Composing Sound Identity in Taiko Drummingaeq_1159 101..

119
KIMBERLY A. POWELL
Pennsylvania State University
Although sociocultural theories emphasize the mutually constitutive nature of persons, activity,
and environment, little attention has been paid to environmental features organized across sensory
dimensions. I examine sound as a dimension of learning and practice, an organizing presence that
connects the sonic with the social. This ethnographic study of taiko drumming underscores an
acoustemological sense of knowing that congures the practice and performance of taiko as an
Asian American soundscape of (re)composed cultural identity. [music, Japanese American,
Asian American, identity, race]
Sound achieves creation in different ways. The presence of a new sound or song can create a new
form of existence.
L. Sullivan, 1986, p. 24
There has been a proliferation of research regarding the social and cultural aspects of how
people learn. Learning as a sociocultural process emphasizes the situated, coconstructed,
mutually constitutive nature of persons, activity and environment (e.g., Cole 1996; Greeno
1997; Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff and Lave 1984; Stein et al. 1998). Concepts such as
legitimacy and meaningful participation (Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff 1990), agency and
positioning (Davies 1990; Holland et al. 1998; Holland and Leander 2004), and the mastery
and reappropriation of cultural forms and symbols (e.g., Herrenkohl and Wertsch 1999),
have all been explored in relation to identity as a constructed, ongoing process that occurs
through activity. Holland and colleagues (1998) have described the ways in which identity
develops through the improvisation that comes from meetings, situations, and products
and that the appropriation of these products acquire meaning for the next activity, con-
stituting gured worlds that both enable and constrain participation. They derive their
theory from merging Vygotskys conception of semiotic mediation with Bakhtins con-
cepts of dialogism and authorship (Bakhtin 1981; Holquist 1990), arguing that identities
are both socially organized and reproduced through encounters in which ones position
matters and distributed across many different elds of activity, giving the landscape
human voice and tone (Holland et al. 1998:41). Figured worlds are socially produced,
culturally constituted activities (Holland et al. 1998:4041) where people come to
produce and perform new understandings and identities, as they gure how to relate to
one another across time, place, and space (Urrieta 2007). They are as if imaginings that
shift through, with and by collective actions. Figured worlds are materialized in practice
through the artifacts participants use in their performances. Artifactsobjects, discourse,
tools, and resourcesmediate thoughts and feelings of participants, are the means
through which gured worlds are individually and collectively determined, and offer
possibilities for becoming. Poker chips, life stories of Alcoholics Anonymous, clothes, and
Tij songs are some of the examples of artifacts described by Holland et al. as having
developmental histories (p. 61) that assume both material and conceptual aspects
that while embedded in past activities also remain in ux through improvisations of
participants.
Although sociocultural perspectives of learning make explicit the environmental
context in which learning happens through an engagement with tangible and intan-
gible features, music, and performance-oriented learning environments pose particular
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 43, Issue 1, pp. 101119, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492.
2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1492.2011.01159.x.
101
challenges. Music performance contexts are places in which the teaching and learning
environment is comprised of sound, an environment in which knowledge is constructed
throughindeed, dependent oninteraction with auditory features, where human voice
and tone literally, as well as guratively, matter for the ways in which identities are
socially organized and reproduced. Sound is a unique formof knowing and apprehending
that requires specic attention to the ways in which it is a material and conceptual
intentionality, referring to Holland et al., to the ways in which the sonic gures the social
construction of identity.
The call for a pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London Group 1996) and multimodal
literacies (e.g., Jewitt 2008) has recognized the multiplicity, complexity, and interrelation-
ship of different modes of meaning such as sound. The New London group identied
metalanguages, a grammar (1996:19) of specialized language that describes patterns of
representation. Audio meaning, Gestural meaning, Spatial meaning, Visual meaning, and
Multimodal meaningthe latter of which recognizes the dynamic relations among the
former modesdraw attention to the intertextuality of literacy events as well as to the
importance of appropriate pedagogy for cultural and linguistic diversity.
Recognizing this signicant contribution to the legitimization of multiple modes of
representation and communication, I work in the spirit of pursuing audio meanings, yet
extend discussion beyond the concept of audio meaning as a grammatical language. I
consider sound as a dimension of experience in and of itself (Stoller 1984:567), an
organizing presence that connects the material and nonmaterial (e.g., spiritual), and one
that gives form to abstract concepts such as identity. Here, I am suggesting that sound is
more than a cultural tool for mediating activity and the shaping of expression in a gured
world or community of practice; rather, it is a bearer of cultural expression itself
(Rasmussen 1999).
Drawing from an ethnographic study of taiko drumming and its role in Asian Ameri-
can identity politics, I focus on the ways in which taiko congures an acoustemological
sense of knowing that congures the practice and performance of taiko as an Asian
American soundscape of (re)composed cultural identity. Although the focus of this
article is on a musical practice, I use the term sound, rather than music, to broaden the
concept of music as one that is organically part of a larger sound world (incl. street
sound, ambient noises, language, and the sounds of everyday life), emphasizing the
ways in which social relations are embedded in sonic relations (Feld 2001). I also seek to
underscore the particular ways in which the arts offer a space for experimenting, con-
testing, and reconstructing important social issues through aesthetic forms and means
that emphasize sensory experiences not found in other aspects of lifethe ways in
which the arts and our encounters with them might enable new imaginings into what is
not yet (Greene 2001); or how, through experimentation and improvisation, new
gured worlds (Holland et al. 1998) may come about as particular groups and individu-
als leave their signature on cultural genres. A study of sound ways of knowing is par-
ticularly relevant to the scholarship of multiculturalism and diversity. Performance-
based aesthetics have historically played an important role in ethnic and cultural
movements, with scholars examining the relationship of these practices within critical
race theory (e.g., Denzin, 2000a, 2000b; Ladson-Billings 2000, 2003; Parker 1998; Powell
2008; Rolling 2008), recognizing performance and arts-related activities (e.g., poems,
songs, drama) as critical modes of expression and social action.
