the beat of a different drum

On July 26, I went out to the 4th annual ShastaYama Taiko Festival. This is an event that my dad and I had been wanting to attend since year 1, but had always seemed to just barely miss and then hear about in the news afterward, so we were determined to catch it this year. So, he and my mother and I made a day of it.

Once we got into town, we discovered that Google Maps’ street directions to the venue were not entirely accurate. It aimed us approximately 3 miles away from where we needed to be. Fortunately, we spotted one of the cross streets on our way, so were able to retrace our steps and quickly find the true location, aided further by decorative banners and the sight of a person clad in a bright green “Event Security” t-shirt, who helped us find a place to park. There was shuttle service from the parking area to the concert area, which was nice because all three of us had our arms full with lawn chairs and blankets and stuff. I was amused when the other shuttle driver, having found himself in a tight spot, asked the driver of my shuttle, “Hey, do you know how to put this thing in reverse?” and my driver replied cavalierly, “Nope, haha!”

We arrived in time for the pre-concert show, which were a pair of jazz bands. One was a tribute band performing in the style of Django Reinhardt, which completely captured my dad’s attention as he’s a fan of the original. The venue was a stage set at one corner of an open, grassy and well-tended field. We set up near the center, not too far forward nor back, where the sound was balanced just right. It wasn’t long before more people poured in around us.

The show turned out to be a grand opportunity for people-watching and overhearing.

Behind us, for example, there was a family with three teenage girls. During a break in the pre-concert show, I overheard one of them lamenting: “… on his MySpace page, he’s dressed as … a ninja. With a sword. And on his interests? Ninja. Just … ninja.”

The pre-concert show was a little slow-going because people kept doing sound checks between the bands’ songs. Meanwhile, there was this old lady in a rainbow-striped shirt (not tie-dyed, mind you, just made up of different colors of cloth sewn together) who either know a lot of the audience in front of us already or just decided to hug them and then stand around blocking our view of the stage with her undergarment-padded butt while she chatted. She seemed harmless and charming enough; it’s just that I wanted to get pictures of the female Gypsy singer dancing on stage but I kept getting foiled. So now if anyone ever asks me if I have pictures of that band, I will have to reply, “That Depends.”

Also in attendance and noted during the pre-show were:

• Dude with a spike-mohawk and leather jacket.
• Long-white-haired woman in a purple muumuu, making up her own dance to every song.
• Female sporting a pair of lavender “fairy wings”. I spotted her once from across the field and assumed it was a younger woman, but my parents saw her close-up and assure me that she appeared to be a woman in her 40s.
• Rather smarmy-looking dude in a pinstripe suit and a fedora, roving around, hawking CDs of the bands playing.

I liked the jazz bands a lot. The host came up after their part of the show to formally welcome everybody. As part of his introductions, he quipped, “We want to apologize for the lack of a non-smoking section…” It took me a minute to catch that he wasn’t being literal, but rather was referring to all the smoke that was still in the air from the hundreds of lightning-sparked fires that have been ravaging our state for several weeks now. (The comment drew scattered, knowing chuckles.) He also invited the audience to visit the food vendors which were lined up near the entrance. My parents picked up some sushi and coffee; I had a fruit juice bottle.

In time, the host introduced the first taiko performance group of the evening, the local “Shasta Taiko”. Pretty straightforward traditional taiko style. They did one or two pieces by themselves. Then, they taught us in the audience a “bon odori”, which they explained to us is a dance to celebrate and “reconnect” with one’s ancestors, and when they began to play, they invited us to “lose our egos” and dance along. I totally did. :) The audience participation as a whole was so-so, but several of us who did stand up and dance with the band made our way to the front, right below the stage, to form a loosely-defined circle. The dance they taught us was a series of moves, each of which supposedly represented something about this part of California, including “mountain”, “river”, “fish swimming”, and “sun”. There was also a generic “welcome” move. After we learned each move, it was trivial to link them together to help tell a story.

And that really was one of the highlights as far as I’m concerned.

They continued to perform, and as the sun set I noticed each piece had its own accompanying light show — orange for a harvest-themed piece, maroon for a flute solo & fan dance; blue for a calm, sparse, minimalist drum number. They ended with an unusual dance routine involving fantastical-looking costumes — that the program described as having been created from recycled modern products — and the addition of a pair of ad-libbing saxophones to the standard taiko percussion. It was fairly well received by the audience, though. Then, it was time for an intermission so that the big out-of-town act could set up. We stood and stretched and I took note of how the paper lanterns placed along the venue’s borders were now lit.

