” Australian Stage, January 24, 2007. 74 Ibid.

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Cleworth explained: “Meryl [Tankard] tends to work with individual dancers and uses their natural movements. Anton [Lock] has trained in both Japanese dance and martial arts and she has incorporated those elements in this work.”75 With permission TaikOz extracted Lock’s Kaidan solo dance to re-air in their 2010 ‘Blessings of the Earth’ tour. Of TaikOz’s 2009 collaboration with Bell Shakespeare, Pericles, Lock beamed: “I got to use my martial arts skills in a jousting scene.”76 Reporters love to interview Lock because he is interpreted as the sexy, vital, sensitive-brute of the group. For example, a 2010 article titled ‘Thumping Great Theatre’ wrote: “Lock has shown such prowess at the energetic form of Japanese dance associated with drumming… [wearing] traditional Japanese long skirts. He's always been an action man… His repeated [skydiving] jumps keep him poor.”77 Many reviews characterise Lock’s taiko as extreme sport, out-of-reach, and foreign. Lock told in our 2013 interview:

Taiko makes my identity, but not just taiko. I do kung-fu, taiko, gymnastics, skydiving and surfing. I'm a musician primarily. All these things are my identity. When I play taiko, all of that is coming out. So it's not like now I switch off this aspect because I'm playing taiko, I'm doing my kung-fu when I'm playing. When I'm dancing onikenbai78 it's in the same spirit that I do all these other things. I mention sky-diving [to reviewers] because it's all down to that one moment when you step off the plane... You can't hesitate: you have to [act] as if you're about to die [and this primacy is like 79 performance being judged on stage].

Lock is then ‘doing martial arts’ when he ‘does taiko’, but he characterises these as ‘doing his art’ or performing selfhood, which is separate from any component entity. The doing of each is defined not by physical qualities but ‘the spirit’ with which each is executed. He does not see himself to be altering taiko by doing kung fu in the very moments his sticks contact drums. Lock revealed:

Now that I'm more experienced after going to Japan and learning different things, I have a base from which to teach. I can [only] teach other people the way I learned. I'm not sure the [values TaikOz shares with students are] different [from other Australian

75 Thow, Penny. “Powerful blessings.” Hobart Mercury, November 13, 2010. 76 Longworth, Ken. “Thumping great theatre.” Newcastle Herald, April 14, 2010. 77 Ibid. 78 Regional masked dance from Iwasaki, Iwate, Japan, discussed in chapter 7. 79 Anton Lock interview with author, February 13, 2013.

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music education]. I was really into taiko [age 15 at Sydney Conservatorium High School] because it was a way of doing martial arts and playing music at the same time. [Back then] I didn't want to say ‘I'm [just] a musician’. I wasn't proud of that… There is nothing ‘missing’ from ‘being a musician’ actually. All this time I've been wanting to be a fighter or a warrior, martial arts person, but the musician is the – can be the – modern day artist. You can make it your warrior… When I go out to gymnastics at Homebush Olympic Gym, people come from all sorts of disciplines and my coach Dimitri [introduces me as] ‘a musician’. I'm so proud of that now. Being a musician you can – music can – change people: it can affect people… [Music] can take you to a different place [and] bring people together. I hope I teach those values.80

Humbly, Lock touched on what it means to be Australian – relying on imported culture because most Australians are immigrants (at various scales) – and how identity is made by actions taken. From his interview and the quoted media examples we have seen ways martial arts and war themes are viewed in TaikOz performances.

A seasoned voice of reason, familiar with TaikOz, in 2019 critiqued their ‘Seven Flowers’ program with regards to the themes of this chapter. Veteran reviewer John Shand was unimpressed by this production inspired by Noh playwright and theoretician Zeami’s once secret 15th Century treatise Fushiukaden. Shand mentioned: Energy drilled close to perfection in terms of precision. But [concerning] the combination of drums, players and compositions, nothing deeper lay behind the salvos. In many ways taiko has more to do with theatre, dance, circus, ritual and martial arts than music. It lies outside the truly great traditions of drumming that come from such places as India, Arabia and Africa, and ultimately [taiko] compromised this enticing concept for a suite [based on Zeami’s special ages].81 Shand correctly identified that taiko does not have a long or prestigious history, nor a unified oeuvre, but he was careful to associate taiko with theatre, dance, circus, ritual and martial arts without correlating any of these. His criticism implied that taiko could have been more effective in this working had taiko had a longer, more codified life-span; an actually recognisable tradition from which to depart. This aligns with the widely held view that old traditions are good traditions, and that merit inheres in each because it has survived. This

80 Ibid. 81 John Shand, “Thunderous drumming muddies insights,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2019.

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attitude has been important to Australians, especially those wracked with antipodean self- doubt.82 Shand’s use of ‘salvos’ indicates applause but also ‘discharge of artillery’, keeping the war image close.

Conclusion This chapter has explored relationships between taiko and professional performance pressures, demonstrating that TaikOz prostitute themselves to finance their art. In doing so TaikOz have both argued for and against war mythology and martial associations. Commercial factors that continue to impact TaikOz’s need to ‘play along with’ undesirable associations have been discussed. Accounts from participants and affiliates to TaikOz’s Abu Dhabi IDEX encounter revealed the emotional somersaults performed by all in the name of professionalism, identification and commercial viability. This has shown up contradictions, paradoxes, inconsistencies, obfuscations, even lies, but I have aimed to present these empathetically with focus on TaikOz’s emotional engagement with their many dilemmas. My research has provided an account of who TaikOz are, what they do, and ways they are perceived.

In the context of closing the gap between self-identity and public reception, TaikOz act as though they have little choice but to keep on keeping on. They do it all, making their art and scraping a living by those who pay for performance, no matter how misinformed those buyers are. As my other chapters argue, TaikOz are multifaceted as practitioners and as artists, they play several roles on stages with ease: electronic, orchestral, collaborative, dance-based, traditional, filmic, grungy, high-brow. It seems, to date, TaikOz has been able to ‘be themselves’ only by themselves (in private), as they sell products in public to the brief.

While this chapter has provided evidence that TaikOz might try to manage the misattributions that occur, it has not explored the influence that TaikOz’s management and/or operational styles has on the public’s perceptions. To answer this, and to promote adjustments would require expert understanding of business, marketing, arts administration and journalism. Pertinent questions for future research (outside ethnomusicology) might be: Does it matter commercially that TaikOz are misunderstood? If so, how? And if not, how can TaikOz retain

82 Shirley Apthorp, “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo - Multiculturalism is alive in Australia,” Financial Times, March 1, 2000: 9.

