Asian Arts & Culture program presents Fubuki Daiko.

In concert, few instruments immediately engage an audience on a visceral level. It takes time for the melodies and rhythms to drive out the mundane preoccupations that most audience members bring into the hall with them. But from the first strokes on the massive odaiko, the power and passion of Japanese drumming produce a palpable excitement that is impossible to resist.

On March 10, the internationally renowned Canadian group Fubuki Daiko brings its energy and expertise to this incredibly demanding performance art form in a full-length evening concert in Bowker Auditorium at 8 PM. While 700 area schoolchildren will enjoy an hour-long “sold-out” school performance by the group in the morning.

The group's name Fubuki Daiko, means “blizzard drums” in Japanese and from all accounts is apt, as their playing has been described as “a violent attack on the drum heads with the energy and ferocity of martial arts warriors.” Its four members move among the various-sized drums from the shime, or small taiko tightened with rope, through the larger wadaiko, miya daiko, nagadou daiko, and jozuke which can be played flat or on a slanted stand. The odaiko is usually anywhere from three to six feet in diameter.

Hiroshi Koshiyama, founder of the Winnipeg-based group, trained with Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka who is credited with bringing modern taiko drumming to North America over thirty years ago. Koshiyama and his fellow kumidaiko players met while apprentices at Tanaka’s San Francisco Taiko Dojo. Performing, training, and teaching year-round, each member has over ten years of taiko experience. Koshiyama is the only Canadian formally trained in the art of the Japanese Lion Dance by world famous lion dancer, Nosuke Akiyama.

The origins of the taiko (or daiko), which means “big drum,” are unknown, but it was once an integral part of Japanese life and was used in religious ceremonies, festivals, imperial court music, Kabuki and Noh ensembles, on the field of battle, and in the rice fields. In modern times, it has tended to be regarded as a festival relic. The current style of community drumming, or kumidaiko, was introduced in 1951 by Grandmaster Kaihachi Oguchi, and further popularized in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The taiko is still used in Sumo wrestling events. Striking the drum at the opening of Sumo is called Yakura Taiko. This is done to draw attention to the large Sumo performances. The Yakura is 16 meters high and made out of Japanese cedar. The sound is intended to carry far over the waves of the Sumida River to call people to the event.

Fubuki Daiko’s music and style reflect the players’ roots in the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, but they now perform an almost exclusively original repertoire. Their goal, as they put it, is that of “catapulting Japanese drumming into the 21st Century.”

Tickets may be purchased through the Fine Arts Center box office at 413-545-2511 or 1800-999-UMAS