Viva Brighton April 2015 Issue #26

music
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Yamato Drummers
Beat poets
“Basically, we are always
together, except the
time when you’re in the
toilet,” says Gen Hidaka,
one of the Yamato
Drummers of Japan.
The group was started
by Masa Ogawa in
1993, after his mother
found a big Taiko drum
in a shrine and suggested
he do something
with it; they’ve since
performed to more
than six million people
in fifty-odd countries.
In mid-March, Hidaka spoke to me from the Netherlands,
where he and another member of the group
have been teaching. Their latest tour hadn’t yet
started, so the rest of them were probably in a village
called Asuka, where they all live in the same house.
“We sometimes argue, but it’s really important
for us to understand each other more, and more
deeply. We believe that to make one sound on stage,
you must understand each other. That’s why we’re
always together.”
Though, of course, they do practice a lot, “we consider
it’s more important for us to live together, and
talk together, than practicing Taiko… When I joined
Yamato I had no Taiko experience or knowledge at
all. They said as long as you can live together with
us, you can join. There was no drumming exam, or
physical test; they only asked me if I could cooperate
and live together with them.”
Hidaka had been a business-management student
when, as a birthday present, a friend took him to see
the Drummers. “The next day, or something, I was
calling the head office
of Yamato and asking if
I could join.”
So he went to live in
Asuka, adopting the
group’s exhaustingsounding
routine. “In
the morning we get up
together at like 6.30 or
7am, then we go running
for about 10 kilometres,
then we clean
the house, also we cook
and eat together. After
that, we usually go to
the mountains and do
some weight training. Then, in the afternoon, we
start rehearsing Taiko drumming, until like midnight,
[or] until the neighbours complain.
“I don’t feel like we have no free time. Sometimes
we go together to the sea and go fishing, or go to do
the shopping. We enjoy that. When we are on tour,
every city we go to, we go running in the morning,
then we can see the city; it’s like sightseeing for us.
“Because we are always together, we don’t really
have time to spend with [our families]. We write letters
to them, especially when we are on tour. That’s
how we communicate with our families, basically.”
‘I have never seen personal discipline or work discipline
like it,’ an assistant on their European tour told
the Times in 2001. ‘It’s frightening.’
Hidaka says “sometimes I might feel like, ‘Oh, I cannot
continue drumming anymore’, or ‘I’m too tired
today’, or ‘I’m not good enough’, but we support
each other and encourage each other - ‘Hey, don’t
give up now’. Then we do more.” Steve Ramsey
Sun 26 Apr, Theatre Royal, 7.45pm
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