[00:03:12] Jonelle: I imagine there are a few back aches and aches and pains along the way. That sounds like a large dance partner. [laughs]

[00:03:20] Franco: It is. We do a lot of conditioning. We are dancers, we are musicians, but also, yes, there's a lot of moving around. Our audition process is around two years. We do a lot of conditioning. We do 50 pushups, 200 crunches every rehearsal.

[00:03:45] Jonelle: I have no idea.

[00:03:46] Franco: It's that conditioning that helps us stay in shape along with the taiko, along with being our own roadies and making sure we're lifting with our legs. [chuckles] Sorry, not our backs.

[00:04:00] Jonelle: Oh my goodness. You are performers, you are musicians, and you are athletes.

[00:04:05] Franco: Yes, definitely.

[00:04:07] Host: Wisa Uemura transitioned from a performer to executive director for San Jose Taiko. She explains to me the history of the organization and of taiko itself.

[00:04:17] Wisa Uemura: When we started back in 19-- I say the we, that's the royal we.

[00:04:20] Host: Of course.

[00:04:21] Wisa: When San Jose Taiko started back in--

[00:04:22] Host: It's your family now. It is a we.

[00:04:23] Wisa: Yes, it is a we. Yes. Started back in 1973, we were only the third group to form in the United States. I do want to backtrack a little bit in that taiko as an instrument has been outside of Japan for quite a while. First in Hawaii and then through different means, but the art form of taiko, as we call it, or this ensemble performance art that most people reconcile the word taiko with, that only came to the Americas in the late 1960s, but it actually only started in Japan in the late 1950s, this ensemble style of playing.

[00:05:01] Host: The drums were just instruments for performance before?

[00:05:07] Wisa: Usually, they're part of other, I'll call it ensembles. In Japanese court music, or the Imperial Court Music, which is one of the oldest forms of orchestra music in the world, there would be taiko of different sizes and different styles, but usually only one of each. Then it's amongst a larger ensemble of string and wind instruments. Similarly in kabuki theater, there's only one or two taiko perhaps amongst hayashi or an ensemble that's providing the musical backdrop to the play itself.

In temples, yes, only a singular drum used to accompany the priest when they're chanting. Most villages, like the older villages, they would have what we like to call the village taiko, usually on some sort of taller structure. That would be used to call the village together or send certain signals and messages across. We like to say and it was told that the size of the village was denoted by however far you could hear that taiko. That's the backdrop.

[00:06:14] Host: Sure. I'm going to keep branching off here. The taiko itself is just the drum used with the two drumsticks. What do you call them?

[00:06:24] Wisa: Bachi. B-A-C-H-I.

[00:06:28] Host: That's the taiko, is the actual drum itself.

[00:06:31] Wisa: I can even go a little bit further. Taiko the Japanese word is drum. In Japan, that can be any sort of drum of any origin. Conga, bongos, djembe. Here or I'll say outside of Japan, and especially in more recent decades, taiko, that word taiko has come to mean specifically the Japanese drum. Everybody outside of Japan says taiko and they think the Japanese style drum that is played with bachi most typically. There are some styles of taiko that are played by hand, and those are the more traditional, the ones that are part of the imperial court music.

The idea of the ensemble performance art, that was in 1950s in Japan, and then came to America primarily through festivals. Some of the Japanese migrants who came here, one in particular, Tanaka Seiichi or Seiichi Tanak from San Francisco, he was born and raised in Japan, came to America. He was at a Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco and he was like, "Something's missing." It took him a little while, but he realized it was the sound of the taiko. He started a group and they're actually credited with being the first group in North America.

From there, a second group formed a year later in Los Angeles at the Senshin Buddhist Temple. For them, their inspiration was more about using the taiko as a means to become better Buddhists, to deepen their understanding of Buddhism. Fast forward 1973, a few years later, our founders or many of our founding members, including Roy Hirabayashi and PJ Hirabayashi, they are students at San José State or recently graduated students of San José State University, and they're really immersed in the activism that was going on in the '60s and the '70s. Civil rights movement, the Asian American Studies Movement, affirmative action, the early steps for affirmative action.

