Yamato The Drummers of Japan at Peacock Theatre is sensational
Among the many touring Taiko drumming groups, Yamato are the most frequent and successful on UK stages. They perform at The Peacock Theatre until 22 June, their first time back in London since the pandemic, says Grace Times
Traditional uses of Taiko drums range from the religious, in Shinto shrines, to the practical, from storm warning to battlefield message despatch. Despite the fact that archaeologists found Taiko drums in Japan dating back 2000 years, Taiko ensemble drumming, or Kumi-Daiko, has a surprisingly modern history.
The Kumi-Daiko was born in 1951, when jazz drummer Daihachi Oguchi reproduced the modern drum set with players joining on drums of different sizes and pitch, from the thin and flat Hiradaiko, resembling a snare drum, to the massive, Oodaiko, carved out of a single tree trunk, weighing easily 500Kg and with an otherworldly booming base. Kumi-Daiko groups have since thrived inside and outside of Japan, where they often serve to cement a Japanese cultural identity for the expat communities. Taiko ensemble drumming went mainstream in the West – and became closely associated to communal living and ascetic physical training – when Za Ondekoza, a group from Japan’s Sado Island, Taiko-drummed on stage right after completing the 1975 Boston Marathon.
The guest star is undoubtedly their two meter-wide Oodaiko. Reportedly hewn out of a 400-year old tree, it requires four to prop it up and one very fit drummer to strike it with a baseball like bat, standing naked from the waist up, partly showing off and partly because a kimono or any top would be sweat-drenched in seconds. Hearing is the wrong word here: the ensuing sound is one you feel in your ribcage.
The Wings of the Phoenix sees five young men and five young women, two only nineteen, choreograph a series of 10 or 15 minute-long sets of synchronised drumming, solo drumming, drum duelling, and vocalising. Plenty of it, actually. Human screams, hardly audible above the rhythmic thumping, release the tension and pass the energy around the group. Arms are lifted and dropped theatrically, drums are played sideways, both ways and in mirror formation, so that two players can strike four simultaneously.
This is a show for the whole family will enjoy. Compared to previous shows from Yamato, this production relies a lot less on Japanese tropes – no Sumo-wrestler thongs in sight, thankfully – and feels modern, casual and decidedly un-mystical. Kimonos over ripped jeans and audience participation in spades: if anything, in some of their more relaxed sets, there are distant echoes of rock, Caribbean steel drum bands and, as far as the moves go, a discreet amount seems borrowed from the Haka. For a Taiko ensemble drumming style that was born of Jazz in the first place, I see no sacrilege there. A wonderful, high-energy night out.
• Yamato The Drummers of Japan perform at The Peacock Theatre until 22 June