My Taiko Retrospect, Part 1: Why I Hated Taiko

What is Taiko?

“Taiko (Japanese: 太鼓)” is the Japanese word for “drum”, or “big beat”. It’s also the name of the general style of Japanese drumming where the drums are made out of tree trunks (sometimes wine barrels), and in addition to music, there’s movement and choreography incorporated into the song. Some say it’s a balance between music and movement/dance.

I love taiko.

It’s a both traditional and modern art form that I enjoy. Traditional in the sense that the design of the drums and performance techniques span back to ancient China, but modern in the sense that taiko has nuances in techniques, styles, music, and performance elements that are evolving throughout the modern day.

Taiko is also great for the body and mind. I get to study music and “exercise” while playing music as a performer due to the demand for physical choreography.

2026 will mark my 10th year* since I first picked up learning taiko and my 4th year** as an official performer with a local Las Vegas-based taiko group, Korabo Taiko.

(*10 years, chronologically, but not consecutively. 

**4 years will be as of July 2026)

My affinity for the art of taiko has fluctuated throughout the years. It’s been a very interesting journey from the start, one that has led me to where I am now. 

I don’t hate taiko at all now, butI can’t say that I’ve always felt that way.

If I am being honest, I have some regrets, but none of which cause me to lose any sleep. 

As I reflect on where I started in my taiko journey to where I am now, I feel like sharing my story for a few reasons.

The first reason is I think my taiko story is absolutely ridiculous, in a good and bad way. “Good” ridiculous in a sense that I have to tell people about it since so much nonsense happened! And “bad” ridiculous that, looking back at it, I can’t believe I tolerated so much nonsense at the beginning of my journey.

The second reason for telling my story is just to put it out there. Peopleknow I do this, but don’t know how I got to where I am today.

Will I inspire people to play taiko after telling my story? Who knows! But I hope that others may see what taiko can bring to one’s life through what I’ve learned in my own journey. 

Perhaps you, the reader, may be inspired to try taiko, or at least create some sort of interest in partaking or, at least, watching taiko! 

Taiko is a truly moving artform. 

Taiko has the ability to evoke emotions and shake your physical being to its core. It is a visual spectacle of movement combined with earth-shattering, soul-moving sounds.

But…

I didn’t always see taiko like this. 

First time seeing taiko live: June 2014

The very first time I heard of and saw a taiko performance was during a trip with my time doing volunteer work with a local Buddhist temple here in Las Vegas. We went to California to watch a competition featuring the temple’s performance groups from across the United States.

Taiko was one of the categories in the competition. 

We also had some competitors who were in the chorus division of the competition, whom we wanted to support. So in addition to supporting our local members, all other performances, to me, were a bonus to watch.

The audience members from Las Vegas traveled together as a group to attend the competition at one of the temple’s universities in Aliso Viejo, CA. Once we were seated in the auditorium, someone near me was talking to a neighboring audience member and asked, “Have you ever heard taiko before? They’re really powerful.”

And he wasn’t kidding. 

I was probably seated 2-3 stories higher from where the stage was, but as soon as the taiko performers started, the sound of the taikos resonated through the air and the floor. I could definitely feel the earth and the air shake.

“Powerful, indeed,” I thought to myself.

I was definitely impressed by the power of the drums.

The Buddhist temple was divided into 3 main regions in the United States, so the three best taiko groups from each main region competed. We were attending the finals of the entire competition. I was quite new to the Buddhist temple at the time, so I had totally missed witnessing any preliminary performances.

The taiko group that won was from Hawai’i, which was part of our temple’s region, so I was happy for them. I even think, even to this day, the other groups in all the categories should be proud of themselves as they all did a wonderful job. 

I will say, every taiko performance had their own way of expressing power, rhythm, and movement.

However, I learned that creating such a performance in the temple usually takes a lot of time and effort with the limited resources the temple had to offer. 

As I look back at that award-winning performance now, I now know that it was just scratching the surface of what taiko offered. Little did I know, eventually my views on taiko would change dramatically. I would eventually learn that there is a whole world and community that preserves the art of taiko: that wouldn't be until many years later.

“Kickoff” of performance groups at the Buddhist temple

After that competition in California, the Buddhist temple, as an organization across the US, decided to hold multiple events and meetings afterward as springboards/kickoffs/restarts to kind of revitalize the performance groups across the USA. From what I heard from older temple members, I guess there used to be really strong performance groups prior to the 2000’s, but they fizzled out somehow. 