Sound and Acoustemology
An emerging scholarship related to the senses as cultural systems has contributed to
the development of the eld of sensory studies, to an anthropology of the senses (e.g.,
102 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
Classen 1997; Howes 1991, 2005; Stoller 1997), and to auditory culture studies (e.g., Bull
and Back 2003), addressing the ways in which perceptual activity is cultural, politically and
cognitively informed.
1
Sound has been addressed as a mode of experience that has both
physical and psychological dimensions (Feld 1990, 1996; Gell 1995). Acoustemology, a
term popularized by Steven Feld, is an exploration of sonic sensibilities, specically of
ways in which sound is central to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth
(1996:97). Thus, while we tend to think of our environment as made up of physical features
that are seen, rather than heard, places and spaces exist in and through the medium of
sound. For example, in Felds study of the Kaluli in a Papua, New Guinea rainforest, death
and mourning, colonial encounters, missionary encounters, and nation-state building
were musically lived through song (1996). Felds notion of acoustemology is based on the
ways that the senses are engaged in emplacement.
Others have extended the concept of acoustemology as a way of knowing into urban
and contemporary social spheres. In an analysis of the acoustemology of postKatrina
New Orleans, Matt Sakakeeny has argued that music is inextricably linked to the expe-
rience and history of place, examining the ways in which New Orleans indigenous and
hybrid musical styles, carnivals, and parades have been a principal forum for sound-
ing back to the unending economic and political disparity (2006:42). Others have
examined the aural ecology of cities (e.g., Atkinson 2007), the ways in which people
create aural sanctuaries through personal stereo systems and electronics (Bull 2000), and
the sense of place and performance of home through sound in domestic settings (Pink
2006).
2
Within the framework of acoustemology, the experience of sound is both part of gured
worlds as well as a particular form of world making. Bowman and Powell (2007) have
argued that both music practice and listening involves seeing, feeling, and touching. An
acoustic epistemology enables us to understand the ways in which people apprehend and
transgress social norms and cultural values through sound practices. Within this frame-
work it then becomes evident that music as a sound practice has the potential for cong-
uring complex social issues such as racial identity. As Rice argues:
Particular genres of music may be coded racially, and music is increasingly animated through
visual presentations, meaning that racism listens with its eyes in certain contexts. But music also
has the capacity to permeate cultural boundaries, engaging those whose ears are respectfully tuned
to the voices of others. [2005:202]
The term acoustemology thus broadens the study of sound in three signicant ways. First, it
maps sound onto ecology, extending beyond the construct of music as sound to include
found sounds in the environment such as car horns, voices, and ambient noises of
everyday life. Implicit in this broadened denition of sound is a broadened denition of
music; the gured world of music practice, then, is congured not only through and by the
musical notes, rhythms, and instruments but also through and by its ambient setting of
seemingly nonmusical elements. Second, acoustemology highlights the somatic experi-
ence of location as a means of composing identities that, paradoxically, transcends any
particular instance or locale. This allows for theoretical discussion of the ways in which
identities, while placed in practice, are also displaced. It is these two implications that are
focused on in this article.
I rst trace the development of sound conventions in taiko through some lineages of
practice to situate contemporary North American taiko practices. These examples reect
shared practices of taiko and thus underscore taiko as a national cultural project engaged
in an education of Japanese Americanand more broadly, Asian Americanidentity
dened through sound practices and performances. I then focus on one taiko ensemble,
San Jose Taiko (SJT), ethnographically situating a discussion of sound through interviews,
Powell Sound Identity 103
archives, and observations with the group. The last half of the article focuses on
compositional practices as a means of constructing sound identities in a taiko drumming
world.
Sound Conventions of Taiko: A Brief Account of Practice and Performance
Although it is not the purpose of this article to review the origins and history of taiko
drumming, a discussion of some of the signicant practices, conventions, and styles of
taiko is important to an understanding of the complex soundings of taiko as a contempo-
rary practice and how it has become embedded in Asian American identity politics. The
roots of contemporary taiko can be traced back to different contexts in which taiko was,
and is, used in Japan. Taiko is an instrument that historically has been used in Japanese
classical music such as Gagaku (lit., elegant or rened, the Imperial court music of
Japan dating back to the sixth century) and folk and religious music, as in traditional
festivals tied to Buddhism and to Shintoism. The drum was either a solo instrument or
played in relation to other musical instruments and characterized by a xed form and
steady, predictable rhythm with little syncopation (e.g., unexpected stresses of rhythmic
beats). In addition to a steady tempo, there is also the principle of elastic or breath
rhythm, in which a piece and its metrical landmarks are not conducted but, rather, felt
and performed as the rhythm of breathing (Malm 1977). A related concept is that of ma, or
the space between sounds. By increasing or decreasing this silence, the expression of
sound takes on different qualities, creating tension and release in the sound. Thus, lack of
sound becomes an integral part of the music. Ma also has a spiritual association that is
present in other Eastern art and meditation practices besides taiko (P. J. Hirabayashi,
personal communication, 2001).
Additional inuences on contemporary taiko derive from festival drumming of dif-
ferent Japanese prefectures during such festivals as Buddhist Obon or Matsuri. Unlike
Gagaku, festival music often uses a collection of drums to accompany instruments such
as hagaku (conch shell), hayashi (ute), or gong. Kumi-daiko (harmony drum), or
ensemble drum style, is the practice of playing several different drum sizes and styles
together in relation to each other, so that one type of drum might carry a base support-
ing rhythm, another carry a melody or main theme, and another might carry sup-
porting, complementary rhythms. There is also a soloistic style that is incorporated with
one player carrying a melody or improvised rhythm over a steady rhythm maintained
by the other players. Osuwa-Daiko, among the rst ensembles of this style in 1951,
incorporated both traditional Japanese as well as jazz rhythms (Takata 1998). This
style is what dominates the musical style of North American taiko, most likely because
of, perhaps, the widespread teaching of Osuwa-Daiko founder Daihachi Oguchi
(Takata 1998). Different Japanese prefectures often have drum patterns, or melo-
dies, that are unique to a village or town, as well as associated physical styles of
playing.
