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Mark H Rooney Taiko

Taiko Instructor & Performer

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Rediscovering the fun in music by Becky Schwartz

09.10.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

I’ve spent many years with music, but my background is in Western music.  I started playing alto saxophone in fourth grade and continued music recreationally through graduate school. (Yes, pep band counted towards my graduate degree.) I performed in school concert and marching bands and took private lessons throughout middle and high school. Switching around instruments until I stuck with French horn, mellophone (the marching version of the French horn), and piano.

Looking back, most of my classes and performances focused on perfection and precision—for instance, making sure to exactly follow the conductor’s tempo and only listening to feedback from the conductor or other music instructor and not from a peer. This complemented my perfectionist personality. Sometimes, the band director or music instructor wanted us to have “fun.” “Just have fun and rock out,” my college marching band director instructed for portions of our Guitar Hero show. He didn’t take the time to explain what that meant. I rocked my body with the music and pretended I was having a great time.  That perfectionism and precision mindset prevented me from feeling connected to anything but the music and marching movement. I occasionally felt a connection to the crowd, conductors, and fellow players. But for the most part, I faked that connection.

Joining the Mark H Taiko School helped me rediscover the fun and connection in playing music. Mark builds connection between players through explanation, demonstration, drills, songs, and peer to peer feedback. Rather than Mark just saying the words “have fun,” we practice connection. Exercises connect one or more players through eye contact, kiai, body movement, facial expression, and feedback discussion. At first, this felt strange and intimidating. “I don’t know these people. I don’t normally make prolonged eye contact,” I timidly thought (of course, while trying to make eye contact with other students during these drills).

Then, at the Sakura Taiko Takeover last year, one of my fellow Miayko players pretended to bump into me during a song. She shared a smile and funny eyebrow raise to remind me to relax and share the fun. Once I started catching another student’s eye and smile in that way, I felt the connection. I wanted to share that joyous feeling with my fellow students. Later on, I realized connecting to other players brought enthusiasm to playing and performing I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Now, we are in COVID times. Close physical presence is not safe at the moment. But that doesn’t mean the physical and emotional connection have disappeared for Miyako. Our practices have gone virtual, where I enjoy watching everyone drum at slightly different tempos due to internet lag. Our Miyako practice now serves as time to both learn taiko and catch our breath from unprecedented and unexpected events. Even though these activities take place virtually, I still feel emotionally connected to my fellow members. I look forward to our post-Covid practices. I know we will continue our connections from before the pandemic, despite everything that happened in between.

 

Categories // Taiko Voices Tags // Miyako Taiko

Why Taiko Conferences Are Awesome: Report from the East Coast Taiko Conference

03.10.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

Anyone who’s studied with Mark knows that he’s always telling us to get out there and learn taiko from other people, too. One of the best ways to do that is to go to a taiko conference. This week, Sara Harris tells us about her experience at the recent East Coast Taiko Conference, and why that is a great piece of advice. Enjoy! -Linda

The first practice after a taiko conference always bubbles with laughter, stories, and energy. In February, Miyako Taiko, the Mark H Taiko School community group, sent a record number of members to the annual conference for East Coast taiko groups: fifteen members strong. Taking Root, the 2020 East Coast Taiko Conference at the University of Connecticut, drew about 300 taiko drummers from the East Coast and across the United States to gather to learn, play, and have fun. This year, attendees were about evenly split between collegiate and community group players.

It may be hard to envision what the experience is like—how we spend our time and what we get out of it. I’ll admit, it’s not all that obvious what goes on. For the most part, this isn’t the type of conference where you sit and listen to people talk. What is it that we do all day, and why do are so many drummers eager to go? What do we get out of the experience that keeps so many of us going back year after year?

Just to get this out of the way right off the bat: We play taiko! By nature, a taiko conference is hands on. No one is sitting in hotel conference rooms listening to panels all weekend. We come to show what we’ve been working on, learn new instruments, songs, and techniques—and to jam! ECTC 2020 kicked off with an after-dark outdoor session featuring Burlington Taiko’s enormous glow-daiko. Bulbs inside the drum body make the head of the drum light up and change color. Lots of groups bring their equipment to the conference to share, and the opening night jam sessions are a unique opportunity to play a particularly resonant odaiko or check out a new hira design. An indoor jam following the outdoor session had dozens of players assembled for the session collectively create a base line from a series of claps, stomps, whistles and other body percussion. In turn, drummers soloed over the line.

We meet other people who love taiko. The world of taiko is made up of a lot of interesting people! At conferences, you get to connect to the person next to you in the jam session or at the lunch table, the people you meet in your workshops, and taiko friends you know you’ll get to catch up with, year after year. Every time, we share stories about who we met and what we learned from players in other groups. The groups’ styles, habits, practice routines, structure, and group dynamics can be so different, and there’s nowhere like a taiko conference to get exposed that range and variety.