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their musical and communal values while capitalising further on false visions? These questions have already fuelled TaikOz’s practice, directorial choices and business for decades, but outside perspectives may articulate profitable changes.

282 Conclusion

TaikOz are professional musicians, versed in many instruments, styles, genres and scenes, of which taiko, ‘Japanese drumming’, seems paramount to witnesses. This thesis is not about Japanese taiko. It clearly separates ‘traditional’ taiko, for example matsuri culture, from contemporary amateur taiko in Japan, contemporary amateur taiko outside Japan, contemporary professional taiko in Japan, and contemporary professional taiko outside Japan. Each of these subsets claim to be doing something Japanese authentically, and they justify these actions with overlapping mythology. Despite substantial variances in the interpretation of terms relating to taiko, wadaiko and kumi-daiko, a collection of quite different traditions is performed today without consensus on style or meaning. TaikOz as contemporary, professional, non-Japanese artists, strive for legitimacy while witnesses question their motives and methods, often in relation to racialised arguments of belonging.

I have written of TaikOz in Australia and the paths of transition and transmission regarding taiko in a global scene, spotlighting disjunctures from many authentic origins. TaikOz do not emulate Japan, or appropriate Japan blindly, but by their embodied and deeply engaged practice they convey a ‘spirit of Japan’, paradoxically by being themselves. This points to fluency – where they can express something because their work is no longer purely determined technically. TaikOz perform across genres and venues, collaborating widely, appearing internationally, in concert halls, popular music festivals, theatres, with video artists and with the worlds best taiko artists. TaikOz’s versatility seems like a hybrid but continues a world taiko tradition of assimilation and change that has been led by Japanese actors, but not necessarily musicians. Taiko is not considered traditional in Japan, though it is used to perform Japaneseness inside and outside Japan. As TaikOz’s witnesses perceive this Japaneseness, they ascribe certain meanings to TaikOz’s work and identity. TaikOz fight to achieve neutral witness, or rather, to be judged by criteria they believe to be important.

TaikOz have constructed 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. TaikOz get

283 marked as appropriators though, non-belonging to the cultural material they generate. This thesis has problematised why witnesses see what they believe, and not necessarily what is before them, and how this impacts TaikOz’s art and business.

More taiko literature exists in English than in Japanese, given its cosmopolitanism. Academic taiko literature prioritises histories of regional festivals, transcultural identity construction, acoustics, aesthetics, accounts from American amateurs, cultural change, education, history, politics and psychology. Most taiko literature examines specific instances of taiko playing, like I do, but then uses that example to speak for a unified genre, when actually the particular cannot stand for the general. Too much variation exists in this field for such simple conclusions to be drawn.

A central claim of my thesis is that TaikOz make art that both continues and deviates from Japanese models, from Australian chamber music models, from academic discourse about taiko, and taiko discourse within popular media. They like to reside in this periphery. I have attempted revelation rather than resolution of the score about TaikOz by presenting information gleaned through reading, ethnography and epistemology. Through highlighting the performativity (in Butlerian sense) of TaikOz’s musical performance, I have argued their art is constituted but not determined through their practices of music making, and that their remaking of subjectivities happens in conjunction with the subjectivities cast upon them by others. I have attempted to reassign or revalue the primacy placed on certain discourses.

Given the absence of academic literature about TaikOz, I exhaustively reviewed TaikOz’s presence in print-media. Reportage on TaikOz betrays little-to-no expert knowledge derived from taiko experience or taiko literature, so performs a role with unintended consequences. These negative frames, alongside commercial pressures from shifting entertainment/art market mean TaikOz must continually invent ways to remain relevant and viable.

To rewrite the story of taiko, as culminating in TaikOz, I assessed themes in taiko literature and in popular opinion as summarised through eight common themes. When taiko is conceived of as spiritual and ancient, it implies a cultural starting point, a historical origin, that predates the formalisation of the taiko genre, which emerged as it continues presently, only in the mid twentieth century, ushered by professional amateurs. While this genre is not homogenous, its many faces don the same hats. And these forms have nearly no connection

284 to Japanese classical music traditions like gagaku, noh or kabuki. While the instruments in question share roots, the cultures performed on these objects differ. Taiko gained appeal in Japan and globally by first taking root in classical music circles. Orchestral music propelled taiko into the spotlight. But taiko is also ‘for everyone’ and its community music applications, and roots, saw a Japanese jazz drummer attempt to play Western pop on local derelict taiko objects. He made his music simple and accessible to encourage participation.

The practices of taiko in the United States (and elsewhere) cannot be seen as simply a continuation of Japanese models. Instances are very much constructed, while calling on themes from a faraway place. Also, some themes attach without much real connection, for example stories about dance, martial arts, war drumming and musical acrobatics. These stories rely on taiko’s visuality, which appear to be truthful but can be tricksy. Fantasised and borrowed mythologies enter discourse through multiple avenues and are justified using arbitrary data. What is universal to contemporary taiko globally is a proclivity to mythologise and for these stories to be more valued than the same stories’ relationships with evidence. When inconsistencies arise, some try to find justification through differences between Eastern and Western thought. This can reinforce ascriptions of new age spirituality, thickening the murky limits of how things looks versus how they are. Despite the co-existence of professional, amateur, expat, non-Japanese and even video-game versions of taiko, these cultures rarely engage laterally today. Each rely on diachronic assumptions about inheritance of meaning and tradition. Contemporary taiko is not so much a long-established musical tradition being transmitted and practised – as gamelan or Carnatic music have been intercepted – as a global music tradition being constructed continually in response to urban, capitalist conditions.

Theoretically, my interdisciplinary approach prioritised a reading via performativity. Though ethnomusicology, media studies, Japanese studies, and histories informed my research, I wrote using simple language matching the ways my subjects and I engaged. TaikOz’s processes of identification have not taken place in private, but were negotiated in relationship with others, emerging between self-image and public image. They have been asked to ‘fit into’ certain ideas or markets (discriminatory universalism), but they have defied this and copped the resultant label of ‘imposed difference’. This assumption that a staged expression of taiko can be somehow ahistorical or neutral suppresses, marginalises, or erases TaikOz’s own identities. It removes the possibility for diversity and innovation by curbing TaikOz’s

285 expressions and their witnesses’ impressions. My study has found that the apparently simple act of recognising, rather than restraining, multiple beliefs and purposes, is integral to neutral witness.

