Summer
Festival
For Taiko, this is a biggie!
The Diablo JA Club's annual Summer Festival
and Obon is known throughout the area for
it's great food and entertainment. Traditionally,
San Jose Taiko performs on one of the two
days of the event. This year, we're opening
up the line up of entertainment. So, we
have work to do! The Summer Festival takes
place on 9th and 10th. We'll be going on
stage, starting things off at 3:30pm on
both days. This year, guest taiko groups
will include San Jose Taiko and Tatsumaki
Taiko.
Recent Events
At the end of May, Diablo
Taiko sent a group of performers to introduce
taiko and its traditions to Mrs. Ong's 2nd
grade class at Indian Valley Elementary
School. The kids were really cute and seemed
to enjoy our mini-performance. When the
principal found out what we were doing,
she asked us to promise to come back to
do something for the whole school. So, maybe
we'll do something again in the Fall!
Previous
News
Back from Japan
Jiro recently returned from
a New Years visit to Japan and managed to
take a taiko class in Tokyo with our good
friend Kazuaki Tomida. We now have yet another
song to work on! Hope you like the odaiko...
A New Year's Greeting to Diablo Taiko
February 2008
New Taiko Class Starting
Up!
February marks the start of
a new beginning taiko class being taught
by Susan Nishizaka. The new class meets
on Monday evenings from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30
p.m. at the JA Center. The new class starts
on February 4th. For more information, please
e-mail
us.
All persons new to taiko should
start with the Monday evening class. No
prior experience necessary. Please join
us for some drumming and learn about this
Japanese art form.
Coming Up
There are a lot of great taiko
related events coming up in the next couple
in the Bay Area. First off, we have our
very own taiko making workday, on Saturday,
February 2nd from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Jiro's
house. Gotta get those taiko made!
Also, there is a Hanayui
concert at Rhythmix in Alameda on Thursday,
March 13th at 8 p.m. There is also a Hanayui/KASA
workshop on Tuesday, March 11th from 6:30
p.m. to 9:30 p.m. For more details on either
of these events, click
here.
For those interested in a
very traditional instrument, there are also
two Tsuzumi
workshop being held at Dentoh in the Kintetsu
Mall in San Francisco's Japantown on February
2nd and 3rd. I've found no information on
the Internet about this, but you can download
a pdf here.
December 2007
This month began right off the bat with
a taiko making workday on Saturday, December
1st, followed by our second taiko performance
as a club at the JA Club's Holiday Party
the following evening.
With the new year upon us, it's time for
us to regroup and make changes for the year
ahead.Stay tuned for class and event updates.
Debut of the song "Kakehashi"
at the Holiday Party
Some
Photos from December Workday
Getting Glooey
Ouija taiko
Jiro-san's taiko levitation
attempt
Our
first group taiko making project is to build
four small 17" taiko. Originally, we
were just going to make them "practice
quality" taiko. But, there is some
interest in making at least some of them
nicer quality so they will look good in
a peformance. We still have a ways to go
before we need to decide for sure.
November
2007
Sunday,
October 21st was our workshop with original
Ondekoza and Kodo member Kazuaki Tomida
at the JA Club. This was the first of what
we hope will be many workshops with local
and Japan based guest instructors.
Here's a link to Tomida-san's blog. It's
in Japanese, but if you don't read Japanese,
you can go to babelfish translation, though
it still takes of bit of interpretation:
http://utigumi.ameblo.jp/
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