3
An integral part of drumming is kata, the physical movement and form of taiko
drumming. Drums are played gracefully, with purposeful movement, so that the visual
aspect of music is emphasized as much as the aural (Malm 1977). Sound, in other words,
is visually manifested through choreographed movements. Earlier kata incorporated some
dance forms. More recently, martial arts have inuenced the kata of contemporary taiko
ensembles. The effect is an integrated performance that involves both movement and
music. Its visual impact is as important as its aural impact and is an integral aspect of
sound production (e.g., stylized arm movements are associated with particular dynamics
and drum tones).
104 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
North American Taiko
The above-mentioned Japanese taiko groups, among others, have inuenced the for-
mation of North American taiko movement. Today, taiko has become an international
Asian diaspora based on an identiable sound (Kobayashi 1994).
4
Within North America,
there are currently over 150 taiko ensembles (www.rollingthunder.com), catering to all
levels of age (children and adults) and expertise (recreational, amateur, and professional).
Historical events in the United States have signicantly shaped taiko as a cultural and
political project. Facilitated by President Franklins Roosevelts Executive Order 9066 in
1942, over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens,
were relocated to internment camps (Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians 1982). As one former taiko player commented, If you can
understand the World War II concentration camp experience of Japanese people and the
effects that that has had in real, human terms on the Nikkei community to this day, then
you can understand the great signicance of the upsurge of the American taiko move-
ment (Hayase 1985:47).
5
The development of taiko in Canada has dealt with similar
concerns in terms of using the art form as a cultural rebirth in the wake of tough U.S. and
Canadian immigration policies, helping to support the diaspora of not only Japanese
Canadians but also other Asian Canadians (Kobayashi 1994).
North American taiko, then, is a hybrid art form informed by these historical events as
well as different musical conventions, and its overt social agenda has been to connect
Japanese Americans with Japanese heritage as well as with contemporary culture through
the development of a cultural, artistic expression toward a positive conception of Japanese
Americans (Hayase 1985; Hirabayashi 1988; Uyechi 1995). The sound conventions of
steady, elastic rhythms, ma, visualsound integration through kata, percussive instru-
ments such as small cymbals and shakers and kumidaiko (ensemble drumming) charac-
terize taiko drumming, but additionally, NorthAmerican taiko borrows fromsuch musical
forms as jazz, Native American drumming, and salsa. One of the signicant appropria-
tions has been the U.S. jazz idiomof improvisation. Many NorthAmerican ensembles alter
precomposed segments with solos in which individuals improvise within the rhythmic
style of the song. Like the music itself, kata, too, is hybridized through a variety of
movements such as those from gagaku, martial arts, and contemporary dance.
There are many groups with particularly notable styles, but three are typically credited
with inuencing the majority of North American ensembles. San Francisco Taiko Dojo,
founded in 1968 by Sensei Seiichi Tanaka, has been credited with bringing the ensemble
style of kumidaiko to the United States. Another founding taiko ensemble in the United
States is Kinnara Taiko, established by Reverend Masao Kodani and George Abe in 1969 at
the Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, California, as a form of Japanese American
Buddhist expression. Kinnara introduced concepts of Buddhist drumming blended with
traditional Japanese rhythms such as kizami, straight, steady base rhythm, and oroshi, a
slow succession of beats that accelerate to a drum roll, elements that are present in nearly
all taiko ensembles. Kinnara also developed the use of oak wine barrels for the body of the
large chu-daiko, one of the main drums (and drum shapes) used in ensemble taiko
drumming. Traditionally carved from a single piece of wood by master drum makers, this
appropriation allowed many groups to fashion their own drums and start their own
ensembles, revolutionizing taiko as it became more accessible to a larger audience (Kim
2010).
Thus far, I have presented a brief account of aesthetic conventions of taiko practice to
depict the sonic gured world of taikothe conventions, practices, and negotiated frames
of meaning that socially identify taiko as an art form. North American taiko is constructed
through or as sonic, gestural, and overtly political discursive practices that locate it within
Powell Sound Identity 105
a larger social eld in relation to other forms of taiko, a guration of its positionality
(Holland et al. 1998) within the taiko drumming world as well as the larger landscape of
identity politics. Fromartz and Greeneld (1998) have called attention to the aesthetic
practices of taiko drumming that disrupt the cultural myth of the quiet and docile
Asian: the strong stance, the physical stamina needed for drumming, the loudness of the
drums, and the use of martial arts movements with drumming, a space that is anything
but quiet. I now turn the focus of this article onto San Jose Taiko, the site of my ethno-
graphic study. In the remaining sections, I depict the development of sound knowing
understandings of, deliberations with, and experimentations in sound.
San Jose Taiko
San Jose Taiko (SJT), founded in 1973 by Roy and P. J. Hirabayashi (Managing and
Creative Directors, respectively) and located in San Jose, California, home to one of three
Japantowns in the United States, is generally considered to be one of three founding taiko
groups. Inspired and shaped by the teachings and ideas of both San Francisco Taiko Dojo
and Kinnara Taiko, they have developed their approach to taiko into a forum for social
action, community development, cultural preservation, andAsianAmerican identity, char-
acteristics that mark many North American taiko ensembles (Hayase 1985; Hirabayashi
1988; Uyechi 1995).