This thesis defines TaikOz, not taiko, but has included histories of taiko instruments, stars and innovations through time. Structured in three parts, the first began with TaikOz’s modern projects involving DJs and media arts, as related through the prism of TaikOz’s history with sibling Synergy Percussion, a modernist ensemble. Chapter two looked at taiko in Australia more generally and considered how the discourses made by and about Australian taiko players can be misleading for the genre and for TaikOz. Something uniting Australian taiko was not an instrument, a form, a style, a repertory or an established tradition, but instead a habit for story-telling and assigning value to actions through associated traditions from Japan. Semblance rather than mimicry defined Australian Japaneseness. Stories and publicity of Australia taiko teams helped to ‘place TaikOz’ and revealed a first wave of participants, headed by majority non-Japanese players, and a second wave of ‘more Japanese’ groups, led by expatriates delivering memories of matsuri and community engagement, who place value on ‘doing’ over reproducing, and on entertainment above all.

Part two leapt back into histories of taiko, via stories of Japanese taiko stars, to show ways TaikOz continue a culture of borrowing and repurposing. I looked at taiko in classical music by Japanese composers and by Australian composers. Iconic taiko piece/genre yatai-bayashi, features in all three chapters in this section. In Chapter five about Graham Hilgendorf and Masae Ikegawa’s work Shifting Sand, I traced several Japanese cultural artefacts and practices, which I connected with ongoing lived traditions. Part Three also contained three chapters, these problematising TaikOz’s identities, business operations, artistic choices, media engagements and philosophical quandaries.

TaikOz’s projects Origin of O and TaikoDeck, like Synergy Percussion’s coterminous City Jungle each blended drumming with media-artists, accentuating visual aspects of performance. TaikOz were criticised for departing from ‘traditional’ taiko, or for recontextualising Japanese materials, but this criticism was problematic. TaikOz enact multiple versions of taiko and differentiate their concurrent versions by adopting the audience culture or venue culture of each space. Regarding pulse:heart:beat, the decades-long collaborative project between TaikOz and Synergy Percussion, I presented media

286 interpretations that prioritised difference and exoticism.

In the Australian taiko scene, most groups have emerged since 2005. TaikOz members have been performing on taiko in Australia since the 1980s, and like other local ‘first wave’ enthusiasts, they came at taiko from a percussion background and were not trying to recreate Japan abroad. Other Australian taiko groups publicise their activities using mythology that is misleading or plainly false. TaikOz then negotiate these myths in a market defined also by others.

Eitetsu Hayashi, alongside groups like Ondekoza and Kodo, pioneered taiko as a contemporary genre that could be solo, professional, stylised, staged, commodifiable. Innovators of taiko, including those in the United States, configured which authenticities should matter. Some of them did this through classical music institutions and conventions. TaikOz repertory discussed includes Maki Ishii’s Monochrome and Mono-Prism, Gerard Brophy’s Book of Clouds, Lachlan Skipworth’s Breath of Thunder, and Andrea Molino’s Winners. Through the cracks creeps curious instances of racial discrimination.

Two simultaneous projects composed by TaikOz members, Shifting Sand and Toward the Crimson Sky, yielded disparate interpretations regarding authenticity and Australianness. Shifting Sand looked too Japanese, and Toward the Crimson Sky was not Japanese enough. Both programs delivered visions for a consolidated TaikOz, one with independent identity. Containing Toward the Crimson Sky by Ian Cleworth, this piece for bass kobo and synthesizer using Hungarian modes, which confused taiko fans and critics. I asked which aspects of Japaneseness are permissible and why. Then I concluded, via an anecdote of Taiko no Wa in Tokyo International Taiko Contest, that even the organisations self-tasked with defining the taiko genre and perpetuating its appeal, blur distinctions of what constitutes Japaneseness or taiko.

Back onto reception, through discussion of Chi Udaka and Pericles, I found that the Australians who appreciated TaikOz’s efforts at cross-cultural art did so by prioritising concepts like ‘dialogue’. I found that TaikOz’s multi-faceted identity confused most reviewers who intercepted isolated moments in TaikOz’s practice so were hard-pressed to evaluate the complexity of TaikOz’s reflexivity. Just as media voices struggled to juggle what TaikOz’s complicated authenticities mean, TaikOz summersault through conceptual hoops

287 when justifying their art at every point. TaikOz are routinely seen as doing something ritual or spiritual, and often called Zen, acrobats or martial artists. Through discussion of Onikenbai, an ancient, ceremonial, ‘demon sword dance’ from Japan, that TaikOz began practising after encouragement from professional stage performers, Kodo, I reveal that TaikOz gained more than legitimacy from this activity. TaikOz perform community differently, resulting from their learning and embrace of this form. TaikOz have formed robust relationships with cultural custodians of Onikenbai and other traditional artists (like those sharing hachijo-daiko, miyake-daiko, o-edo-bayashi) in Japan. In Australian concerts, while independently performing Onikenbai, TaikOz were asked to remove the ‘demon’ from translation of Onikenbai to avoid upsetting spiritually-minded attendees. TaikOz did not remove the demons from the dance, but did remove the translation to appease locals. This situation epitomises TaikOz’s bind, where some stories are considered unacceptable. The practices that fall outside acceptability then continue, out of context, in the margins.

Faced with commercial realities, TaikOz make difficult choices about repertory and representation. TaikOz often let patrons and employers shape producible art. In engaging with Australian rugby culture and the world’s largest weapons fair in 2013, TaikOz betrayed their brand. I argued that some engagements undermined the performers’ self-conceptions and additionally affected artistic output. When TaikOz enact versions of taiko that disagree with their personal philosophies, TaikOz contribute to problems of identification that they simultaneous attempt to correct.

By exploring appropriation ethics, ideological paradoxes, histories and justifications for aesthetic preferences, I presented glimpses into TaikOz’s world. By asking ‘what makes tradition traditional?’ I found that the aspects of Japanese taiko that are highly valued by enthusiasts are not universally based on fact. Where factoids are brandished, these have been used defensively to protect taiko products constructed in specific contexts (locales) that tend not to connect linearly with Japanese antiquity. Even though several groups are using similar mythology to justify a non-homogenous collection of taiko activities globally, they do not seem to question the limits of where their stories begin, end, or diversify. So TaikOz, professional taiko players in Australia, figurehead the problems of appropriation, providing a symbolic departure from ‘tradition’ on which a global public might enter conversation.

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This thesis has revealed workings of TaikOz and ways TaikOz are interpreted. Media reviews over the years have focused on sensational aspects of TaikOz. These have ascribed meanings to TaikOz’s practice that only partly align. Some of the trouble has stemmed from the ill- formed generic definition of taiko – if a genre at all – or a single term loosely attributed to a variety of activities. Contentions have arisen over which taiko repertories are old, sacred or traditional, and which are instead only experienced as old, sacred and traditional. Therefore, it has mattered whether experience or fixity are valued more highly by those engaging. In this dynamic place, performativities are (re)inscribed through performance.