Our organization, we like to say, was really more about third-generation Japanese Americans searching for a way to express their cultural identity. You have to take into effect or context the World War II incarceration camps or internment camps where these third-generation Americans weren't there, but maybe their older siblings or certainly their parents, maybe, most likely their grandparents were in these camps. Coming out of the camps as we call them, although that makes it sound fun, but coming out of the camps, there's really a lot of, I don't want to say pressure but focus on not highlighting that someone was Japanese or Japanese American.

It was a shameful period in our experience, our American experience, and those who were in the camps really just wanted to forget it and just wanted their kids to just fit in and not have to experience that for themselves. Many of them grew up not really experiencing a lot of those culturally relevant activities, but by the time they get to college, they're like, "I'm filling out all these demographic forms. I'm having to say I'm Asian, I'm having to say I'm Japanese, but what does that mean? What does that mean for me?"

[00:09:54] Host: Sure. That's the time where everyone searches for their own sense of identity and belonging.

[00:10:01] Wisa: Exactly. I will say this group was highly active and they immersed themselves in like, "Okay, what shall we use as this voice of our generation of Japanese Americanness?"It ended up, thankfully for all of us who came later, they found and selected the taiko or the drum partially for its beauty, of course, as an art form itself, and the way it brings people together, but also because it's powerful and it's in contrast to what some people might have stereotypically believed of Japanese Americans at that time that we're quiet, we're docile, we just go along with the flow.

Here we're these young Japanese [chuckles] Americans, I'm not going to say banging the drums even though a lot of people say that, [laughs] making music on the taiko loud and proud that they were third generation. Very early on, they were straight up and said, "You know what? We're not going to be a traditional taiko group. There's no way we can be a Japanese Taiko group. Having been born and raised in the United States, we're not as familiar with Japanese music and cultural forms that would inspire a traditional Japanese group. We're going to have to write our own music using our own musical influences." San Jose Taiko from its very beginning was a contemporary taiko ensemble, or kumi-daiko is what we call it here in North America, which is ensemble drumming.

[00:11:32] Host: Here's Franco discussing their collaborative project, Swingposium.

[00:11:36] Franco: A Swingposium is a project of ours. It's an immersive theater experience. What does that mean? It's basically, the audience is not sitting down in a seat and observing passively to a performance going on in stage. Basically, if you imagine yourself walking onto a Hollywood set and the setting is basically a dance hall, unfortunately, this dance hall is located in an incarceration camp in the 1940s during World War II. As you enter the dance hall, basically, you're surrounded by other dancers, actors, musicians, a live band playing, the music playing, and you just start dancing as the actors work as they onboard the guests.

Many people experience this Swingposium experience as a couple so that they have a dance partner, but a lot of folks just come in and they find a dance partner and people are all in character. A story unfolds about these actors that are playing characters that are in their teens navigating what life is like in an incarceration camp as a Japanese American. The storyline follows these two characters, George and Amy, and who fall in love.

George is navigating not even knowing how to dance and learning about music and swing music. There is his friends also experiencing the complications of being a Japanese American that's being asked to serve in the military, and what does that mean in terms of wanting to serve a country that has imprisoned your family and yourself without due process, but on the other side, also wanting to prove that you're just as an American as anyone outside of barbed wire. The music and the dance is really a vehicle for this larger message and larger history.

[00:14:06] Jonelle: I heard you mention several times actually the infringement of civil liberties. My understanding is that this project was at least partially funded by a grant from the California State Library. Can you tell me a little bit more about how this program specifically ties into the Civil Liberties Grant?