It’s a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with instructors, too. The workshops are taught by a world-class lineup of professional artists and instructors, and they are often happy to share meals and time in between workshops to talk taiko. If you want to know what makes the taiko world tick, spend some time chatting with others in the community. The conference is a great place to connect and reconnect. This time, I met drummers who play with Columbia Taiko, Taiko Tides, and Swarthmore Taiko, all of which will be performing at the Sakura Taiko Takeover at the Tidal Basin on March 28.

We learn about taiko. Over the weekend, each attendee went to three two-and-a-half hour workshops with professional taiko performers from across the United States. We studied specific styles or techniques, such as how to play odaiko, Miyake, yatai bayashi, uchiwadaiko, or chappa. We learned songs. Or we studied specific aspects of playing, such as performance, expression, composition, soloing, or building community. Even when the material is familiar, the experience can be totally new when you learn it from a new instructor. One of the most exciting parts of coming back home is sharing new stretches, drills, pieces, and ways of thinking about playing that weave their way into practices for weeks or months after. This spring at the Sakura Taiko Takeover, Miyako will perform a piece two members learned in a conference workshop and taught to the rest of us. The workshops can be a challenge, but they also are accessible, and everyone’s there to learn.

We stretch ourselves. One of my workshop instructors asked us to think about how we react to being exposed to new things. They either fall in our comfort zone, or make us stretch, or cause panic. As we moved around the room and interacted with each other, she asked us to push through any mild discomfort and be open to the challenge of things that put us in our stretch zone. When the things you learn in a workshop cause you to stretch, you may come out of it with a tricky new move or favorite rhythm to weave into a solo. It may tax you physically. Or it may tell you something about yourself.

We geek out about drumming supplies. The conference marketplace at ECTC featured Asano Taiko and Kadon—suppliers of bachi, drums, T-shirts, and other instruments and equipment—as well as a table for the Taiko Community Alliance, a membership organization and resource for the community. The marketplace buzzes with activity from the moment it opens the first morning of the conference. Whether you need to replace broken bachi, are looking for a souvenir of your weekend, or want to practice on your own uchiwadaiko, the marketplace is always a big draw.

We get inspired by taiko! When practicing and rehearsing with your group, it’s easy to focus on mastering a specific pattern or technique. But the art of taiko keeps growing in exciting and sometimes surprising new ways. Every taiko conference features a concert, where taiko as an art form is on display. We saw the dynamic energy of Soh Daiko’s Matsuri, which opened the show; a new arrangement of Utsu Hachijo shared by Brown University’s Gendo Taiko, and a powerful and moving study on the theme of violence against women from Toronto’s Raging Asian Women Taiko Drummers. Here is where we come to see the traditions of taiko re-envisioned. The concert is an inspiring showcase of what the art of taiko can be and what groups in North America are making it into.

We reconnect with our taiko family. And finally, when we come back home, we all have the opportunity to share and reflect with each other. One of the great attractions of a taiko conference is the chance to learn about new groups and meet new taiko players. During the conference, the Miyako attendees are going in all different directions and may or may not have much of a chance to overlap. But telling our stories and sharing what we learned is a fresh highlight of the conference experience itself. The shared experience brings us closer together as a group.

And as soon as one conference wraps, planning for the next year kicks off. Gendo Taiko at Brown University has been selected to host the conference in 2021. What’s more, ECTC is only one of many gatherings for the taiko community worldwide. For example, after a decade of national conferences in North America, Japan for the first time will host the World Taiko Conference in November. Closer to home this summer is Connect 2020—twelve hours of drumming workshops with leading artists held over a weekend in August. In this January blog post, Miyako member Kim Morrison talks about her experience at Connect 2018. The Taiko Community Alliance is a great resource about all things taiko. Follow its Facebook page to learn about upcoming taiko events around the country and the world. Maybe we’ll see you at the next one!

Categories // CONNECT 2020, Taiko Voices, Uncategorized Tags // conference, ECTC, Miyako Taiko

Taiko Voices: Gearing up for the busy spring season with Miyako Taiko

02.11.2020 by Linda Lombardi //

This week’s post is by Abena Oteng-Agipong. Abena took her first taiko class with Mark six years ago and is now a member of Miyako Taiko, the community group of the Mark H Taiko School. She says, “My first encounter with taiko was in college when my lion dance group, Cornell Lion Dance, did a collaboration with the taiko group on campus, Yamatai. I tried to drum once in lion dance, decided I was terrible at it, and didn’t try again until I came across Mark’s school. When I am not playing taiko, I work in the ‘fascinating’ world of IT and web development. On a more interesting note, if I am not playing taiko, I may be practicing martial arts (I started wushu – Chinese contemporary martial arts – in college as well) or trying out something new – this year it is ballroom dancing.”