Can one be Japanese without being Japanese? And further, if Japaneseness is important to taiko players, to what does Japanese refer? It has not definitively meant a place, a time, a trend, an ethnic group, an aesthetic or a mind-set. The closest I can get is to call Japaneseness ‘the memory of the feeling of a place’: it is affective. As Yosuke Oda of Kodo said about TaikOz, when they were true to themselves, when they cultivated their own voice, their fluency and indigeneity in their practice yielded in another a vision: “Listening to their music, I could see Japanese scenery, temples, gardens, the landscape, but through their eyes. It was natural and felt good.”1

1 Yosuke Oda, “Email Questionnaire,” Interpreted by Melanie Taylor, November 6, 2012.

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Newspaper articles and reviews

“A music lover's delight.” The West Australian, September 15, 2009.

“A night of sounds and silence.” Hornsby and Upper North Shore Advocate, November 6, 2008.

“A powerful experience.” Penrith Press, February 22, 2005: 45.

“A yen for percussion.” Guardian Express, April 17, 2007: 23.

“Australia: Chi Udaka India Tour (99AIC grants 2016),” CPI Financial, November 4, 2016.

Adie, Kilmeny. “Latest evolution of ancient Japanese art.” Illawarra Mercury, June 16, 2005:

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41.

Akiyama, Shoko. “Beat the Drum.” Record Searchlight, December 13, 2011.

Albert, Jane. “Grace Notes.” The Australian, February 22, 2002: 20.

“All Australian Wadaiko Festival.” Go Go Melbourne, September 12, 2008. https://www.gogomelbourne.com.au/events/report/116.html, accessed July 22, 2020.

Allen, Elizabeth. “Percussionist feels the rhythm.” Courier-Mail, July 25, 2007: 46.

Apthorp, Shirley. “From Strauss to taiko to didgeridoo – Multiculturalism is alive and well in Australia.” Financial Times, March 1, 2000: 9.

“Australia's leading taiko drumming group, TaikOz, will do more than beat drums...” The Chronicle (Toowoomba), October 28, 2010.

“Balloons filled with hope.” The Canberra Times, March 25, 2011.

Barclay, Alison. “Thunder out of the East.” Herald-Sun, October 17, 2003: 93.

Barmby, David. “TaikOz - the Beauty of 8,” Performing Arts Hub, published February 16, 2017. Accessed June 12, 2017, http://performing.artshub.com.au/news- article/reviews/performing-arts/david-barmby/taikoz-the-beauty-of-8-253176.

“Beating the drum.” The Cairns Post, September 7, 2006: 29.

Beaumont, Anita. “Taiko away.” The Newcastle Herald, November 24, 2005: 35.

Bennet, Rod. “Riley finds chemistry right.” Manly Daily, November 20, 2009.

______. “Setting the stage: Diverse Mix Planned for Glen Street,” Manly Daily, September 26, 2012: 11.

Benson, Buster. “Cognitive bias cheat sheet: Because thinking is hard.” Chainsaw Suit. September 1, 2016. Accessed April 23, 2017. http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/09/16/on-research/.

Benzie, Tim. “Metro – High Life.” Sun Herald, March 30, 2003: 2.

Bevis, Stephen. “TaikOz ready to drum up a storm.” The West Australian, December 1, 2010.

“Big beat on taiko track.” The Canberra Times, August 22, 2006: 8.

Blake, Jason. “Hooray for the band drumming up interest.” Sydney Morning Herald, July 2, 2009.

Borja, Jhuny-Boy. “Australia: Chi Udaka India Tour (99AIC grants 2016),” Asia News

321

Monitor, Thai News Service Group, Bangkok, November 17, 2016.

“Brace up for some Taiko beats today,” New Indian Express, November 23, 2016.

Bretherton, Mark. “All the grace of a sonic boom.” The Courier-Mail, October 25, 2004: 15.

“Bring out the big drums,” Bega District News, March 17, 2016.

Brooke, Elizabeth Heilman, “Arts Abroad: Taking Taiko, Japan's Big Drum, Into the Hip-Hop Age,” New York Times, September 24, 2002.

Brown, Suzanne. “THE FACE,” The Australian, April 13, 2002.

Butson, Tyron. “Follow your drum.” Newcastle Herald, April 6, 2010.

Buzacott, Martin. “Local inspiration.” Courier Mail, June 21, 2000: 43.

Byram, Vickii. “Pulsating rhythms and cultural dancing,” Port Macquarie News, July 15, 2016.

Byrne, Mal. “Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers (Adelaide Fringe),” Limelight Magazine, February 18, 2020. Accessed August 21, 2020, www.limelightmagazine.com.au.

Cadden, Dominic. “Have a go at... Taiko.” Sunday Telegraph, August 30, 2009.

CaptainFez aka Luke Martin. “TaikOz Future Directions.” Published June 14, 2014. Accessed August 1, 2014, http://captainfez.com/2014/07/31/taikoz-future- directions-1462014.

“Capturing nature's shifting sounds.” The Queanbeyan Age, March 18, 2011.

Card, Amanda. “Sydney Festival review: Chi Udaka.” The Conversation, January 17, 2014.

Casamento, Jo. “Cheers darling.” Sydney Morning Herald, May 1, 2009.

“Charity Concert,” The Arts Diary, Sydney Morning Herald, May 4, 2011, 11.

Clark, Felicity. “Hybrid Beats.” RealTime Arts Magazine 116, (2013): 50. Accessed May 21, 2016, www.realtimearts.net/article/issue116/11275.

Clarke, Daniel. “Keeping the beat.” Adelaide Advertiser, August 26, 2003, 36.

Clayfield, Matthew. “Asian flavour does this Shakespeare few favours.” The Australian, July 6, 2009.

Clewley, John. “Japanese sounds take the stage: Hiroko Kokubo offers a bit of jazz piano while TaikOz thunders.” Bangkok Post, October 2, 2002: 8.

Cooke, Graham. “Taiko trainees beating to a different drum.” Canberra Times, July 15, 2002.

322

Crawford, Kate. “Friends missing in Japan.” Mosman & Lower North Shore Daily, April 28, 2011.

“Culture: Beat the drum,” TimeOut, The Cairns Post, October 21, 2010: 10.

Cunningham, Harriet. “Bang the Drum.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 6, 2004: 8.

