By Lauren Caggiano
Fort Wayne Taiko, a local group sponsored by the Fort Wayne Dance Collective, brought the ancient Japanese art to Fort Wayne in 2000. Taiko is a drumming and movement art form that engages both the participant and mesmerizes the spectator. Taiko is played on big drums, skinned on both ends and placed in vertical, horizontal and diagonal positions.
The movement is as important as the rhythms — drummers play with sticks using choreographed arm movements while dancing from drum to drum.
Director and founder Allison Ballard is nothing short of a dynamo. With excitement in her voice, Ballard told the history of the group. Ballard was first exposed to the drumming art in 1992 when the Dance Collective brought a guest taiko group to perform (Katari Taiko from Vancouver, Canada) in 1992 and 1997. She was hooked and wanted more. She attended a taiko conference 1997, and taiko camp in California in 1998, which whetted her appetite for more. Both further peaked her interest in bringing the art to northeast Indiana.
“We’ve got to do this in Fort Wayne,” she thought at the time.
Through her efforts, Fort Wayne would come to know the art of Taiko. Ballard took a grassroots approach and started her own Taiko group in 2000. At first, she said the amateur drummers had “no idea how to play,” but their enthusiasm did not dwindle.
The first task was to build their instruments. (Taiko is Japanese for “big drum”) Using directions from the Internet and eight 50-gallon white oak whiskey barrels, it took the group two years to make the first drum. A total of four drums were completed in five years time.
Finding the barrels was a job in and of itself. Ballard looked locally to no avail. Finally, after a few phone calls, she got lucky: a whiskey distillery in Louisville had barrels for sale. Ballard ventured down south with a friend bound and was determined to take home the coveted goods.
Two hundred dollars bought her eight barrels and some happy memories.
“We were so excited we rolled them right off the line into the van,” she said. A mix of joy, excitement anticipation (and maybe some whiskey fumes) fueled them on the ride home. Once back at the Dance Collective, Ballard was eager to get started on the project.
“The barrels still had residual whiskey in them,” Ballard said. “We stopped at a movement workshop on the way back, and as the barrels sat in the sun for hours, the car was rank with the alcohol smell.”
With the help of a few dedicated volunteers, Ballard blundered her way through production of the drums. Working on all eight barrels simultaneously, Ballard’s team learned the craft, from gluing the staves to cutting the drum to preparing the hides.
Ballard said skinning the drum is perhaps the most challenging step. After soaking the hides in a children’s wading pool and cutting them, she found the trick was to stretch it across the drum to its limit — the farthest it can go without tearing. This is the “magic moment.”
“We are always a nervous wreck while we’re doing that,” she said. “I say, ‘take it another one,’ and Peter (her drum building partner) said, ‘I don’t think it can take another notch.’ It was pretty intense.”
After the hide is stretched and nailed to the barrel, the drum is ready to play. The quality and tone of the drums are unpredictable. One side of the drum can produce a drastically different sound than its counterpart. What’s more, the tone can change due to humidity, air pressure, amount of use, and many other variables. Put simply, the heads are in a constant state of change. The pitch and tone of the drumhead make each performance unique.
Once the drums are set, uncompromised concentration is key to the artistic experience. Ballard said Taiko centers around a mind-body connection.
“As you grow as a Taiko drummer, you get a deeper understanding of the drum as a living being,” she said. “You’re in relationship with the drum. You give and take energy to and from the drum. It’s work… it takes a lot of effort.”
Despite all this effort, the group makes the routine look completely natural.
“Whenever we have a guest artist come, whether it is San José Taiko or our friend John Yost from Chicago, they tell us that the strength of your group is in the fun you have while playing,” Ballard said with a smile.
Lauren Caggiano is a freelance journalist and a friend of the Fort Wayne Dance Collective. Check out her website at LCagg.com.