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TI: So how did this experience change you and your music and San Jose Taiko?

RH: Well, one, I came back from that learning a lot of different production skills that I felt that we could use here in San Jose. But importantly I felt that -- and our group was just doing the, more the festival things still, we just started to kind of do our own concerts in a way -- but I felt that we had something that was real different that could be really, maybe not the level that they're doing in Japan because it's a whole different culture and lifestyle, but still there's an opportunity for us to be one of the best groups here in the United States and to kind of be the equal to what Kodo was here in the U.S., in our own way, but it would take a lot of work to do that. So I started to share that with the rest of our group members, that we, we should probably start looking, start looking at how we could improve ourselves and really build to that kind of level of performance and activity. Most of the members in our group were just very happy just doing it for fun because it was strictly a hobby at that time. No one got paid. We just did festivals. Sometimes we were, got excited because we got invited to travel, fly somewhere, but that was kind of far and between. It was mainly just doing the Obon festivals around, around the area, and people were very happy and content with that, practicing maybe once a week or whatever. So the idea of increasing practicing to improve skill and technique and this, just trying to develop in different ways was a little bit more than what people wanted to do for themselves. They, they couldn't grasp what it would take in order to get to that level, basically, saying that it was just too far beyond them.

TI: So some people said, "So Roy got religion. All of a sudden he came back and," and all of a sudden you wanted to really take it up a couple of notches.

RH: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah, 'cause it, I would talk about it and then people says, "Yeah, it sounds cool, but I don't know." And it wasn't until we, in nineteen, let's see, 1987, we got invited to go to, as a group, to go to Japan. The original Ondekoza was still performing and they invited us to go and play with them, and so it was after that trip that basically our members then realized, well, one, we were worried that the Japanese people wouldn't understand what we were doing, and two, we didn't know if they would know that we're different from being, that we're Japanese, or Nikkei, Japanese American. And so, but they did notice that and they did hear the difference in our sound and our music, and they did realize that as Japanese Americans we were creating something different, so that made us realize that we do have something here that's just as important as that's being developed in Japan, that we should try to pursue this as a group, that what we're doing here in the United States with taiko is just as important as what's happening in Japan.

TI: And how about comments about your, your technique and how hard, I mean, that part of it? So your, the music was different because of the influences you had in the United States, but how about the way you played taiko?

RH: Well, one, because we had a lot of women involved and every, like I mentioned earlier, we all played equal, so that was a big surprise for them, and we also, we had already developed a style that we were playing for joy and enjoyment of ourselves, in a way, so when we play we naturally are showing that. It's not very, it's not a serious look, it's not that kind of a look that, so that was much different than a lot of groups in Japan who are very serious when they play. There's, there's no expression of joy sometimes, actually, at all. And that's changed a lot, but I think we've had, we've influenced that a lot, so we, I think we've influenced women involvement and the fact that you could be happy while you play taiko at the same time. And so, and also the, what I mentioned before, our music, which was much more musical, in a way, it was much more layered and involved and a little bit more musical in content because of how we'd been writing our music and what we'd been involved with in that way.

TI: So that must be pretty heady stuff, to realize you've influenced the core taiko in Japan by what you've done in the United States. You go back, you play, and now you start seeing changes in Japan. Must be pretty exciting.

RH: Right. Yes, over the years we've seen a lot of what we've, I mean, initially, when we first started playing, too, we're trying to do taiko, but we're incorporating other instruments, so like we use the tambourine, a cowbell and stuff like this because that was kind of our heritage here, what we grew up knowing as far as percussion sounds. And we were being criticized, in fact, because they were not Japanese instruments. You didn't play taiko with a tambourine or a cowbell, so that was wrong. And we kind of persisted, saying, "Well, that's the way we are. That's our music, so we understand what you're saying, but no, that's, we still feel this is what is important for us."

And now you see all kinds of fusion of what's going on, so we kind of, I feel we took the brunt of the, of that criticism early on and just by continuing to do and try to expand on that, that we opened the doors for a lot of people to look at that. And also by doing crossover work, by working with other artists in other disciplines, whether it's dance or other, even Japanese classical instruments, but whether it's ballet or modern dance, even classical musicians or jazz musicians, so we started to do other types of things and different fusion ways with collaborations, and then also other ethnic groups, like the Abanai Dance Company, or Indian dance and those kind of things. So we were doing these collaborations way before a lot of other groups even tried 'em or thought about them, and now you see these collaborations happening all over and people saying "for the first time," whatever. Well, we did this long time ago, but oh well. [Laughs] And so it's exciting to see that kind of growth and that I feel we've influenced.

In Japan, even the concept of making the barrel drum that Kinnara Taiko started and they, they revolutionized, that was a very important of American taiko, they took a wine barrel and put a hide on it and called it a taiko. And the Japanese people, when they want a taiko they have to go to a taiko maker and they, they have buy that drum from them, and if that drum breaks they send it back to that taiko maker, which was, generations of families have been doing this. Here in America we're making our own and if it breaks we're fixing it on our own, so it's a very different kind of relationship that we have to the drums and those instruments that, even though it's not a real taiko, I feel we have a stronger connection to that drum than some of the people that play taiko in Japan because they're just buying that instrument.

TI: Now, in the United States, when you came back from Japan you talked about stepping it up a couple notches, how did that affect your standing amongst the taiko groups in the United States in terms of, back then it seemed like you saw a lot of the taiko groups as kind of at the same levels, but with that extra training, did San Jose Taiko kind of separate themselves from the other taiko groups?

RH: Well, I don't think we did it consciously, but it was, as far as trying to be better than the other groups in that way, we just we were trying to create the best sound and thing for ourselves, basically, was how we were looking at it. And it wasn't really a concern that we were trying to better than San Francisco Taiko or Kinnara Taiko or any other group that was started after that, but it was, yeah, it was just trying to see, 'cause we, if you look at it, San Francisco Taiko kind of leads the traditional folk style way of playing and Kinnara leads the Buddhist style, and then we took on this very contemporary Asian American, Japanese American perspective and kind of opened fusion type of work. And so a lot of groups kind of followed our format. We also developed a sort of collective process of working together, which a lot of other groups had to also adopt because they didn't have a teacher either, so we kind of helped build the infrastructure organizationally and musically, I think, for a lot of groups. And I think, a lot of people tell us that in a way, San Jose Taiko, we've kind of built our own competition, so to speak, by helping and sharing our style and our information so freely with other organizations, other groups that are trying to develop. And that's just been kind of who, what we feel's been important. It's not so much for us that we feel there's competition, but that it's important that there's more groups out there doing stuff and so the larger public knows what taiko's about, and it's really important that those groups are doing their own work so that it's not that we're trying to create a hundred different mini San Jose Taiko organizations out there, that there's a variety so people understand that there is that differences, even though, like jazz, you have this large term, but each artist is their own musician.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.