SJT has as one of its goals the cultural preservation of Japanese American culture as well
as San Joses Japantown. San Jose Japantown is a signicant community in the sense that
out of 53 businesses that were forced into closure during internment, 40 businesses and
100 families reestablished themselves by 1947, three years following the revoked policy:
In this country, where most other Japanese-American neighborhoods were lost after the
internments of World War II, San Joses Japantown is a rare treasure (Japantown San Jose
2011). According to a 2003 demographics report (Claritas Inc. 2004), 26 percent of San
Joses approximately 643,000 residents are Japanese American, with approximately 15
percent of Asian Americans residing within a one-mile radius of Japantown.
It is against this backdrop that SJT conducts public workshops for local youth and
adults, schools visits, and other public outreach initiatives. SJT has developed a profes-
sional performance ensemble as well as a conservatory that hosts tour residencies and the
Junior Taiko program for youth ages 818, with a current enrollment of about 70 students
(San Jose Taiko 2011). The performing groups regularly participate in the community
events of Japantown.
During the years of 2000 and 2001, I conducted an 18-month ethnography of SJT
involving eld notes, participant-observation, interviews with ensemble members, and
videotape analysis. I focused most of my attention on the adult performing ensemble
because of their visibility within the larger taiko community and the effects this group
continues to have on the composition of an Asian American sound diaspora. There were
14 performing members (incl. the two directors) at the beginning of my study, dened as
those individuals who engage in regular practices and performances of taiko, ranging
fromages 18 to 50. Participants were comprised of four (self-identied) Japanese American
males and ve females (many of whom were sansei, third-generation Japanese American),
one Filipino American male, a Chinese American female, two white males, and one white
female. I also studied participants involved in a two-year apprenticeship program known
as the Audition Process (AP) and became involved as an apprentice for four months of this
process at the invitation and, indeed, insistence, of the ensembles directors. Although the
majority of participants were of Japanese American origin, the number of non-Japanese
members (incl. Asian and non-Asian) are typical of the composition of many North
American taiko ensembles, demonstrating, perhaps, the amorphous identity of many
106 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
contemporary arts projects, in which a particular cultural identity politics is at play in a
larger social context of interests that cross racial and ethnic boundaries.
The following conversation, taken from an interview with P. J., reveals the way in which
their sound identities were positioned and authored (Holland et al. 1998) in relation to
ethnic legitimacy, authenticity, and status. During their training, Roy, P. J., and some
of their colleagues apprenticed with a preeminent taiko sensei (teacher). Recalling the
words of their sensei during an interview, P. J. described the impetus for establishing their
own taiko style. Youll never be real taiko players, he told us. Youre just beer barrel
drummers, referring to the drums that SJT fashioned from wine barrels. Their senseis
concern with cultural authenticity extended also to their nationality. Having not grown up
in Japan and followed the traditional way of working with a sensei, they were told that
they would never become Japanese taiko players. P. J. recalled her response:
We said, Well, well never because we arent. And realizing for us it was very important that our
music be a reection of who we are. So it was an instrument to be our expression, our voice. For
our creativity. Our stories. Our experiences. . . . So we regarded ourselves as never, ever, from the
very, very beginning, becoming copycat taiko from Japan. [interview, September 1, 2000]
In a separate interview, Roy described their desire to create something uniquely represen-
tative of their members diverse musical backgrounds and experiences:
Conceptually, as far as when were writing our music, it was taking on more of a jazz type of format
versus, say, Japanese Festival drumming, which is very repetitive. . . . There was a lot more
freedom of soloing and we had built the songs within that jazz framework in a way. . . . So when
I talk about the Asian American or Japanese perspective as far as us, as far as San Jose Taiko, its
really coming from that. That we were taking our American experience of our musical sense and
trying to use the Japanese instrument, taiko, and fuse that together into a really different art form.
[interview, February 16, 2001]
Since its inception, SJT has strived to infuse traditional Japanese rhythms and kata with
contemporary rhythms and movement in an effort to gure an identity. Soul and jazz
were derived from the Black experience but nothing on the popular market could be
referred to as the Asian American experience, Roy explained in an interview, and has
written elsewhere, We were Japanese Americans who found taiko as a connection to our
ethnic identity (Hirabayashi 1988:2). Their performance style is notably inuenced by
jazz, traditional Japanese rhythms and polyrhythms. Roy explained that, during the start
of their group, he and other musicians looked at Afro-Cuban drumming, where all the
different drums are playing different voices yet are coordinated as a unit:
And trying to understand or maintain the fact that there are so-called voices within the different
drums, as far as sounds. You know, the middle size drum has one sound to it; the large drum has
bass in it; the shimes have the tenor drumsound. And then adding whatever other instrumentation
to that, we were creating the so-called melodic voices within the ensemble. And then rhythm-wise
it was just trying to be as creative as possible within that polyrhythm format. [interview, February
16, 2001]
Roy explained that in SJT, patterns are often overlapped in rounds to create polyrhythms:
And so in a lot of our music youll hear that theres a bass beat and then theres a melody
beat and there might be a counter thing all happening at the same time. SJT generally
employs a collection of different drums, percussive instruments such as cymbals and
gourds, and sometimes shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo utes) and other instruments asso-
ciated with Japanese music.
These statements reveal the ways in which SJT has positioned itself within the gured
world of taiko, and the ways in which sound authors that position. In SJT, authoring, or the
Powell Sound Identity 107
orchestration of social discourses and practices through ones resources (Holland et al.