[00:14:24] Franco: Yes. There's so much to take in in terms of the history of the Japanese American internment. I'm going to back up just a little bit. Before we even got that grant, our goal was to really experiment with this format of immersive theater. The story itself was one that, as ambassadors for our Japantown community, we felt that it needed to be told. It's been told in many ways, in movies, in songs, and plays, but for us as a taiko company, I really wanted for the delivery mechanism, this vehicle, to really be impactful.

I came across Epic Immersive, which is an immersive theater company in San Jose, and Steve Boyle who was doing some amazing work at History Park with an immersive project using the buildings in History Park for his particular project. I really fell in love with the possibilities of this immersive format and what it could do for the story of the Japanese American internment.

We debuted it in Japantown for our own community and received a lot of great response, a lot of things that we wanted to-- It's changed every time we've performed it because we have people in our Japantown community that basically either have relatives or were incarcerated. We're telling the story to folks who have experienced it in a very intimate way.

[00:16:09] Jonelle: What is their reaction?

[00:16:10] Franco: Especially after the first one, I'm thinking, that we did, some folks were crying after the performance because the music brought back different types of memories. Some who were younger, while they were at camp, they actually responded saying, "As a kid in camp, I remember camp being fun. We got to play baseball or we got to play games. We did some school."

[00:16:41] Jonelle: I don't know if they find that comforting or not. [chuckles]

[00:16:44] Franco: What was heartbreaking about it for me, especially as a parent of an eight-year-old now, was that you really understood how much the kids were being sheltered by the parents during this horrific experience for the kids to feel like that it was camp, that it was not this atrocious nightmare of civil liberties. That really hit me, especially as a parent. Then obviously folks that experience the camp as more of a young adult, a lot of memories coming back in terms of being a bittersweet in terms of the music, but then a lot of bad memories coming up and the hardships that were endured.

There's a generation that didn't want to talk about this with their kids. There are a lot of Japanese American families that don't talk about it. You have folks that are coming into this experience and saying, "We didn't talk about this as a kid, but now I understand a different aspect of it. I understand maybe why my grandparents didn't want to talk about this." It was quite a mix of emotions." Back to California, [chuckles] the grant, what they allowed us to do was when we brought this production to Humboldt County, we added some elements to it.

Rather than just having the immersive theater experience itself, we added an interview portion before the show started where we were interviewing internees, actual internees or descendants of internees. It was about a 30-minute interview with the audience there. Before we take this time warp into the 1940s, they were sitting in this-- Actually, it was a mess hall. It was just a wonderful space.

I wish I could show photos, but we're on a podcast, I totally understand. We had some amazing interviewees who told stories. They were all very different experiences from what it meant to be in high school at the time and to feel the prejudice and frustration. We also heard from some of the kids of those internees and how as a family, they came to know of this story and came to respect their parents or grandparents for what they went through, and how to continue that story.

[00:19:34] Jonelle: How is Swingposium adapting to the new virtual world? I imagine that you can't pull off the same three-dimensional feats through Zoom, not to mention the time lag.

[00:19:46] Franco: We're putting it on hold for now. We had some performances set in some Japanese American communities in Stockton and LA, a stage performance of it. We were actually asked to perform a stage version of it in Tokyo, Japan-

[00:20:07] Jonelle: Oh, wow.

[00:20:07] Franco: -for November as part of a World Taiko Conference. Obviously, all those plans have--

[00:20:15] Jonelle: Postponed.

[00:20:16] Franco: Postponed, yes. I would like to optimistically say postponed. We don't know how we're going to be rolling this out, but there is some opportunities in the virtual space, some ways that we can connect with this history in a meaningful way. Most people I think are probably sick of Zoom calls.

[laughter]

[00:20:43] Franco: I think in the same way we chose immersive theater as an engaging vehicle for the story, I think we're going to apply the same kind of treatment to an online virtual version if we do it. Steve Boyle, one of my partners for this project who leads Epic Immersive, they’re at the cutting edge of what is possible in a virtual space. Whether it's going into these rooms where you have an avatar or is there a virtual reality or augmented reality experience that can be done well to serve the story, those are all on the table, I think.