Here in Las Vegas, they were looking for people to be the official, “appointed” leaders of the performance groups they wanted to launch. 

Taiko was one group: the other groups were the dance group, youth chorus, and the youth band group, which, for some reason, was separated between men and women (don’t ask me why), making 5 groups. In Las Vegas, we ended up combining the bands so we had 4 groups.

One day, one of the temple leaders from out of town was visiting and invited me for an interview for a leadership position. I think I had the choice of either choosing to be the behind-the-scenes leader (someone who helps direct parking lot traffic and picked up trash) or to lead all the performance groups. 

I chose to lead the performance groups, and I was appointed not only to lead the dance group (due to my prior dance experience), but to also oversee the overall operations of the 4 groups we had in Las Vegas. Because so much was on my plate, joining and learning taiko was not even on my mind. However, I thought I knew what taiko was in the most basic sense, and it was my job to make sure all the groups succeeded.

After my appointment, they then selected the leaders for each of these groups. From what I recall, there were no auditions and no official, in-depth interviews. It was basically just, “Who wants to be the leader of each group?” and the first person to raise their hand got the position, to my understanding. 

This worked out for dance since I actually did have experience in a dance group prior (b-boying and hip hop dance) and still maintained my dancing up until that point. I would even join an actual b-boy crew (Sin City Flava née Zimbabwe Stylez) a few years later. The chorus and drumline (our band had more percussionists so we just made a “drumline”) had very competent people as their leaders, so I was never really worried about them.

An important note that I would like to mention about the Buddhist temple taiko group is that although the majority of the people at the temple were nice people, a few bad apples did indeed spoil the bunch from time to time and continue to do so to this day. 

One of those “bad apples” was not only going to be a part of the taiko group, but in fact, was, to my understanding, going to become their first official leader since the “kickoff” event. This turned me off from learning taiko completely if it meant I had to deal with this person. Dealing with them as a co-leader was difficult enough, but I couldn’t imagine actually performing taiko with this person.

My aversion to taiko starts

It would indeed turn out to be a rollercoaster ride for the temple’s taiko group since their “leader” was someone I slowly learned was extremely incompetent. I was still new and naïve to the Buddhist temple at this point. However, for me, as the person overseeing all the groups, I still had to make sure all the groups showed up for practice and at least had a few opportunities to perform, either in or out of the Buddhist temple. 

Ever since that “bad apple” was appointed, and the more I would learn how much trouble this person causes, I would reluctantly support the temple’s taiko group. In the grand scheme of things, however, I would support them mostly for the sake of everyone else who wanted to play taiko. At the inception, there were a total of about 4-6 consistent taiko performers in the temple when I joined. There was only one other person whom I thought could be the leader, but having that person take over might have caused even more drama since the old “leader” might have had a tantrum if that happened.

The taiko members themselves, aside from their leader, were mostly drama-free and easy to deal with. However, the more I stuck around the temple, the more I would learn this taiko “leader” always caused drama with other people in the temple (not just in the taiko group), and to make things worse, this person wasnot a very good musician.

If this “leader” was one thing or the other, I’m sure we could have worked something out. 

Nice person, but bad music skills? Anyone can learn music with time, practice, and rehearsal.

Rude person but good at music? That’s a tougher situation, but at least there would be some decent performances now and again.

It’s important to note that every group had its main set of performers, and the Buddhist temple made a huge deal about “youth” being the main performers. Every time someone turned 35 in the group, there to be 2 options since that person is no longer considered “youth” in the organization. That person who is now over 35 could now play an advisory role and guide the performers to develop and grow, or they could just not participate anymore in the youth activities.

The Buddhist temple higher-ups always “encouraged” the youth to take the lead despite the fact that not many young people at the time had the skills nor talent to do so: this was especially true of the taiko group. 

I thought that was quite ridiculous since those above 35 could obviously bring a higher caliber of skill and talent to performances. If someone 35 or older took the lead, they would “encourage” someone else, younger, to take the lead. I had one incident when I brought a breakdance instructor in who was definitely above 35 to help us put a performance together. I was pulled aside to be told, “You need to take the lead, Kevin! You can’t have someone [non-youth] taking over the group,” despite knowing damn well it doesn’t ever hurt to use the guidance of more experienced performers.

That incident was quite annoying, but the performance I put together was still cool at the end of the day.

Back to advisors.

The taiko “leader” had access to4 advisors and, in my opinion, completely wasted their time with them. 