1998), is congured through an acoustemological knowledge of traditional sound aesthet-
ics (the actual drums, as well as rhythms) that signify Japanese identity as well as con-
temporary sounds of U.S. and world music, such as jazz. Roys sentimentwe were
taking our American experience of our musical sense and trying to use the Japanese
instrument . . . and fuse that together into a really different art form (see above) gures a
world of sound expressions that cross ethnic boundaries. His statement, along with P. J.s,
evokes the concept of answerability (Bakhtin 1990). The taiko world requires an answer in
terms of how SJT might situate and identify itself within the landscape of practices that
index larger historical and cultural meanings. SJT, in effect, has authored that space
through a hybrid form of sound practices. Roys and P. J.s sentiments reveal the intimate
tie between sound and race politics. Consider, also, an excerpt from an interview with
Johnny Mori of Kinnara Taiko, speaking about the founding of his group:
But lo and behold, this particular taiko, this Japanese-American taiko, had no roots whatsoever in
Japan, nothing at all. Basically, we sat around and said, Are we making this thing up? and
Reverend Masao said, Yeah, were just making this up. And I go, This has no connection? No
other Buddhist group in Japan does this? And he said, Nope. I go, Wow, I always thought I had
this connection to Japanand I dont. [Fromartz and Greeneld 1998]
These sentiments, articulated by Mori as well as the founders of SJT, point to the spatial
temporal qualities of music, in which ownership and origins blur and hybrid styles
emerge. Musics capacity to leap across boundaries enables individuals to reconstruct or
restore cultural or ethnic identity by relocating or reembedding personal identities in
different places. The discourses in which place is constructed and celebrated in relation
to music, wrote Martin Stokes, have never before had to permit such exibility and
ingenuity (1994:114). Through the bringing together of discrete elementsindividual
talent and musical preferences, aesthetic conventions and cultural traditionsmusic
becomes an important means through which people might reconnect with or nd a sense
of belonging, in which particular instruments, rhythms, and voices communicate a sym-
bolic sense of place and identity.
Yet the spatiotemporal leaps that sound allows also problematize the concept of cultural
authenticity. The above excerpts reveal the slippages among the ethnic categories of Asian,
Asian American, Japanese, and Japanese American. The slippage that occurs around the
concept of cultural authenticity is explored more deeply in the remainder of the article,
through a description of SJTs pedagogical, compositional, and improvisatory practices.
Composing Sound Identity
SJT uses a pedagogical framework consisting of four interdependent principles: (1) an
attitude of respect and discipline toward self, instruments, and other players; (2) kata, the
physical, aesthetic form involving choreographed movements usually based on martial
arts stances; (3) musical technique involving rhythms, sticking, and correct handling of
the bachi (drumsticks); and (4) Ki, spiritual unity of body and mind and the source of
energy that connects players to each other, their instruments, and to a larger spiritual
purpose. These principles, notably ki and kata, reect eastern spiritual and philosophical
components of martial arts, traditional Japanese arts, and meditation practices.
There is an oral tradition of teaching the musical repertoire of the group, an important
acoustemological dimension of learning. Rather than transcribed, written documentation
of songs, as in many Western musical genres, taiko rhythms are generally taught orally
through a syllabic system called kuchishoka that denotes certain rhythms and striking
108 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
positions (kata) on the drum. These syllables are spoken in rhythm, usually before
members play the actual rhythms: Don, for example, is loud and denotes a certain
powerful, downward stroke of the drum; suku tends to be a faster rhythm, sometimes
played on the off beat, and denoting a quieter sound marked by corresponding, smaller
drum strikes. Once syllables have been learned, the kuchishoka is then transferred to the
drums. As the artistic director expressed during one rehearsal, If you can say it, you can
play it.
Another acoustemological dimension of taiko drumming is kiai (shouted syllables), an
aural form of creating and maintaining ki (energy and unity), an important part of SJTs
principles. In some cases, kiai are actually part of a song. For example, the syllable tsu,
which is sometimes used to mark nonhits to the drum, can be composed into a song itself,
so that the tsu becomes part of the sound pattern. For example, in a dance called Ei ja
Naika!, members would dance to a drumbeat and yell in unison a so-re! at certain points
in the song. At other times, kiais were invoked individually, often in relation to helping
others maintain their energy and stamina, or to help a fellow soloist nd her way back to
the downbeat, rhythmic pattern and structure of a song.
Thus, at every level of the teaching and learning process, sound was a key component
for making sense of taiko: whether speaking kuchishoka to learn a song, using kiai, or
striking the drums, sound was one of the primary forms of sense-making. In the larger
context of taiko as a political project, this is a signicant matter. It is a space lled not
merely by sound, but by an embodied presence that sound composes and represents an
incessant materializing of possibilities (Butler 1990:272) that are created and recreated in
the acts of practice and performance. It is a principal way in which the players engage in
taiko world-making (Holland et al. 1998), wherein sound conventions, and the social
conventions they index and locate, become embodied by participants while at the same
time acquire the personal character of those involved in (re)producing these forms. Each
moment of practice and performance, then, holds potential for a reinvention and impro-
visation of the very forms that denote a taiko sound.
The materializing of possibilities is most obviously present in SJTs compositional
process. All performing members are encouraged to compose songs for the group, which
makes up most of their performed repertoire. During the time of this study (200002) the
ensemble had ofcially logged 66 original compositions that revealed a diverse range of
musical inuences on taiko, exemplifying their mission to include the musical back-
grounds, experiences, and culture of the players. RumbaKo, written in 1993 by Janet
Koike and Toni Yagami, fused traditional rhythms from both Japan and Cuba. Currents,
written by Jose Alarcon in 1976, combined a series of musical inuences in three sections,
the rst of which is based on a Muslim song from an island in the Philippines, followed
by a driving baseline of traditional Japanese rhythms, and concluding with a section
infusing jazz and Latin rhythms. Currents also employed the traditional conch shell that
is blown during Buddhist rituals and some community festivals. Gendai Ni Ikiru
(Living in the Present), written by Gary Tsujimoto in 1978, was often referred to as the
signature piece of SJT by Roy, P. J., and other members, which integrates traditional taiko
and modern jazz rhythms. According to Hirabayashi, The music conveys elements of
moving, swinging, free-formexpression (with structure and abandonment). Inherent in its
title, Gendai Ni Ikiru is the appreciation and gratitude of what came before us and the
spirit to be able to move forward (Nakasone n.d.). Ei Ja Nai Ka? [Isnt it good?], written
by P. J. in 1994, incorporated dances from folk festivals of Japan.
