#jon wang

The inevitable question that every collegiate taiko player asks him/herself upon graduating: "Taiko...what now??"  I found myself asking the same question since I realized my time with Gendo would be pretty much over after my trip to Musikfest in August 2010.  The only taiko group I had heard of in Boston was Odaiko New England, and I wasn't all that enthused about taking a bus to Woburn or spending a lot of money to take classes from a group whose style didn't really seem to jive with me.  Don't get me wrong, I have grown close to many people from ONE over the past few years, but it was important for me to establish early on what I wanted to do with taiko in Boston: build my own drums, lead/manage a group, find other young drummers, compose some new repertoire, and, of course, play Miyake uchikomi as much as possible.  ONE just didn't seem like it could satisfy those goals, which were all very important to me at the time.  

First thing I needed to do was make drums.  With the help of my friends Miles and Jon from Gendo, I built my first shime daiko, 秋口 (akiguchi, for it was born at the beginning on Autumn).  It had a beautiful and loud tone, much more precise than the shime at Brown. The colors and power that came out of that shime just blew my mind.  Now, Miyake is obviously impossible to play on shime, so I knew I needed to buy a wine barrel to make a chu daiko.  Jon was an invaluable help during the whole process, and we managed to finish 鯨 (kujira, or "whale," a name given to the drum by Armand's dad, who said the body was big like a whale) in January of 2011.

During this time, I had already begun speaking to a few people in Boston.  Mark H. Rooney was one of the first people I contacted to learn more about how to get involved in taiko without needing to go all the way to Woburn to play for an hour every week.  He was very interested in seeing the shime and employing me for some drum skinning projects while we chatted ;-)  It was very comforting to have the leader of ONE at the time applauding my efforts to start my own group.  I also got a chance to meet up with Karen Young, who was in the middle of starting her own taiko group for Asian/Asian-American women.  While the exclusiveness of her project was a lot to stomach at the beginning, it told me that I needed to start something of my own.  And now, over a year later, The Genki Spark and Rutsubo are twin siblings, and Karen is probably my most influential taiko mentor in Boston.

The next step was finding a name for my group.  I definitely wanted something Japanese, but I also wanted it to be meaningful to the mission of the group.  It was important that I team up with young people in a similar boat as mine: a recent college grad who wants to continue to play taiko.  Mana helped me come up with the name 坩堝, Rutsubo, which means "melting pot" in Japanese.  The idea behind the name is to suggest a fusion of many different taiko traditions and experiences into one.  As a group, we would learn from each other and make Rutsubo an entirely unique collection of ideas.  Jon had been on-board for a while, but when I learned that the former performance director of UC-Riverside's Senryu Taiko, Ellie Tiglao, was moving to Boston and itching to play taiko, I knew I had to snatch her quickly.  A random email to Ellie, and the three-person directorship of Rutsubo Taiko was formed!

All that was left was finding a place to play taiko... after emailing countless organizations in Boston without any affordable option, I received a response from Shaffee Bacchus-sensei at the Shoshinkan Shinkendo Dojo in Chinatown Boston.  He offered to have us sublet their Dojo space for a few hours of practice time every week.  Teaming up with Shaffee-sensei was the best decision we could have made.  

Our first official practice began with the walk across Chinatown with all of our equipment on our backs and shoulders.  The stares we got as we carried kujira, akiguchi, stands and bachi through the snow-filled streets were priceless!  

Arriving at Dojo and hitting kujira for the first time was incredibly invigorating.  It had been six months since I had played Miyake, and I was dying to get started. Jon jumped onto one side of the drum and began a steady swing ji, which prompted me to get ready.  Legs spread wide... get lower, JD... lower... LOWER... I guess that'll do for now... left arm wrapped tightly around my neck... right arm held up with bachi pointing straight forward (Gensou style)... torso slightly forward, keeping everything straight... don't forget Raiki's "fat cow" analogy!  The first hit was tinny sounding; this was the first time kujira had ever been played, and it was definitely going to take some time to get the deep and full sound of the taiko that I wanted.  Despite the unusual timbre, I kept going with kihon no te: suku Don suku Don suku Don Don suku Don suku Don suku Don Don tsuTek ke Ten Ten tsu tetek ke Ten Ten.  Ellie jumped in with the swing ji on shime, which allowed Jon to get into stance for the two of us to play.  We filled the entire room with the sound of the drums for fifteen minutes straight as sweat dripped down our faces and our shoulders became fatigued from lack of practice. This finally felt like home to me...