Who can resist driving rhythms, leaping bodies, and spin-on-a-dime choreography? Taiko is one of the exciting developments in Asian American music, and the North American taiko scene is absolutely bursting with creative spirit. New groups spring up by the day and audiences flock to taiko events.
Japanese taiko has been played in Buddhist rituals and festivals for several thousand years, but kumi-daiko, or massed ensembles of Japanese drums, is a post-World War II phenomenon that has been in North America since only 1969. Although there are several thousand taiko groups in Japan, JASC Tsukasa Taiko is one of about one hundred and fifty taiko groups in North America and only a handful of taiko groups in Chicago. Tsukasa Taiko brings striking energy and vision to the taiko scene. It is strongly community-based and deeply connected to Japanese traditional musics.
Tsukasa Taiko is engaged in distinctively Asian American identity work in an urban Midwestern context. It is based at the Japanese American Service Committee of Chicago, a social service non-profit agency that offers a wide range of programs and services supporting the local Japanese American community. Tsukasa Taiko's dojo (studio for teaching) is strategically located where it can best reach Japanese Americans, from the children and grandchildren of former internees who relocated to Chicago after World War II, to recently-arrived Japanese immigrants. Tsukasa Taiko is also supported by Asian Improv aRts Midwest, which builds community through Asian American culture and performance via a broad-based circle of musicians who combine astonishingly inventive creative work with socially-grounded political effort. The sounds on this album thus emerge from the intersection of politics, culture-making, community-building, and music.