One advisor was a veteran drummer who also played in a band in many Las Vegas casinos and was in a drumline in their school days. Another advisor was a world-class percussionist who specialized in Afro-Cuban rhythms and was both an instructor and active performer in Vegas, despite having spent time with these 2 advisors, the former leader still sucked at playing taiko for some reason and couldn’t hold a decent beat.

Like I mentioned before, it was my job to make sure all the performance groups succeeded, but if you don’t try to improve even just a little as the freakin’ LEADER of your group, it’s only a matter of time until everyone else in your group suffers from your lack of music skills. In the taiko group’s case, everyone would additionally suffer from this “leader’s” lack of maturity, as well.

This “leader” also caused a third advisor who specialized specifically in taiko to leave completely by berating this taiko advisor, excessively talking down about the advisor’s exercises and tardiness publicly on social media, and making unnecessary comments about the advisor’s teaching style behind her back. This was despite the advisor having the most taiko experience in the room at the time.

Because of this “leader”, and despite seeing the nice taiko performance in California prior to all the drama, I considered the art of taiko to bea complete freakin’ joke for a very long time since that “leader” was the spearhead of the group. Creating a performance like the one I saw in California actually seemed impossible. In addition to this, I was not very impressed after watching a few of their performances locally, which added to my aversion to taiko.

My aversion to taiko grows

In my opinion, the taiko group’s rehearsals were never productive, and some other temple members and performers started to notice this. One temple member even said, “All they do is fuck around all the time.”

There was one incident I recall when 2 of the other taiko performers actually skipped taiko practice to join me for dance practice, which I didn’t mind. They did this twice before leaving the taiko group completely, if my memory serves me correctly. 

At the time, the dance group was learning ballroom thanks to a guest ballroom teacher working with us who was also a member of the Buddhist temple. I vaguely remember the reason why the two performers skipped practice, but if I recall correctly, they skipped practice because these 2 performers were not currently enjoying how the incompetent “leader” was treating them. 

After this happened, I heard that the incompetent “leader” sent a seething text to our guest ballroom teacher stating that the dance group “stole” 2 performers from taiko, and our guest teacher had no right to do so. I thought this was quite childish since anyone is welcome to join any group they want to and no one was really tied to a group unless they were a teacher, leader, or advisor.

The second time the 2 taiko performers skipped practice, the “leader” wanted to hold practice at their own home instead of at the temple, but I believe the same 2 performers decided to skip going to the “leader’s” home, and went to the Buddhist temple to join the dance group instead. This caused the “leader” to come to the temple angrily to look for these members. These 2 temple members thenhid in the parking lot from the “leader” to avoid backlash. I did bring this up to higher leadership, and even the higher-ups at the time stated that “no one should have to hide” from anyone during practice. Despite this, the “leader” was still allowed to be a part of the taiko group.

I want to mention something very important: 

I understand wholeheartedly that everything we did at the Buddhist temple wasvoluntary.

I myself was a volunteer, afterall. 

From the advisors to the leaders, to the official performers, I know no one was getting paid, and anyone could technically leave at any time they wanted to. However, there comes a time when you really need a certain level of professionalism to uphold a group and make your group look “good”, or at the very least, “decent”. This former “leader” proved time and time again that they struggled to be professional at all and never really arranged a taiko performance that made anyone go “Wow!” 

Because of this, I could never imagine myself ever joining the taiko group or learning taiko in the future.

Allowing the bad apple to keep spoiling the bunch

You may ask yourself, “Kevin, why didn’t you say anything to anyone?” 

The thing is, I did. 

Many freakin’ times! 

And I wasn’t the only one who said something.

But I felt when I spoke up, it always fell on deaf ears. In the Buddhist temple, there was a whole “dialogue” and “positivity” culture, which I now know was totally ruined by and run by dogma and was very toxic.

I would mention many things to many higher-ups about this leader’s behavior. I kid you not, I could mention very bad behaviors about this “leader”, but some of the responses I received went something along the lines of, “If this ‘leader’ can’t attend practice, then how are they going to get better at taiko? And how are you supposed to develop as a leader if you can’t deal with difficult people? We have to give that person ‘encouragement’!”

I felt this was a horrible mindset to have, seeing that everyone around this “leader” would eventually suffer and also distance themselves from taiko due to their incompetence. And on top of that, no one else wanted to play taiko! People came and went from every single group, but the taiko group was definitely the most-drama filled that no one wanted to be a part of due to that leader.

So what happened next? How did I actually start taiko? And did I ever get over the incompetent leader?

Look out for Part 2 of my Retrospect!