Kodo and the magic of taiko

I have been in love with the taiko since I saw the Toronto-based group Yakudo play at the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre. Since that I have always wanted to hear the world's best.

Last night my wife and I had finally the pleasure of seeing, hearing and feeling one of the world's foremost taiko (Japanese drum) groups, Kodo perform live at Toronto's Massey Hall. This was an unforgettable experience! The amazing precision of the players, their total focus on both their own instrument as well as on their fellow group members' play, the exciting variety of compositions, and the enormous amount of energy released, all collaborated to produce something truly magical.

The Kodo show did not present taiko only but a great number of other Japanese instruments (fue, shamisen, etc.) and beautiful songs as well.

The occasional humour let people's mind and sould ease up a little from all the vibrations that made our bodies (certainly mine) resonate to the beat of the great taiko.

Some say the vibrations of the great taiko resemble the heartbeat (one meaning of Kodo, the group's name) of the mother, and make babies fall asleap. Well, there was an amazingly well-behaved little boy in the row in front of us, who, after being initially startled by all the noise of the drums, started to become somewhat restless. Clearly, the show was getting too long for him. However, as the great taiko began roaring, he started to quiet down, eventually almost fell asleep as well.

One thing is for certain. Once you hear the sound of the great taiko, not much else will have room in your body and soul. Its thunderous sound has a cleansing effect. It purifies by not letting anything else in. Its vibrations inside the body cause something akin to a meditative state where one exists in a beautiful world of harmony and rythm.

Something everyone must experience!

The Sibling Society by Robert Bly

In this truly thought-provoking book the author reflects on the reality of our current society having lost its bearings (traditionally based in the moral absolutes of religion) in that it encourages people to not grow up and become adult members of a structured society. Rather, our present culture makes it clearly more attractive for its members to stay turned-inward, selfish and reckless adolescents for life.

Rather than simply acknowledging this phenomenon, Bly goes on and asks: "How did we move from the optimistic, companionable, food-passing youngsters gathered on that field at Woodstock to the self-doubting, dark-hearted, turned-in, death-praising, indifferent, wised-up, deconstructionist audience that now attends a grunge-music concert?" He interrogates reason. But there is no clear answer to this question nor is an easy answer as to possible solutions.

Bly, who is also known as "the man man" for his efforts at helping men rediscover what he calls the "mythopoetic" roots of masculinity through reenactments of various primitive male-group initiation and similar rituals, attempts, through fables and fairy tales, to map out when and how the transition occurred from a paternalistic society into the current society of father- and motherless siblings. In the "sibling society" boys do not struggle against their fathers any more, there is no more oedipal love between mother and son, or father and daughter. Rather, the horizontal (flattened) family model, from which the classic moral values have been removed, advocates to its young to look at fame as the only value proposition. "If you are not famous, you failed in life" - is the new creed.

Unfortunately, Bly offers no clear way out. He is too involved in putting his thoughts into a socio-scientific poem. His valid alarm, that our culture is in for a very rude awakening if we do not get our fathers and mothers back into the family, comes with some rather confusing commentaries on topics such as "vertical thought" or the psychoanalysis of "Jack and the Beanstalk" story and the Hindu myth of Ganesha, the lord of beginnings and eliminator of obstacles.

I would have liked to read about ideas moving us forward. Maybe it is a shortcoming I have developed through my work, but I do prefer solutions, however immature, over statements of problems and difficulties, however precisely presented.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Canadian Bead Oasis Show

We visited our friend Vera at the Oasis Bead Show in Toronto's downtown. Although I am not really into beads, I was happy to find some amazing handcrafted beauty. Magnificent artwork from Tibet. Of course, there is now also the inevitable mass-produced cheap junk that may eventually kill the real artist's ability to make decent living.