My one regret with Omiyage This post is a continuation of my post of couple of a week ago. I was going to post a little description of the two workshops Ill be doing in NY on April 5th but as always once I get talking about taiko its hard to stop so I decided to break it into two posts. This post Im going to talk about Omiyage. First a little history for those who are wondering what the hell Im talking about. I wrote the piece Omiyage for TAIKOPROJECT (TP) back in 2004 (has it really been 10 years?) for Taikoprojects first theatrical show called re:generation. At the time I was serving as musical director for TP and Bryan Yamami had much of the outline of the concert set. We knew there would be a piece called Omiyage that would end the show and that the group would workshop and teach this piece to the various communities it visited. We workshopped many ideas for this piece including some rather interesting mobile katsugi ideas but I was never happy with piece so in a moment of frustration I threw out everything we had up to that point and stayed up all night composing and brought the piece to the group the next day and the rest is history. A few years later I released the song as an open source piece and since then its become one of the most widely performed pieces in taiko world and is performed by many groups around the world. This piece along with another one of my pieces Watashi Watashitachi also have formed part of the core repertoire taught at the Los Angeles Taiko Institute and principal instructor Yuta Kato has done a lot to further develop and popularize the piece. In most ways I feel that Omiyage has been a huge success. The open source model has been great in helping the piece spread and its great to see how much joy and excitement its brought to so many taiko players. I have more thoughts on the open source model for taiko and its success and pitfalls now that Ive seen how it has worked for the past 10 years. But that is also a long post so Ill keep it to the artistic aspects for this post. My regret in the way Omiyage has spread is the emphasis on one its most popular features: the batchi spinning. Yes I know spinning batchi is visually nice but entire point of the spinning batchi in Omiyage was that it would be the most natural path the batchi would make in the overall flow of the movement. In my mind the real emphasis of the chu daiko part in Omiyage is based on a concept of how complex motions can result from a simple impetus from your hara and how you should be able to feel this point of motion move throughout your body. The spinning batchi is what should happen as a result of this more fundamental understanding. I would even go so far as to say that you shouldnt practice spinning the batchi directly. The batchi spinning is the last most superficial aspect of the core motion. Practicing it directly is missing the point. The practice should be put into the more core fundamental aspects of the motion and the batchi spinning should happen as a result of this. So my regret in the way Omiyage has spread is not having different drills and concepts more clear when the piece spread. I want to have my pieces widely spread and performed by many groups of various levels but within each piece there is always more fundamental concepts that Im working on. What I realize now is that I have to do a better job in having more basic exercises and drills to more clearly illustrate these core concepts that will get passed along with the piece. So this is what my Omiyage workshop will be focused on. Im working on different ways I can try to get players to understand the core movement concept of the piece. I wrote in my description that itll be geared toward those who know the piece but now that I think about it itll be fine for those who dont know the piece or are trying to learn it as well. I wont spend much time on the individual lines but will spend a ton of time on the fundamental aspects of how the movement should be generated and transferred as you play the chudaiko parts. Whew... so much more to write about but Ill wrap it up here. If you are interested in the workshops in NY on Feb 5th here are the details: Lion Chant Workshop 1 : Interlocking Rhythms This workshop will introduce participants to components of Shoji’s newest piece taiko composition: Lion Chant. Focusing on simple independence this workshop will focus on the timing and technique required for creating dense layers of interlocking rhythms. This workshop will also teach part of the structure of the piece Lion Chant and will lay the foundation for learning and performing the composition. Limited to 12 participants Mastering Omiyage This workshop will focus on refining the technique and concepts behind Omiyage. One of the taiko world’s most exciting and performed compositions Omiyage is now performed by taiko groups throughout the world. Learn to master the subtleties of the movements and composition from the creator himself. Limited to 12 participants Schedule: 10 am to 1 pm: Lion Chant 1 pm lunch 2 to 5 pm: Omiyage Fee (includes lunch) For KWTC members: $55 for one workshop, $95 for both For non-members: $60 for one workshop, $105 for both RSVP by emailing mari@taikonyc Thanks for reading!
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 21:06:53 +0000
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