More on Kaga Style Taiko

I am becoming infected with taiko. It seems that I go to bed with taiko going through my head, and when I wake up in the morning, it is still going through my head. I suppose this is a good thing, seeing as we are hoping to eventually get our bread and butter from playing the taiko.
Perhaps we are just filling our schedule so full of taiko, that it is saturating my mind. The performance last week took a lot of preparation and time, and it turns out that I will get to perform again this Sunday. It's kind of unbelievable for me. Within 7 days, I am able to perform twice with Hono Taiko. This performance also will take up a lot of time. There is a rehersal on Saturday night, and then the performance on Sunday will take up part of the morning, and most of the afternoon, by the time we load the drums and unload the drums. Video may not be allowed at this performance either, but if it is, I shall definitely try to get it recorded and post it.

In the meantime, perhaps you can enjoy learning a little more about Kaga style taiko, which we are also learning. The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know. Often, the result of learning, is realizing that I made inaccurate statements on this blog. For example, I believe I said in an earlier entry, that taiko is never improvised, or nearly never improvised. Hopefully I wrote nearly, because it seems that Kaga taiko is one of the rare styles that is improvised. We have been learning set rhythms in the class, but when the style is performed, the performer strings together the different rhythms any way he likes.

The instructors seem to emphasize being relaxed while we play, and enjoying ourselves. It seems to have a fairly long history, at least its roots go back several hundred years, I believe. I think the style we are learning has been developed more recently, and was developed almost as a style to be played in restaurants and such places, where people might not necessarily be coming strictly to see taiko. It was sort of meant to be entertainment during dinner, or a drink.

In case my earlier descriptions of Kaga taiko have been insufficient, or have, perhaps, left you wanting to know more, we located a site with a couple of short videos demonstrating the style. The site is in Japanese, if you cannot read Japanese, just look for the videos and you can enjoy them.
http://www.kuni-net.com/ichijyuku/ichijyuku.html