______. “Beat That! Music You Can See and Feel.” Sydney Morning Herald, October 15, 2003: 14.

______. “Beyond the bold drum roll, king of strings holds court.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 24, 2012.

______. “Filling the air with sonic colour.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 9, 2009.

______. “Sweet purity: Eitetsu Hayashi with TaikOz.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 2006: 19.

______. “The exotic and quixotic from man with big ideas.” Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2008.

Cuthbertson, Ian. “How to get the drum on Shakespeare.” The Australian, July 1, 2009.

“Dance and Music Initiative Results.” State News Service, June 2, 2011.

Darling, Alex. “Of Tiger lovers and Taiko drummers,” The Footy Almanac, May 15, 2016, Accessed February 15, 2020, https://www.footyalmanac.com.au.

Day, Samantha. “Big drum lullaby.” Manly Daily, March 11, 2010.

De Soysa, Shamistha. “‘pulse:heart:beat’ – A Kaleidoscope of Sounds and Imagery – from Taikoz and Synergy Percussion.” Sounds Like Sydney, June 20, 2013. Accessed May 2, 2017, http://soundslikesydney.com.au/news/pulseheartbeats-a-kaleidoscope-of- sounds-and-imagery-from-taikoz-and-synergy-percussion/13289.html.

Dinsdale, Mike. “Surprise, surprise: Mosh pit in the kitchen.” Northern Advocate, March 21, 2015.

Dinneen, Martin. “Knocking about on sand creates ode to ocean.” Newcastle Herald, April 21, 2010.

Downie, Stephen. “In the dark on principal aim.” Daily Telegraph, May 22, 2006: 58.

Doyle, Sarah. “Kaidan: A Ghost Story,” Australian Stage, January 24, 2007.

323

“Drumbeats herald Mercury level lift.” Centralian Advocate, October 24, 2014: 34.

“Drum up a storm.” The Courier-Mail, October 20, 2004: 27.

“Drumming up a hero.” Melbourne/Yarra Leader, August 3, 2009.

“Drumming up a response with a fusion of art and action.” Sydney Morning Herald, October 7, 2004: 3.

“Drumming up a sonic storm.” The West Australian, December 7, 2010: 10.

“Drumming up a storm.” Inner West Courier – Inner West, November 24, 2009.

“Drumming Up One Top Spectacle.” Northern District Times, (Epping, N.S.W.) July 10, 2013: 29.

“Drumming with thunder and delicacy.” Portside Messenger, February 20, 2002: 21.

Dunning, Jennifer. “Dance in Review.” The New York Times, December 6, 1993: 12.

Eccles, Jeremy. “First Night Opera House Audience Faces A Cultural Learning Curve.” Canberra Times, January 11, 2000: 10.

Ferguson, Simon. “Drum up business – The Gathering.” Daily Telegraph, April 14, 2007: 10.

Formosa, Amy. “TaikOz brings Japanese style of music to Pilbeam concert.” The Morning Bulletin, November 6, 2008: 27.

“Four Winds taiko workshop.” Merimbula News Weekly, May 28, 2016.

Fraser, Rainie. “Just beat it...” Geelong Advertiser, August 19, 2006: 43.

Fuller, Nick. “Chi Udaka brings TaikOz and Lingalayam Dance Company together at the Canberra Theatre.” The Canberra Times, July 13, 2016.

Fulton, Adam. “Australian artists let in on ancient demon dance.” Sydney Morning Herald, April 25, 2011.

Galvin, Nick. “We're going to need a big orchestra.” Sydney Morning Herald, August 10, 2017: 11.

“Gaining confidence to the beat of a drum.” Parramatta Advertiser, September 27, 2017.

Gill, Harbant. “Perils of Pericles.” Herald-Sun, July 31, 2009.

Grant, Freya. “Powerful beat hits the senses.” Daily Telegraph, March 8, 2002: 111.

Gyger, David. “Tremendous TaikOz ' blew lid off the joint'.” North Shore Times, May 6, 2011.

324

Habib, Rashell. “Brothers team up to beat their own drums.” Inner West Courier, October 25, 2011.

Hallett, Bryce. “Trip the light monastic.” Sydney Morning Herald, September 11, 2010.

______. “Here come the drums.” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 29, 2006: 23.

Hanusiak, Xenia. “We'll give you the drum.” Herald-Sun, October 22, 2003: 52.

Harper, James. “Extreme versions.” Courier Mail, November 28, 2000: 19.

______. “Serious drums.” Courier Mail, October 30, 2000: 10.

______. “The Big Percussion Concert.” Courier-Mail, July 24, 2003: 19.

Hay, Ashley. “Arts and Culture: Contemporary Australian artists and international classical music.” The Bulletin, April 8, 2003: 14.

Hayashi, Eitetsu. “University of Japan’s Traditional Drums, Wadaiko,” Viewpoint, Japan Close-Up, (year unknown): 34.

Hopwood, Paul. “Inhabiting the Edwards bush soundscape.” The Australian, December 6, 2010.

Humphries, Glen. “Can't beat the drums.” Illawarra Mercury, September 23, 2004: 29.

Hurt, Jessica. “The drum on the latest heart-starter.” Adelaide Advertiser, September 3, 2003.

Hyderabad, Telangana. “Chi Udaka straight from Australia.” The Hindu, November 23, 2016.

Iuchi, Chiho “Taiko pioneer Eitetsu Hayashi to mark 45 years of drumming to his own beat,” The Japan Times, December 11, 2015. Accessed December 26, 2016, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture.

Jain, Reshma. “Joie de Vivre, with a Cross-Country Art Form.” New Indian Express, November 29, 2016.

Jones, Adair. “Winners.” Artshub Australia, August 2, 2006.

Jones, Deborah. “Festival ends on a moving note.” The Australian, April 7, 2009.

______. “Swingalong raises standards: TaikOz Live at Angel Place.” The Australian, October 25, 2003. ______. “TaikOz Live at Angel Place DVD review.” The Weekend Australian, October 25-26, 2003.

Jones, Jeff. “Energy is hard to beat.” Oakleigh Monash/Springvale Dandenong Leader,

325

October 1, 2008.

Kary, David. “Dance, Music, Sydney Festival: Chi Udaka.” Sydney Arts Guide, January 19, 2014.

Kelly, Patricia. “Singers carry their musical instruments with them.” Courier-Mail, October 11, 2002: 21.

Kennedy, Douglas. “Beat of a new drum genre.” The Sunday Mail, October 12, 2008: 14.

Kroslakova, Katarina. “Boom time.” Sun Herald, May 14, 2006: 24.