[00:21:33] Jonelle: Do you see the San Jose Taiko Group growing into a new direction with this AR or returning as soon as it's safe to this comfortable pheromonal three-dimensional state?

[laughter]

[00:21:45] Franco: That's a great question. My thought, and this is just an instinct I have, like many people, I don't have a crystal ball, I think we're going to be changed by this time. It's not a bad thing, but in some senses, there's no going back. As artists of a contemporary art form, San Jose Taiko is, we're learning a lot about what's possible in this virtual space. I think such as the same with our classes that we're teaching online, I think there's going to be an element of it that stays, a virtual element that stays after things go back to "normal".

[00:22:30] Host: A lot of the world seems to be on pause right now in that holding pattern filled with this potential energy ready to get out and get back to normal, or whatever that means. Wisa explains it to me in relation to taiko.

[00:22:45] Wisa: It's not just the drum, it's the drum and the performer because there's so much happening in the space between the strike. It's like you're watching energy build and hold and then release, and then build. It's like watching a circle. It's really beautiful.

[00:23:06] Jonelle: There's a concept in Japanese art called Ma, and that is the space between both musically as well as visually. Yes, you really picked up on that. That's really important. You have been doing this a long time, what led you into taiko in the first place?

[00:23:24] Franco: My original attraction to taiko was through its music. In the mid-'90s, I was living in Berkeley, California and a friend had gotten me tickets to see a concert at Zellerbach Hall, which was San Francisco Taiko's annual concert that they were holding at the time. I had played percussion all my life growing up in Texas, and my friend at the time thought I would be interested in it. I saw it and immediately-- If you ask any taiko player, it's a very similar story. It was moving, it was something that we just had to do, had to try. That was my first attraction was through the music. I'd never played. I'd played percussion in different styles all my life growing up as a child through school and college.

Just the combination of athleticism, of music, of spirituality, of martial arts, of dance, and expression, it was everything all balled up to one. That's how I first became attracted to it, but then it wasn't until I auditioned for San Jose Taiko in 1998 that I realized that this art form, or at least San Jose Tiako in the way that they did this art form, was tied to a cultural community. That was something I had never experienced before. I had played everything from being in a rock band to Brazilian samba, bateria. Those were connected to culture, but never a physical neighborhood. The music was the thing that attracted me, but it was the community that made me stay.

[00:25:24] Host: You studied hula as a young person in Hawaii. I'd love to know how taiko relates to it because I see a lot of similarities in the performance aspect, but also in the storytelling aspect.

[00:25:41] Wisa: I could go in so many different directions [chuckles] with that question, Jon-Barrett. There's definitely storytelling in both. In hula, I think the most common way hula is explained is you're telling a story through your hands or the choreography. In taiko, it would be partially the choreography, at least in the way that San Jose Taiko does it, but also in the music itself. It really depends. For us, since we write so much of our own music, I think each composer has a different purpose and possibly a different story and a different methodology in how they compose.

I love to tell this story. Our artistic director, Franco Imperial, he had a dream one night. When he woke up, he had a taiko song almost completely written. It was the dream of a dolphin swimming in the ocean. He named the song Iruka. Just to wake up and have an entire song pretty much finished, not very many people have that experience. Most times for many people, it starts with either a pattern or a visual, like a movement, and then they have to build off of that and slowly piecemeal it together until they have a complete song.

The storytelling, I think it's not a single performance of San Jose Taiko. Not all of them are where the song order and the songs come together to tell a complete story. Most times I think I would say each song is a story in itself. The other part I would say is similar between hula and taiko is those growing pains of a cultural art form. It gains visibility, it gains popularity, there are more groups growing. Everybody maybe should think about what is authentic. I’m not one that leans towards certification of being able to teach things, but how do you attest to and honor and respect the tradition and those that have come before you in either of those traditions and yet make it something that speaks to you in whatever your lived experience is?

