Taiko Drumming Music Analysis

The distance that spans between Fort Hood, Texas and Sado Island, Japan is around 6,500 miles and a plane ride to transverse that distance would take a non-stop fourteen and a half hour flight (Distance, 2016). Despite this distance, these two locations are connected to each other in interesting ways that would most often not be easily seen. This connection comes from power, mainly power as Michel Foucault thinks of power, and how that power works for, through, and against the people who are controlled by it. Foucault explains the idea of hegemony as the idea that power comes from the people, that a society accepts power structures and rather than those who are in power having to control the people, the people do it themselves. This idea can

In Taiko drumming there is a doctrine that overlays the performance of this art form that can be explained through the phrase of “getting it right” (Bender, 2012, p.122) by which drummers inherit a particular form of drumming from their predecessors. Performers aim to perfect this form over continuous years of practice and never deviate from the norm, embellishment is not encouraged. This particular form requires power in the lower half of the body, “the bottom”, that moves through the upper body and into the arms to cause heavy strikes against the drum head (Bender, 2012, p.122). Both the doctrine of performance and the form of drumming are based firmly in expectations of performance that are based deeply in male capabilities, and on the perceived lack of female physical ability. Throughout the world of Taiko, most believe that women are unable to perfect the form needed to excel at drumming, with sentiments like “women are not endowed with the same kind of natural muscular beauty as men” (Bender, 2012, p.164) and that “women ought to just dance” (Bender, 2012, p.155). This