Labi, Sharon. “Taiko drummers to open Sydney Festival.” Australian Associated Press, January 5, 2000.

______. “TaikOz wows audience in festival opener.” Australian Associated Press, January 9, 2000.

Lahey, Vanessa. “Pericles,” Australian Stage, July 3, 2009.

Lalak, Alex. “Bell's brilliant new beat.” Daily Telegraph, July 7, 2009.

______. “Learn to taiko drum.” Daily Telegraph, October 3, 2009.

______. “TaikOz drumming.” Daily Telegraph, March 6, 2010.

______. “Travelling to the beat of a different drum.” Herald-Sun, February 9, 2009.

Lambert, Catherine. “Zen and now.” Sunday Herald Sun, July 26, 2009.

Lancaster, Lynne. “Chi Udaka,” Sydney Arts Guide, January 19, 2014.

Langford, Ben. “Pounding drums to fill Darwin auditorium.” Northern Territory News/ Sunday Territorian, August 1, 2006: 5.

Lawes, Anthony. “Good-time merchants.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 7, 2011.

Lazarevic, Jade. “Ocean rhythms.” Newcastle Herald, April 17, 2010.

Leys, Nick. “Strewth.” The Australian, January 25, 2005: 11.

Li, Ho Ai. “Beauty of dance in full bloom.” Straight Times (Singapore), October 23, 2003.

Litson, Jo. “Bell's big bang theory.” Sunday Telegraph, June 21, 2009.

______. “TaikOz's plucky strike.” Sunday Telegraph, January 25, 2009.

Lloyd, Tim. “The sounds of thunder: Australia and Japan in melting pot of styles.” The Advertiser, October 1, 2009.

326

Longworth, Ken. “Thumping great theatre.” Newcastle Herald, April 14, 2010.

Lovelace, Jessica. “TaikoDeck – Review,” Stage Whispers, Accessed May 11, 2015, http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/taikodeck.

Martin, Douglas. “Banging the Drums Not So Slowly: In Soh Daiko, Japanese Drumming Calls to the Ancient Gods and Leaves the Drummers Breathless.” New York Times, Oct 22, 1995.

Matthews, Kylie. “Feast for the eyes and ears.” Illawarra Mercury, April 28, 2011.

______. “Shakespeare goes east.” Manly Daily, July 24, 2009.

McCallum, John and Matthew Westwood. “Out & About - NSW & ACT,” The Australian, September 23, 2017.

McCallum, Peter. “Bang on for sheer exhilaration.” Sydney Morning Herald, August 5, 2002, 15.

______. “Dance and song tones the muscles.” Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 23, 2009.

______. “Disciplined Thunder.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 2000, 9.

______. “Night of Sinew, Bicep and Smart Marketing.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 1999.

______. “Passionate radicals beat time's ravaging rhythm.” Sydney Morning Herald, November 30, 2004, 14.

McDonald, Graham. “More than just a drum show.” Canberra Times, July 16, 2002, 6.

McKenzie, Elizabeth. “Review of Nature's Rhythm,” TaikOz Newsletter 6:6, March 2006.

McLean, Sandra. “Hits and hisses.” The Courier-Mail, June 21, 2005, 17.

McPherson, Angus. “Taikoz and the SSO whip up a storm in the concert hall,” Limelight Magazine. February 27, 2018.

Morgan, Clare. “Loud and proud, Kodo gives the sound barrier some stick.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 20, 2009.

Morgan, Joyce. “From A Capitol Idea To A Curious One.” Sydney Morning Herald, December 27, 1999.

Morton, Nadine, “Cultures converge at show,” Western Advocate, Bathurst, July 13, 2016.

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Munro, Erin. “Music,” The Age, February 11, 2017.

Murray, R W. “All God's chillun got rhythm.” Australian Financial Review, July 27, 2007.

Musa, Helen “Stick to the beat for a thumping good time.” Canberra Times, February 16, 2005: 5.

Newton, Samantha. “Play it again Sam.” Staff News, Macquarie University, March 14, 2012.

Nicholas, Jessica. “Musicians strike a persuasive note of accord.” The Age, July 25, 2006.

______. “World Music – Pulse:Heart:Beat.” The Age, July 22, 2006.

Nolan, Katie. “Getting the Drum,” Courier-Mail, August 4, 2001.

Northey, Cheryl. “TaikoDeck,” Alternative Media, Posted July 26, 2013. http://www.altmedia.net.au/taikodeck/80135, accessed March 14, 2017.

Nowytarger, Renee. “Exclusive: Catalyst arts fund killed by Coalition,” The Australian - Online, March 17, 2017.

O'Brien, Philip. “Haiku at heart of drum symphony,” The Canberra Times, October 22, 2013.

O'Connell, Clive. “A piece offering – landscape and memory.” The Age, May 31, 2008: 23.

______. “Collaboration drums up a big response.” The Age, August 3, 2004: 8.

______. “Dazzled and bedazzled.” The Age, February 27: 2009.

______. “How to work your lats, pecs and abs.” The Age, May 4, 2007:15.

______. “Serious music's year of playing it safely.” The Age, Dec 31, 2004: 8.

Park, Nicky. “The Bard with bang.” Sunday Herald Sun, July 10, 2009.

Parnell, Sean. “Win or lose, music to get you thinking.” The Australian, July 8, 2006: 9.

“Percussion takes entire bodies.” The Morning Bulletin, October 11, 2008: 45.

“'Pericles' opens at Sydney Opera House.” SBS 6:30pm TV World News Transcript, June 30, 2009.

Phillips, Janine. “Origin of O takes you on a digital journey,” Burnie Arts and Function Centre Press Release, September 9, 2015. Accessed January 29, 2017,

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Phillips, Melissa. “Monkey magic: On the beat with TaikOz.” The City Messenger, Oct 14, 2009.

328

Philpott, Carolyn. “Versatile Japanese artistry,” Hobart Mercury, November 19, 2010, 25.

Pickard, Nicholas. “Songs of Australia: from Garland to Bernstein.” Crikey, September 10, 2007.

Plush, Vincent. “Ancient beat, new sounds.” The Australian, October 26, 2004, 14.

______. “Enter the drummer.” Courier Mail, October 21, 2000.

______. “More POWER to the MUSIC.” Courier Mail, January 6, 2001.

“QLD - Biggest drum in Australia gets a beating.” Australian Associated Press, August 8, 2001.

“Rhythm Sticks.” Daily Telegraph, November 5, 1999.

Ruthven, Elizabeth. “Rhythmic splendour.” Hobart Mercury, April 4, 2009.