The original compositions of SJT thus reveal many types of musical innovations, incor-
porating African, Brazilian, Jazz, Funk, and Cuban rhythms in their songs. Sometimes,
more than one type of cultural rhythm is used in a song, as when Japanese rhythms are
fused with Afro-Brazilian ones in one particular song called Impulse, composed by one
Powell Sound Identity 109
long-standing group member. Other instruments have also been incorporated, such as the
Filipino-based kulintang, a collection of xed-pitch bells.
New members and new compositions bring with them a forum in which the group
questioned and enacted new forms of music and movement, a signicant discursive
practice that invited opportunity for reinvention. During my observations of the profes-
sional performance ensemble, many examples of the ways in which members worked
within and pushed against the historic, cultural, and aesthetic conventions of taiko took
place and created a hybrid space in which new cultural conventions were performed. The
group spent time during their annual retreats, staff meetings, and group reections, to
discuss acceptable artistic practices.
During an interview with Roy, I asked him how the music reected the change in
members since the early founding years of SJT, and how it impacted the vision of what he
and P. J. had for the group. He responded:
I guess the basic question I always ask someone thats trying to develop something in taiko
musically is, well what makes this taiko? and what makes this . . . as us playing it taiko players,
versus percussionists playing on what we call taiko drums? And so that question is kind of a key
question to be asked. And if they cannot answer that, then thats something to be examined I think.
Because thats where, to me, is really the critical part of music. [interview, February 16, 2001]
The process of composition is tempered by San Jose Taikos philosophy and style. I asked
Roy about the extent to which a composers wishes should reect the identity of the group
and their concerns with taiko as a political project. He responded,
In that [the composition] process, I think for them to be at the level that they understand a whole
issue of whats been involved. And not only within taiko, but from a broader perspective of what
taiko is in general. And so for a person thats just coming into the group, just a fewyears, their main
experience or understanding is going to be just only from our perspective of San Jose Taiko,
naturally. So to be able to go beyond that and then experience other thingswhether its Japan or
other groups in the U.S. or whatever it isthen I think thats going to be able to help establish them
with a better feel for composition and a better feel for how the music can really reect what San
Jose Taiko is all about. Because youll have that perspective from what past composers have been
doing, and what the groups philosophy is, and how we operate as an organization. And then how
that kind of ts into what your composition is. [interview, February 16, 2001]
These statements situate sound knowledge in two critical contexts. Roys question, What
makes taiko taiko? places a particular frame around Bakhtins notion of answerability:
The taiko world must be answered in particular sonic ways that resonate with a recogniz-
able sound identity. And if they cannot answer that, Roy continued, then thats some-
thing to be examined, I think. Roy also contrasted taiko players with percussionists.
Because both of these categories signify musical drumming practices, Roy suggested
something other than literal sounding when he referred to playing taiko musically.
Sound interrelates with other activities and characteristics of taiko playing. For example,
SJT regularly engaged its apprenticing and performing members in exercises and practices
that would help in the rehearsal of drumming technique and kata, including mindbody
techniques of meditation, breathing, and movement, as well as encouraged readings and
videotapes on taiko and, more broadly, Asian American identity as it might relate to taiko.
Indeed, the framework developed for the evaluation of performing musicians listed
musical technique as just one aspect of effective taiko playing: attitude, ki, and kata (see
above) were also integral. Composing taiko is a dialogical encounter with past composi-
tions, with ones self, and with the larger world of taiko and its social meanings (Powell
2005).
Sound identity was a considerable preoccupation of SJT and was notably observed in
their formalized process of monitoring and evaluating newcompositions. When a member
110 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
wished to write a composition, he or she lled out a form stating the intention of the piece,
which required the following information: proposed titles, number of composers, esti-
mated number of personnel (players), suggested personnel, instruments used, song ideas
or description, and drum arrangement. Accompanying this form and the ensuing compo-
sitional process was a series of checkpoints which outlined required tasks for a given
time period. For example, according to SJT documents, the deadlines for a spring concert
required composers to, among other activities, establish tangible musical structures,
discuss status of piece based on the brainstormsessions in Oct-Dec [sic], and determine
to continue piece for concert or to be a work in progress for a later program. There are
checkpoints throughout the process, including postconcert, in which members are
required to evaluate the performance and identify future plans for piece. The song
description and deadlines were meant to encourage consistent and ongoing practice, P. J.
stated, based on the groups feedback on the rushed, last-minute feel of some of the
compositions.
The following two accounts reveal the processes of composition in practice and
in reection. Each account offers a glimpse into taiko as an improvisatory and hybrid
practice.
Composing Pandala: Hybridity
Raised in Austin, Texas and of Filipino descent, Franco, a performing member, wanted
to bring into his compositions a Filipino-based instrument, the kulintang. A precedence
had been set nearly 20 years before, when a previous member composed a piece for taiko
and kulintang. Franco had been learning how to play the instrument outside of his
practice with the taiko ensemble, and thought the sound of the instrument would work in
some way with the sound, and feel, of taiko. Franco incorporated another instrument in
addition to the kulintang: the Aboriginal didjeridoo, a long pipelike instrument carved
from wood or cactus and hollowed out to produce a low, vibrating sound. Stewart, a
performer with San Jose Taiko for three years, was learning the didj, as he called it,
outside of practice, and Franco wanted to experiment with this combination of instru-
ments. The piece grew out of some improvisational exercises between Stewart and Franco.
Both instruments in this composition were used in their traditional ways: Franco played
the kulintangs traditional tonal scale in a rapid pattern reective of historic convention;
and Stewart played the didjeridoo according to its conventional practices. The piece was
largely coconstructed between the two of them.
