The term fusion barely begins to connote the diverse, cross-pollinating efforts of the Taiko Legacy 8 program set to play the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Classical Japanese drumming and music meet dance and American jazz in this diverse enterprise, scheduled Saturday and Sunday at the MCA. In its eighth year, the Taiko program also boasts old pros and youngsters, three generations, in fact, of Chicagoans, San Franciscans and Tokyo artists in its cast.
Preceded by summer workshops and camps on the West Coast, “The Taiko engagement is truly a national effort and one that makes use of community groups from Japanese-American neighborhoods,” said Tatsu Aoki, musician and co-director of the production. “There are professionals, but a lot of young people are a part of this, and that’s important to us.”
The 90-minute program includes Aoki and other musicians performing taiko drumming (a Japanese tradition dating back 2,000 years) and playing other instruments such as the shamisen (a lute-like instrument) and the shinobue (a bamboo flute). The program also boasts tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson and jazz percussionist Coco Elysses-Hevia, as well as Fujima Shunojo, a veteran Chicago performer of classical Japanese dance and head of the Fujima Ryu troupe here.
“Classical Japanese dance is about as old as classical drumming, and you can perhaps relate it in your mind closely to kabuki,” Aoki said. “While it’s not kabuki, which is a theatrical form, you’ll find similarities to kabuki in some of the songs they dance to and costumes they wear.”
Aoki and company are in some ways on a mission to provide a more expansive look at classical Japanese art than that typically found in concerts by such modern practitioners as the renowned Kodo drummers.
“A lot of taiko, like Kodo, is geared today toward athletic entertainment, involving the icon of a naked man pounding away on a large drum,” Aoki said. “It’s an emblem of the macho man. In some ways, that version of taiko is a little misleading, suggesting taiko is all about martial arts. I’m not saying that approach is bad. If you go to a Japanese summer festival, you’ll see a lot of that.
“And we have our share of power drumming, too, but we want to remind people of other aspects of traditional Japanese drumming, of its music, its dance, its other performing styles. There’s much more to the tradition. You emphasize power drumming too much, and you lose sight of the art.”
Aoki’s life is a study in multi-international disciplines. Raised in Japan as member of an artisan family skilled in various classical techniques, he came to Chicago in the late 1970s to sample our city’s avant-garde jazz. He wound up mingling his native arts with ones he found here, his Chicago-based Miyumi Project Big Band now performing some 75 times each year.
Taiko Legacy 8 plays Saturday and Sunday at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave. For tickets: 312-397-4010 or mcachicago.org
More Top Picks Ring Pan Tilt
Also worth catching
*The intriguing, avant-garde troupe Khecari is back with “The Clinking,” the first in a new series involved in deconstructing classic fairy tales and reconfiguring their motifs in the realm of abstract dance.
Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer team up for the dancing; longtime collaborator Joe St. Charles provides the original score. “The Clinking” plays Thursday and Friday at Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater, 3035 N. Hoyne Ave. For tickets: brownpapertickets.com or at the door.
*Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater presents its special family holiday concert Thursday at Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave.
Works include Dame Libby Komaiko’s “La Era Romantica” and the full-ensemble “Flamenco Zapateado.” For ticket information: 773-442-4636 or boxoffice.neiu.edu
Sid Smith is a special contributor.