Sandow, Suzanne. “Kodo and TaikOz,” Stage Whispers, September 25, 2012. Accessed March 12, 2017, http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/kodo-taikoz.

Sasaguchi, Rei. “Hayashi drums up a birthday performance,” The Japan Times, January 27, 2012.

Scanlon, Joni. “Candles shine a light on 10 years of culture,” Canberra Times, October 23, 2012: 10.

Schubert, Misha. “Veterans win fight to silence drums of war.” The Australian, August 7, 1999, 5.

Schwartzkoff, Louise. “Banging the drum for a percussion resurgence.” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 13, 2007: 3.

Sexton, Kristy. “Beat of a different drum.” Sunday Telegraph, May 23, 2004: 27.

Shand, John. “Taiko Drumming review: won over by the song of the drums,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 5, 2014.

______. “Thunderous drumming muddies insights,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2019: 532.

______. “Waves of Tranquillity and Thunder,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 2001: 16.

Shedden, Iain. “Hit parade of different drums.” The Australian, February 19, 2001: 16.

______. “Master drums a traditional beat to true-blue crew.” The Australian, January 8,

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2000.

“Show offers plenty of bang for your buck.” The Cairns Post, October 27, 2010.

Shrubb, Hilary. “More stars than there are in the heavens.” The Australian, August 2, 2002: 15.

Silsbury, Elizabeth. “Powerful physical riot.” The Advertiser, April 23, 2007: 64.

______. “Thumping great theatre.” The Advertiser, October 12, 2009.

Simons, Margaret. “Journalism faces a crisis worldwide – we might be entering a new dark age,” The Guardian, April 15, 2017.

Skinner, Graeme. “A power play between grace and brutality.” Sydney Morning Herald,

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Smith, Blanton. “Drumming to the Rhythm of Womad.” Taranaki Daily News, March 11, 2015: 3.

Solomon, Kate. “The incredible impact of smartphones on music,” Telegraph UK, August 30, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/how-phones-changed-the-world/how- smartphones-changed-music, accessed November 17, 2017.

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Sood, Kanika. “One year after OzCo bloodbath, how are arts groups surviving?” Daily Review, May 11, 2017, https://dailyreview.com.au/one-year-ozco-bloodbath-arts- groups-surviving/, accessed March 4, 2020.

“Sounds Trigger Vision – Pulse:heart:beat – From TaikOz And Synergy.” Sounds Like Sydney, May 20, 2013, http://soundslikesydney.com.au/shows/pulseheartbeat-synergypercussion-and-taikoz-in-sync-for-a-special-offer/12420.html, accessed May 2, 2017.

Spillett, Emma. “A show is born.” Illawarra Mercury, April 1, 2010.

Stead, Laura. “Living with the beat of a different sound.” Courier-Mail, November 14, 2009.

Stone, Deborah. “65 arts organisations lose funding from Australia Council,” Arts Hub, May 13, 2016.

Strachan, Laurie. “First of all, the big bangs.” The Australian, January 10, 2000.

______. “Power play Japan-style.” The Australian, January 21, 1998.

Stretch, Angela. “TaikOz presents ‘ORIGIN OF O’,” Alt Media, April 21, 2013. Accessed

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“Suburban Snapshot: Drummed up,” The Manly Daily; Manly, August 21, 2013: 11.

Syke, Lloyd Bradford. “Chi Udaka: Sydney Festival Review.” Daily Review powered by Crikey, January 28, 2014.

______. “City Jungle: Syd vs Melb,” Crikey. Sydney, October 24, 2011.

______. “Review: TaikoDeck,” Crikey - Independent Media, Independent Minds, November 2, 2011.

“Taiko takeover at two-day beat fest,” Launceston Examiner, January 15, 2017.

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“TaikOz happy to bang their own drum.” Herald-Sun, January 15, 2007: 74.

Taylor, Andrew. “Drum machines reach for the sky.” Sun Herald, March 11, 2012: 25.

“The art of drumming up a stunning performance.” City News, January 30, 2003: 11.

“The Beat - On stage.” Illawarra Mercury, October 17, 2002: 39.

“These Guys are Hard to Beat,” Sydney MX, October 25, 2011: 1.

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Thomson, Ashley. “Shimmering City,” BMA Magazine, May 7, 2013.

Thow, Penny. “Here come the drums.” Sunday Tasmanian, February 8, 2009.

______. “Powerful blessings,” Hobart Mercury, November 13, 2010: 47.

“Thunder and rhythm as Stonewave Taiko takes the stage,” Bega District News, November 4, 2016.

Todd, Courtney. “The art of the DRUM.” Townsville EYE, November 5, 2008: 8.

Toune, Rachel. “Former Ayr girl's now marching to an international beat.” Townsville Bulletin, November 11, 2008.

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“Two of the Best,” Central (Magazine); Sydney, N.S.W., Oct 19, 2011: 30.

Usher, Robin. “Taiko drumming finds its legs.” The Age, March 1, 2006: 21.

Vance, David. “Minimalist but perhaps a tad too bare.” Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2012: 10.

Vasgare, Sadaf “Complex rhythms,” The Hindu, Chennai, November 29, 2016.

Veage, John. “Drum and percussion show rock Rosehill,” St George Leader, May 19, 2017.

Verghis, Sharon. “What's hot this Summer: Dance,” The Australian, December 14, 2013: 5-8.

Vichitsorasatra, Lisnaree. “Cross-border crusade.” The Nation (Thailand), July 19, 2006.

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Watson, Patrick. “Ripple effect.” The Courier-Mail, April 22, 2005: 46.

Westwood, Matthew. “Applause for reset of funds,” The Australian, April 4, 2017.

______. “Catalyst arts fund killed by Coalition,” The Australian, March 18, 2017.

______. “Multimedia forces battle futility of war.” The Australian, July 25, 2006.

Wilkins, Michael. “Japanese tale skinned alive.” Daily Telegraph, January 22, 2007: 56.

Wills, Gillian. “Skills to fore in salute to Japan,” Courier-Mail, April 20, 2004.

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Wilson, Ashleigh. “Better than all, right on First Night Sydney Festival.” The Australian, January 10, 2011.

______. “The boom of a different drum.” The Australian, February 20, 2009.

Woodhead, Cameron. “Bell at its best for Pericles' odyssey.” The Age, August 10, 2009.

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“World-class music is right at our doorstep with a three-day festival,” Southern Highland News, March 24, 2017.

“You'll dig this crazy beat,” Wynnum Herald, October 27, 2010: 53.

Zuel, Bernard. “DVD Metro: Best of the week, Shifting Sand,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 15, 2012: 12.