The ensemble granted him space during a concert in which he could try out the
instrumentbut not a central space. The ensemble incorporated Francos piece as part of
their transition music used between the actual songs to help cover the stage changes in
drums, drum placement, and performers. The piece lasted a total of 20 seconds, on the
corner wing of the stage, during which the rest of the members set the main performance
space for the next song. This transitional space allowed Franco, as well as the group itself,
to experiment in a relatively safe way with new sounds, but also signied the ways in
which experimentation with culturally authentic sound is carefully placed. The concert
program notes read as follows:
Former member Jose Alarcons timeless compositions, written in 197678 were well-ahead of their
time, innovatively fusing the cultures of the Philippines and Japan through taiko. Current member
Mark Imperial introduces the sounds of the kulintang to bridge the old to the new. Each compos-
ers individual exploration of his Filipino culture is manifested into a unique interpretation.
Transition music is typical of many taiko performances. Its affect served to create a uidity
and holistic sense of sound that expanded beyond individual pieces. At the same time,
Powell Sound Identity 111
transition music has its own spatiotemporal identity that serves to locate it at the margins
of artistic practice and performance: in comparison to programmed concert music, its
timing is signicantly shorter and stage placement literally marginal. The spatiotemporal
identity of transition music depicts the borderlands of the gured world of taiko, a world
already composed of hybridization of sounds. In these margins are compositional hybrid
practices that renegotiate a sound identities.
Pandala underwent signicant changes the following year. Based on positive reec-
tions from ensemble members following the transition music performance, Franco was
given the opportunity to create an entire piece based on this transition music for their
annual spring concert. I observed several rehearsals in which this small ensemble ne-
tuned their performance. The nal piece included these two instruments plus traditional
Japanese chappa (small hand cymbals) and a large okedo (a drum strung with rope to
attach and tighten the two drum hides on either end of the drum). These choices were
made as a way to honor the taiko sound, according to Francothe recognizable sonority
of the okedo and chappa. Situated in this song, however, the use of these taiko instruments
differed from their usual use. The parts were somewhat coconstructed by the participants
who played those instruments. Franco dictated the chappa pattern, a constant, underlying
rhythm held steady throughout the piece: buzz, dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit, a slow, lilting
rhythm not commonly heard on chappa. The pattern played on the okedo was inuenced
by the instrumentation from a Filipino kulintang ensemble, namely from an instrument
called the agon, its function being one of timekeeper. Franco told Adam, the okedo
drummer, to use these as references but denitely go off on your own thing if you need
to. And he usually needs to! So I kind of knewthe answer! I mean, he can improvise pretty
well. (interview, April 1, 2001). Indeed, during rehearsals, Adam improvised syncopated
rhythms that played with the existing baseline rhythm. The resulting structure of
Pandala started with an introduction using all of the instruments, followed by a sound
cuean increase in tempofor solos on each instrument, and then a cue for the ending.
Franco admitted that the composing process was challenging, echoing much of what
P. J. and Roy stated in separate interviews:
This is a big learning process for me because this is my rst time composing for taiko . . . that whole
aspect of, is this just turning into a jam session where people are playing on drums, or is this taiko?
You know, thats where the question comes in: Where does the San Jose Taiko style incorporate
itself into your song? [interview, February 16, 2001]
When asked about how he arrived at an answer to what counts as taiko, he referred to the
ensembles recent annual retreat, in which they discussed how they currently evaluated
each other as performing members. P. J. suggested using the four principles that she, Roy,
and Yumi (another artistic member) used in their formal evaluations of current and
auditioning members: attitude, kata, ki, and musical technique. Franco feels that this
provided a really solid foundation and a good model for composing in that songs
should incorporate elements of each of those four principles: I mean, with ki you have
energy projection out to the audience but you also have connection with other players that
are on that stage. Theres also kata to consider: San Jose Taiko denitely has its own
kata. The connection that Franco made to kata and ki underscores sound as an embodied
phenomenon with physical dimensions. Fusing sound to body, kata visually manifests
performative dimensions of songs (Powell 2008). Composed pieces open spaces for
moving with and through prescribed forms.
Also evident in this example is the improvisatory nature of composition, in which
members experimented with rhythms, tones, and timbre, juxtaposing musical practices
based on personal experiences and skills onto instruments that have associated cultural
practices. To understand how these sounds work together requires acoustemological
112 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
knowledge, a technical, musical understanding of the various instrumentsthe didj,
kulintang, okedo, and chappaand the ways in which traditional sound conventions are
rearticulated into something that both reects and pushes taiko form. The musicians are
bricoleurs, reguring their taiko world through improvisation and investing it with indi-
vidual and collective meaning: Improvisations crafted in the moment, wrote Holland
and colleagues, are one of the margins of human agency (1998:278). In the next example,
the nature of improvisation, also referred to as soloing, and its relationship to composition
is explored further.
Composing Iruka: Improvisation
In the same concert season as Pandala, Franco composed another song that came to
him in a dream: I had a dream where I was speeding across the ocean traveling on a
dolphin. The sensation of skimming just above the surface of the water was something for
me that translated into rhythm (interview, April 1, 2001). Francos overall conception of
the piece was based on the movements of a dolphin skimming the oceans surface versus
diving into the sea itself. Iruka, or dolphin in Japanese, is Francos rst full-length
composition, premiered at the annual spring concert held in April of 2000. The spring
concert is a venue during which new compositions by SJT members are performed.
Iruka was one of ve new compositions scheduled for the concert, and exemplies the
ways in which the compositional process within San Jose Taiko requires knowledge of the
historical, aesthetic conventions that dictate taiko, a rened sensory understanding of
sound as well as movement.
When talking about the musical inuences on Iruka, Franco discussed how he
swipes riffs from Latin drummers like Tito Puente, Santana, or artists such as James
Brown and Prince: I grew up listening to rock drummers like Stewart Copeland of The
Police and Neil Peart of Rush, so I think the poprock inuence has an effect on the way
I phrase things (interview, April 1, 2001). Some of the rhythms for the sumo part came
from his experience playing marching band percussion. He grew up playing percussion
in symphonic band, orchestra, marching band, and even a rock band in high school.
