<Begin Segment 17>

BY: I realize that I forgot something that you were involved in that I didn't ask you about earlier. So talk about Portland Taiko.

CH: Oh, yeah, okay. That was happening then, too.

BY: I don't remember, when was that, around? Was it before or after redress?

CH: Oh, after. Definitely after.

BY: Okay, all right.

CH: Well, in Eugene, I had been exposed to taiko, and I had met Russell and Jeanne. Russell Baba and Jeanne Mercer had gone to Mt. Shasta. We had a small taiko group. I wasn't really involved with the taiko group, but my friends were in Eugene. And it just seemed like the right thing to do in Portland, and so I was kind of collecting names, and Ann Ishimaru and Zack moved into town, and so I said, "I think we should do a taiko group. I heard you do taiko, let's get it started," and so we were able to start. And at that time, too, I was really kind of struggling with buyo.

BY: Japanese dancing.

CH: Japanese dance. And I'd studied it for maybe ten, fifteen years, which is nothing. But I had gotten to the point where I could natori, and so I was in this anguished place of, should I natori?

BY: Explain what natori is.

CH: So if you're with a school, you would study that form that the school teaches. In this case it was first Fujinami Kai and then Tachibana. So when Sahomi came and she spoke English, I was able to perform with her quite a bit, but also just really loving the forms and the dances that I was learning. But kind of always had this... I just couldn't figure out how I could do that, how I could be a modern dance teacher and create things and do that. It's just not humanly possible. And so I went to her one day and said, "I just can't. I don't think I can do the natori." She said, "Oh, it's okay. You can take everything that you've learned and incorporate it into your modern dance." You just can't do the traditional, the very traditional aligned with the school, but any folk dance, traditional folk, I could definitely incorporate. So I wanted to land it somewhere. Of course if it's in me, I'm teaching that to the kids and I'm doing all that. But I thought taiko would be a great form. I hadn't really studied that form up until then. So I thought, well, if I studied taiko, get it in my body, then maybe that will be a way that I can incorporate some Japanese dance movements, or at least knowledge. Which I was able to start to do, but then it just kind of felt like, hmm, I'm really not a musician and I had to commit to being a musician. So I just found some other ways to...

BY: So how long did you play taiko then?

CH: Maybe about four or five years, the beginning of Portland Taiko.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.