Concert Review: Yamato Drummers of Japan at Bass Hall

by Todd Maternowski

From Hello Kitty to odaiko, Japanese culture continues to impress.

FORT WORTH — Last Tuesday night, Fort Worth was a scene of a truly enjoyable performance, as the Yamato Drummers of Japan rocked Bass Hall. The Yamato Drummers, or "Wadaiko Yamato," is a Japanese musical group of taiko drummers that fuses percussion, choreography and humor: founded in 1993 by 40-year old Masa Ogawa, the troupe has notched over 1500 performances in front of a million audience members since 1998. Ogawa, the senior member of an otherwise fresh-faced bunch, also acts as the central character in the performance, providing the anchor for his drummers and masterfully egging the audience on.

For those not familiar with taiko drummers, taiko takes an array of differently-sized drums and other percussion instruments and melds them into a cohesive, heart-pounding whole. In particular, the massive, thunderous o-daiko drums are capable of sending (non-amplified!) shockwaves through a large audience, and even with the smaller bass drums it's easy to see the value these instruments had in their original purposes of chasing away evil spirits and increasing/decreasing morale in battle.

For those who are familiar with taiko, or who saw the world-renowned Kodo Drummers come through SMU's McFarlin Auditorium earlier this year, the two troupes are similar in some ways --same instruments, same precision, speed and amazing physical effort on display by the drummers-- but the similarities end there. Yamato is, strikingly, significantly younger than Kodo, with equal numbers of male and female performers. Also surprisingly, Yamato employs the females in traditionally male roles, specifically on the larger, heavier drums, rather than limiting them to the softer, more feminine instruments. And finally, Yamato's "vibe" is far more about enthusiastically blasting out youthful verve and passion, rather than Kodo's focus on the heavily emotional spiritual aspect of the drums. Personally, I prefer the brain-melting beauty and spirituality of the Kodo, but thoroughly enjoyed the wild excesses of Yamato.

The show itself is simply amazing to behold, a tightly-knit combination of music, choreography and special-effects lighting that assaults the eye, ears and --especially with the titanic odaiko drum-- the heart. But this is not to be confused with Iron Butterfly's 45-minute drum solo: the troupe plays eight 'sets', each one radically different from the others, infusing humor and contagious energy into each number. Non-stop thundering drums could easily put a hypercaffeinated squirrel to sleep within minutes, but Yamato kept things continually moving with plenty of physical comedy, using exaggerated body language that effectively transcended any linguistic or cultural barrier.

For example, in Rekka, two men and two women compete for the audience's affections, first with crowd-participation humor, then with a mind-numbingly fast combination of power and speed that is truly amazing to watch. This was just one of the drum "games" during the performance: one charming number, Garakuta involves three men with tiny (yet surprisingly rich-sounding) cymbals who toss the sound around as if it were a ball, playing a game of catch and entertaining the audience with some vaudeville-esque physical comedy in the process.

It's not all fun and games, but the performers clearly were having a blast even for more sombre numbers: in Lion, which means "Thunder", the troupe combines all the drums into one massive whirlpool of awesomeness while wildly jumping, pounding and thrashing around the stage. In Hayate, three lithe Japanese females strum furiously on syamisen while massive bass drums both accompany and cross-riff the trio to stunning effect. And the finale, Shin-On, is like the last few seconds of a Fourth of July fireworks launch, in which whatever energy the seemingly tireless performers have left is spent in a beautifully-choreographed orgy of sound, color and movement.

Like Kodo before them, the troupe was not done after the "finale," and the audience was treated to a double-encore, complete with mandatory audience participation. When 60-year old Fort Worth oilmen are breathlessly on the edge of their seats, trying to clap along to a small Japanese man in orange clothing and anime-esque spiky hair, you know it's a great show.