Abena wrote for us about Miyako Taiko’s busy spring season of performing and organizing events. Enjoy! -Linda

three taiko players at a performance
Abena with Kat and Trish at the 2017 Sakura Taiko Fest

Spring with Miyako

The spring season is probably the busiest time of the year for Miyako, but also the most accomplished. It starts off with the Shinshun Matsuri at the Washington Marriott in Woodley Park. This event takes place in late January or early February.  As the first performance of the year, it serves as a marker of the upcoming performance season.

Each year that we do this performance, I can see how our group improves in the logistics side of a gig: our sets get tighter, transitions smoother, load in, setup, take down, and load out faster. This year, our set was exactly on time at twenty minutes, which is impressive considering we have twenty people playing, positioning, and moving drums in between songs. We also did a somewhat impromptu procession in the morning before our set as kickoff for the festival. We only talked through what we were going to do the morning of, but we were again, exactly on time at four minutes. As Mark puts it, we are working towards becoming that well-oiled machine. And of course, our playing gets better each time!

Shinshun Matsuri is also a special performance for Miyako as it is usually one that most of our members can participate in. Miyako is a big group, about twenty members strong, so it is hard to get everyone in the same place at the same time. But on the rare occasion that we can all play together, it is amazing! As soon as we started with our first song, Ringu, I could feel the excitement and engagement not only from my fellow members, but the crowd as well. This year, every member of Miyako was able to perform and share our energy with the Japanese community of the DC Metro region.

Miyako Taiko after their 2020 Shinshun Matsuri performance

After the Shinshun Matsuri, we go into full Sakura Taiko Takeover at the Tidal Basin/Sakura Taiko Fest (STF) mode. We may have other events going on, such as attending and sometimes even performing at the East Coast Taiko Conference, but our main focus is putting on this event. One area where I feel like Miyako really shines is supporting each other. Every member of the group will, without hesitation, be there to lend a helping hand to ensure the event runs smoothly.

Organizing a full day event like STF is no small feat, but every year, I am amazed at the show our community puts on. It has been getting bigger each year, involving more groups from the United States and even Canada, different branches of the Mark H Taiko school and, yes, even more equipment and drums. And on top of the organizing, Miyako is also working on our own set for the performance. It is a lot of work to pull all of this off, but it is very rewarding.

Miyako Taiko performs at the 2019 Sakura Taiko Takeover at the Tidal Basin

While Shinshun Matsuri connected us with the Japanese community of DC, STF connects us with community groups, collegiate groups, and other taiko players in North America. I look forward to seeing familiar and new faces each season. Being part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival also allows us to engage with a huge audience. The best audience members, without a doubt, are the kids rocking out in the front while we play. I can’t wait to see them again this year!

We can’t rest quite yet after STF, as we usually have a few more gigs after that. These are usually smaller gigs, such as the Freedom Walk or Lantern Lighting Festival. One of the advantages of having a big group is that we can split up for the smaller gigs. We also play at the Sakura Matsuri, the DC area street festival associated with the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Each performance is a little different in nature, and sometimes not everything goes according to plan, but Miyako has a remarkable ability to recover and adapt. All the members of Miyako put a lot of energy and effort into spring performance season, I really enjoying playing with my taiko family and representing the Mark H Taiko school in the DC area. With these amazing people behind me, I have no doubt we will have another successful performance season this year.

After performing at the 2018 Sakura Matsuri

 

Categories // Taiko Voices Tags // community, Miyako Taiko, National Cherry Blossom Festival, sakura taiko fest, shinshun matsuri, taiko talk

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THIS SATURDAY at 8 PM EST! Mark H Taiko presents a THIS SATURDAY at 8 PM EST! Mark H Taiko presents another in our virtual “Meet the Artist” series - featuring Michelle Fujii and Toru Watanabe AND Unit Souzou ensemble! #virtualMeettheArtist #MHTpresents #unitsouzou
Happy New Year! Look - shiny and new! A new year n Happy New Year! Look - shiny and new! A new year now and... nothing is different... Still a pandemic, still political ridiculousness, still unemployed. But somehow, I have a sense of optimism for the future! Forward and forward, 2021!! #forwardandforward
“...it’s been emotional...” Trying not to lo “...it’s been emotional...” Trying not to lose the hard-learned lessons of this year but really ready to move forward. #2020weOUT
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About Mark H

Mark H Rooney studies, performs, and teaches taiko: a dynamic form of full-body drumming based in Japanese tradition. Mark combines that traditional foundation with a modern sensibility to create performances and classes that are full of energy, endurance, and excitement!

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