Especially for us as a contemporary taiko ensemble, there's that connection to our past and really being in our present, but also how do you keep that a living breathing thing, a living tradition, if you will? In many ways, we don't like to use the word traditional. It's such a loaded word given that the art form is so new in itself just from the late 1950s. What is a traditional taiko piece? [chuckles] We often have very deep philosophical conversations about that. In many ways for a lot of people, San Jose Taiko in itself is tradition because we've been around and part of the art form for so long. Current taiko music, a lot of it is very eclectic, incorporating different world music instruments as well as rhythms and influences.

[00:28:25] Host: Taiko is this term meaning drum in general. Drumming seems to be such an important part of the cultural history of so many, every nation, every continent, every group of people from African drumming to the congas in Cuba to the tablas and in India to Native American drum circles. What is it about that rhythm that really was the beginning of music, is the end of music, and ties us all together?

[00:29:01] Wisa: Drums, drumming, rhythmic percussion, it's an echo of our heartbeat. We're born, conceived in a female body and we hear our mother's heartbeat. That's the first percussive sound that we hear. I feel that drumming is universal in that way because it's all of us trying to connect to that first feeling and that first sense whether or not we actually remember that. It is something that unifies us.

We all have a heartbeat. It's actually relatively similar [laughs] and it's not changed by the color of our skin or the way we look or which country we came from. We all have a heartbeat and I think that is something that can connect us universally. It is a innate part of us that maybe we don't realize we are looking for or searching for but can ultimately connect to and relate to, and really remind us of our humanity and our joined humanity, our collective humanity.

[00:30:00] Host: I love that. It reflects this line I got from your website, which this term is so wonderful and prescient right now with our world and our nation and everything that's happening, but “cultural pluralism.”

[00:30:17] Wisa: Oh, Yes.

[00:30:17] Host: Is such an incredible term. I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about how your company embraces that term.

[00:30:26] Wisa: Back in the 1970s when San Jose Taiko first started, there wasn't this phrase multiculturalism. There was mostly the Western Eurocentric art forms out there. Of course, it was happening in smaller communities, but it wasn't being put out there in larger performance venues. Education became equally as important to our organization as performance itself, and they go hand in hand. People didn't know what taiko is. We had to explain what it is, where it came from, and what we're trying to do with it.

For us, cultural pluralism is, as you said, it's so important because one of the lines that we tend to go back to for our school shows, the assemblies that we do within schools in the Bay Area and actually across the nation as we tour is that we hope that through learning about our culture and appreciating and respecting that which we have shared with you, it'll encourage you to learn more about your own culture and the other cultures around you.

So important to realize that we're in a pluralistic society. There is no one way. That's very much a tenet of San Jose Taiko philosophy. Even if we have what we believe to be the way we want to learn and teach taiko, that's not the only way. I can safely say I believe all of us who play with San Jose Taiko believe that, that there is no one way. We have to always be willing to listen and hear and see and be open-hearted and open-minded to new experiences that are not our own. That's essentially for us the heart of cultural pluralism.

I would say in this exact time, here we are in 2020, we are wondering whether cultural pluralism, as beautiful as it is, is strong enough of an approach. We can't be racist. We can't be uniform and homogenous and just one view is the right view. There's so much gray in the world. Actually, I won't say it's gray. There's so much color in the world and that is what makes the beautiful picture, the mosaic that is United States as well as I think life.

[00:32:39] Host: Thank you to both of our guests, Wisa Uemura and Franco Imperial, and thank you for letting us use a sample of your music. To find out more and to see clips from Swingposium, visit taiko.org. Chapters Podcast was produced by Heritage Future and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Libraries. For more information, visit heritagefuture.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.

[music]