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YouTube

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Anton Lock, “That's what I like-Bruno Mars: Drum Cover by Anton Lock.” Accessed May 23, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icCCbPRoDs.

Australia’s Got Talent, “Taiko Drum (Ancient Japanese Musical Artform),” published July 5, 2011. Accessed March 3, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkdKN-Wljo.

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Illawarra Folk Club, “Taiko no Wa at Illawarra Folk Festival 2014,” published January, 2014. Accessed August 28, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D86jLVqFG4.

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‘Origin of O’, TaikOz. Accessed March 18, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViVPUCF 5 o.

Shifting Sand Highlights, TaikOz. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8g9h6q5q2M.

TaikoDeck, TaikOz. Accessed April 6, 2017, https://youtu.be/EkFtdrDQtBk.

“Taiko Beats, IDEX Fair 2013,” published February 20, 2013. Accessed June 25, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPzYpYk4JDE.

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2017, http://youtu.be/1sOeVgtlk34.

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Interviews and Personal Communications

Anonymous informants from TaikOz community, 2013, all ethics approved.

Anton Lock, Email Questionnaire, November 15, 2010.

Colin Piper, personal communication, Stanmore, October 3, 2011.

David Sidebottom, interview with the author, Surry Hills, June 16, 2013.

Graham Hilgendorf, interview with the author, Dulwich Hill, October 24, 2012.

Ian Cleworth interview with author, Stanmore, September 8, 2010.

Ian Cleworth conversational interview with author, Ultimo, June 1, 2011.

Ian Cleworth interview with author, Ultimo, March 5, 2013.

Ian Cleworth interview with author, Glebe, July 17, 2013.

Ian Cleworth interview with author, Ultimo, November 5, 2013.

Kerryn Joyce, interview with author, Maroubra, April 13, 2013.

Kevin Man, interview with author, Ultimo, November 8, 2012.

Martin Lee, interview with the author, October 29, 2012.

Masae Ikegawa, interview with the author, Dulwich Hill, October 24, 2012.

Penny Campion, interview with author, April 12, 2013.

Riley Lee, interview with author, September 14, 2012.

Robert Jeremy, conversational interview, Glebe, October 12, 2012.

Tom Royce-Hampton, interview with author, Chippendale, September 17, 2012.

Spirit Dancer emails, Ian Cleworth and Felicity Clark, October 29 - November 8, 2013.

Steve Reich, quoted in email communication from Synergy Percussion, March 15, 2017.

Yosuke Oda, Kodo member, Email Questionnaire, October 15, 2012.

TaikOz Media Releases, Press Kits, Programs, Vimeo and Blog

Cleworth, Ian. “Program Note: Mono-Prism,” for Sydney Symphony Orchestra, 2009.

Seymour Centre in association with Sydney Festival, accessed May 1, 2015. http://www.seymourcentre.com/events/event/chi-udaka.

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Synergy and TaikOz Limited, “Synergy Percussion and TaikOz: A Selection of Recent Performances and Reviews,” 1 December 2015, p26. Accessed March 2, 2017, https://issuu.com/synergyandtaikoz/docs/synergytaikoz_2015.

Synergy Percussion, “Five Elements media kit,” accessed September 17, 2014, http://www.synergypercussion.com/Downloads/Media/5ElementsMediaKit.pdf. TaikOz, CHI UDAKA - Featuring TaikOz and Lingalayam, 16 - 18 January, “An inspirational fusion of taiko drumming and Indian dance.”

TaikOz, “Chi Udaka – ‘Designing Chi Udaka’ (04a) - Bart Groen and Karen Norris – 2016,” TaikOz Vimeo channel, accessed May 28, 2021, www.vimeo.com/taikoz.

TaikOz, Crimson Sky 2011 Media Release, November 20, 2011, 2-3.

TaikOz, Crimson Sky 2013 Media Release, July 23, 2013: 2.

TaikOz ‘The Spirit Dancer’ Press Release, Vim and Zest, September 25, 2013.

TaikOz Blog. “‘Hitorikago’ and ‘Katana-gurui’,” TaikOz Blog entry, October 15, 2014.

______. “Tori – Ichibanniwa” TaikOz Blog entry, November 27, 2013.

TaikOz Blog, by Ian Cleworth, “Seven Flowers: Highlights on FB & Vimeo,” April 27, 2020. Accessed May 2020 https://www.taikoz.com/blog/seven-flowers-highlights-on-fb-vimeo.

TaikOz pulse:heart:beat concert program, 2010. Accessed July 9, 2014, http://www.taikoz.com/Programs/pulseheartbeat_programme.pdf.

“Toward the Crimson Sky,” TaikOz publicity. Accessed December 11, 2020, https://www.taikoz.com/productions/crimson-sky.

“United States tour,” TaikOz. Accessed June 18, 2013,

http://taikoz.com/TaikOz/PastPerformances.ASPX#sthash.BHmRiKwx.dpuf.

Vimeo, ‘Winners’ by Andrea Molino, showreel. Accessed December 10, 2020, https://vimeo.com/8261394.

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Newsletters and Emails

Australian Shakuhachi Society Newsletter, Excerpt from Riley Lee “Shakuhachi in Australia: ‘Multicultural Performances’,” March 2004. Accessed August 21, 2020. http://www.shakuhachi.org.au/newsletters/ASS Newsletter 016 March 2004.pdf.

All TaikOz Newsletters are available to view or download at http://taikoz.com/TaikOz/News.aspx.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.1 No. 1, 2 and 3, 2001.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.2 No. 1, 2 and 3, 2002.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.3 No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, 2003.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.4 No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 2004.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.5 No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, 2005.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.6 No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, 2006.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.7 No. 1, 2, and 3, 2007.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.8 No. 1 and 2, 2008.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.9 No. 1 and 2, 2009.

TaikOz Newsletters, Vol.10 No.1 and 2, 2010.

Reich, Steve. Quoted in email communication from Synergy Percussion, March 15, 2017.

'TaikOz Onikenbai Club' information sheet. Email to TaikOz students, February 2011.

Sound and video recordings

TaikOz, Daichi... big earth (CD). Stanmore, NSW: New World Music, 2006.

TaikOz, Shifting Sand (DVD). Sydney: TaikOz & Synergy Ltd, 2012.

TaikOz, Taiko no sekai: a collection of live recordings from 1998-99 (CD).

TaikOz, TaikOz: Live at Angel Place (CD). Stanmore, NSW: New World Music, 2003.

TaikOz, TaikOz: Live at Angel Place (video/DVD). Stanmore, NSW: New World Music, 2003.

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