Africa meets Japan

I went out tonight.

And what's more, I went out of my own free will. But there was very good reason for this...one of the new J3s, Carolyn, discovered a concert in Shinjuku that was combining Taiko (those huge Japanese drums you may have seen before) and drums from Ghana. We walked about thirty minutes in nearly freezing rain to find it, were lost, had to stand up through the whole concert, and all in all, it was one of the greatest concerts I have ever been to. Carolyn turned to me at one point during the night and said, "I would have walked out there all night for this!!!"

I've always loved Taiko. It's dance and drums together, and it just doesn't get so much better than that.

But I did have to laugh a little bit at one part of the concert. Two men from Ghana were on stage. One was playing drums, the other was trying to get a Japanese crowd to clap. I'll come back to this in a minute.

When I was in South Africa, we were put to shame by a music group. It was January. They sang a number of energetic songs with all the heart they had. At one point, they came up close to the microphones, stood up straight and still, and sang "Deck the Halls" as though they were members of a fine choir. It was very boring. Then, those mischievous African grins overtook their faces once again, they stepped back from the microphones, and they swayed and sang "Deck the Halls" for real.

Later, they announced how this group of students from St. Olaf was there and how we were going to sing. They tried everything to get us to have spirit. But we were up there, still and stern, singing beautifully but with something missing. I couldn't help thinking how dead we had to look...we were exactly like their jokingly stern version of "Deck the Halls"!

There weren't nearly enough opportunities in Africa to make music with Africans. Being in a circle with Africans making music is pretty close to pure freedom for me. Heaven on earth.

So...back to the Shinjuku Japanese / Ghana drum performance...

I had to laugh because one of the Africans got us to clap in this rhythm. We were supposed to clap on the second and third beat. The whole audience got this down and ran with it. The beat never altered, but was a steady "ichi NI SAN ichi NI SAN"...except that the drummers weren't sticking to the same beat. They would speed up or slow down. The man who had led us into clapping eventually changed the beat he was going at from two beats together to three and the audience continued it's steady "ichi NI SAN"...never changing or adjusting to the music.

Later, I was saddened by it, because the man who had been leading the clapping got off the stage. As part of the audience, I watched him try to start clapping along with the next song. No one joined him. He lasted about a minute before he started pausing longer between claps, and finally stopped all together and faded against the wall. It's hard to be the only one clapping. I was thinking about being in South Africa and how hard they worked to get us to be alive while we were singing.

The different kinds of beauty struck me, though. Japanese beauty is intentional, balanced, artistic, masterful. The taiko drummers were perfectly synchronized, and everything from the beat to the position of their arms is structured.

The African drums had little visual appeal. But while I had no urge to move at all during the taiko, I couldn't stop moving during the African drumming. That contagious freedom is what is most beautiful to me about it. I feel like I'm part of the music.

I always wonder how that freedom fits into Japan. If it's just my culture that makes me long for it, and culture shock that makes me feel like it's missing. Do people born and raised in Japan long for that kind of freedom too? Somewhere inside? Do any of the taiko drummers ever just get the urge to break out and start doing a dance all their own, leaping from drum to drum in some spontaneous, crazy way? I wonder.