Anyway, all fairly traditional-sounding music before this point. I thought it was kind of cute that the local group would try to push the boundaries of their art with their recycled-costume dances-with-saxes bit. My dad and I described it as “Taiko a la Bowie??”

What I didn’t realize is that the musical acid trip had just begun.

During the intermission, some guy doing a sound check started with the typical soft monotonous “check, check one … *long pause* … check two” but all of a sudden dropped that and started full-on beatboxing instead. Woo! Hey, half the audience was milling around or in line at the food vendors, so to us it just sounded like one of the sound guys was having a bit of fun, a sort of impromptu, unofficial performance. However..!

When the big out-of-town act was ready to begin their show, they lit up the stage and sky with big floodlights and started in on their drums and instruments. At the time, I was off the main concert area, standing in line for sushi and coffee at one of the remaining vendors, so I saw more than I heard from their opening piece. The audience response sounded enthusiastic as I walked back up the hill, though, so I hurried to return to my lawn chair, eyes on my open beverage and ears tuned in to the band leader’s greetings. Turns out that he and one of his bandmates were former members of the local group that had just performed. He praised them and then said with pride that his current group had been “taking the art in our own new and different direction.” As I rejoined my parents and got situated, the guy on stage was thanking everyone for coming out, and inviting us to listen.

Well, what followed was over a half hour of … I’m not sure what it all was, but I can tell you it was definitely several degrees removed from any other traditional taiko performance I’ve seen, live or on screen. Their music incorporated electric musical instruments, throat singing, a standard rock drum set, a turntable and more live beatboxing, layered in with a koto and what seemed like sparse use of taiko drums. It was pretty far out and groovy music, buuuut to my ears it was barely “taiko” at all. I came away from their set with the feeling that they were really more of a “kewl” new-age/funk/techno/world-fusion band that just happened to every now and then throw a hit on a taiko drum or two into their songs.

(Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great sounding band, and their performance in itself would have been fine if the concert had been billed as, say, a Drum Festival or a World Music Festival (Featuring Taiko) … but this event was specifically promoted as a “Taiko Festival”, so, I, for one, rather expected less record-scratching and more, y’know, dudes hitting big skins-and-wood drums in strict choreographed rhythmic fashion without melodic accompaniment.)

I noticed, too, that a sizeable portion of the audience gradually packed up and left as their set continued. Granted, the weather had grown cold after sundown, and perhaps not everyone brought blankets as my parents and myself did, but you could kind of tell that the sight of some people leaving was enough to cause others to question whether it was still worth it to them to continue braving the chill air. More than once, my parents and I huddled together to mull over the same question. I kept feeling like apologizing to them, my mother especially, for bringing her to what I -thought- was going to be a full evening of powerful, traditional-style performances. But we decided to wait for the show’s big finale, which was to be a more traditional dance involving -everybody- from the whole concert on stage at once. Pretty glad we did, because it was worth the wait. From what I could see, the local taiko group took the center and brought out some really tall and flowing banners. The lady who performed the solo fan dance earlier, Michelle Fujii, demonstrated her ample chops at the drums, as well. No saxophones, no beatboxing, no problem. I was determined to capture the whole finale on video, but I was foiled in part by more random geriatric types who, I suppose, figured that since the audience had thinned, that it was okay to just stand around in front of the remaining people who were still seated. Fortunately for me, they were also standing in front of the guy in front of me (and his wife), so he got up and got them to move along. The other thing that foiled my effort was the sheer cold of the night which sent my body into shivers, since I had to hold my camera arm away from the heavy blanket over my shoulders in order to see what I was filming. So, what I have recorded is the music, the host’s thanks and farewell, and a bunch of garish amorphous shapes. XD I doubt it’ll ever hit YouTube, but you never know.

When it was time to leave, my parents and I hustled back to our vehicle, where we were content to fire up the heater and just wait for the initial rush of cars to clear out from the overflow parking area. We drove around town trying to find a place where we could use the restrooms and eat dinner, but were denied twice — Burger King had all the lights on and even a neon sign advertising “Open Til 2AM!” but the doors were locked and nobody was on register; another local restaurant also claimed to be open, but wait staff hurriedly locked the doors as we exited our vehicle. Boo. So we pulled up to a nearby gas station and had convenience store nachos for dinner. Funnily enough, one of the departing customers as we entered the store was the pinstripe-suit-and-fedora salesguy from earlier that evening at the concert. The really shady-looking, pimp-mustachioed guy. Even more unlikely but true, my dad and I both thought we heard him say “Bless you, brother” and “See you at church tomorrow?” to the cashier. Oh, life, and its random, unexpected twists.