Franco constructed his style from popular music sources, building on a variety of cultural
inuences, carrying with him a history of performance practices rooted in his personal
experience growing up in Austin, Texas.
Francos piece involved primarily three different instrumental parts: the J-downs, or
josuke drums (medium-sized barrel drums) placed so that their bases are perpendicular to
the oor; sumos (drums traditionally played during sumo matches); and J-slants, in
which josuke drums are placed in an upward, diagonal slant toward the players. The effect
of these differently positioned drums not only yielded different sounds but also the drum
positions yielded different movements: J-slants require more horizontal movements while
J-downs require more vertical movements. The J-downs and sumos carried the back-
beat, the beat that underlies all of the other melodies and holds the tempo steady. The
song, he explained, starts with the idea of a vertical line against a horizontal line.
One of the musical hallmarks of the SJT style is soloing (also known as improvising),
and Iruka was no exception to that practice. In SJTs practice, even the oldest, most
standards songs in the repertoire were reinvented and reorchestrated through soloing.
Soloing typically shifts between the performance of precomposed ideas and those con-
ceived in the moment of performance, requiring a deep understanding of the tonal and
rhythmic structure of a piece, a level of mastery and competence of technical skills, and
creativity. Because multiple solos are present in virtually every song they play, this meant
that some conguration of people were always involved in the practice of soloing during
any given rehearsal, and consequently involved in the recomposition of existing songs.
Powell Sound Identity 113
When considered within an acoustemological framework, the process of soloing
required knowledge beyond technical mastery. They provided occasions in which
members were challenged to reorchestrate a melodic or rhythmic sequence. Such a coor-
dination of efforts necessitated an understanding of sound and the ways in which soloing
structured a recognizable SJTs style, an acoustemological understanding of the ensem-
bles identity. In many ways, soloing was a principal way in which individuals author
(Bakhtin 1990; Holland et al. 1998) the taiko world.
Franco explained, in fact, that, originally I wasnt even going to have a solo section
because all of our repertoire has solos, and I kind of wanted to see if it could be done
without it. But it kind of t in. He changed his mind when he played back his song on his
computer and realized howstraight it sounded in terms of rhythm. To have fun with the
song, he decided to add a solo section: My way of having fun is kind of funky. You know,
I kind of have . . . a funk inuence. Kind of groovy. And so I thought it would be fun to try
it out. And I thought it worked [during the rst rehearsal]. He described this inuence as
being inspired by 1970s foremost funk musician, James Brown.
The rhythmic structure underlying the solo section was straightforward. The impor-
tance of establishing a synchronized beat is what Berliner (1994) called striking a groove,
helping to establish a framework for beginning, middle, and end of a solo. In his kuch-
ishoka (syllables) for the song, he dictated the rhythm as the following: Dn, ta, dn, ta,
dn, ta, dn, ta, and so forth (with accents on the Don), played on beats one and three,
emphasizing the rst beat. Solos were layered on top of this structure. When asked how he
taught them to solo in the style he wanted, he explained that he didnt use the traditional
kuchishoka (see above for explanation) but, rather, the jazz format of scat-singing, the
syllables that singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme made famous: I didnt really
use dons or tsu-kus or ka . . . you know, the regular [kuchishoka]. . . . Because the way I
explained it, when I demonstrated it, I kind of scatted it out (referring to scat-singing in
jazz) (interview, April 1, 2001). Above all, Franco wanted them to have fun with the solos
because the rest of the song was very serious.
His background also came through in his teaching of song patterns, and the ways in
which others learned the patterns by participating, and expanding on, these pop culture
references. For example, when Franco rst taught the transition into the solo section, he
described it to the small group with whom he was working in the following way:
And this part here, goes, its kind of discoey (he speaks the part using the standard syllables of
taiko percussion mixed with his own sounds): Dogo, dogon, Ts! Dogo, Dogon, Ts! [interview,
April 1, 2001]
The ts sounds he makes were not written in the score; rather, Franco is accenting the
rests with this sound. The sound he added is a recognizable sound pattern typical of a lot
of soul music. For example, as an observer, I remembered this riff from a 1977 song
called, You Got the Best of my Love by The Emotions. In response to this suggestion, the
group started moving their bodies and making high-hat noises (the sound created by
western-style cymbals clicking together, creating a high, tinny, staccato sound) by repeat-
ing the sound that Franco made: ts!
The group then tried out this solo section. Franco gave them the solo order: Yumi, P. J.,
Adam, and Trish. Instead of typically singing or beating a solo, or simply counting out the
measures of time, Trish launched into an air guitar solo during her turn, playing an
imaginary instrument and sang twanglike noises that imitated the sound of an electric
guitar, picking up on the pop culture feel by using a guitar sound found in seventies soul
music: Be-ow, be-ow, be-ow, she sang, in a high, twangy sound. The group members
smiled and laughed after Trisha nished her solo.
114 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
Although intended to be funny, Trishs action picked up on the aesthetic norms of
Francos piece. In fact, for the rest of the rehearsal that evening, Trish continued to play her
guitar solo every time they practiced this solo section and continued to receive laughs.
Although her guitar solo certainly didnt last beyond that nights rehearsal, Francos piece
retained that voice in Trishs actual taiko solo during the nal performancethat funky,
popular music feel that he desired in his solo section of Iruka. The resulting solos for
Iruka were characterized by synchronized and swung rhythms that are a hallmark of
funk and jazz, a very different form of solo from that performed during more traditional
Japanese festival songs.
Notable in this example were the ways in which popular U.S. music references
entwined with standard taiko rhythms and practices. Similar to the previous example, the
hybridity of sound produced in this song was made possible through members partici-
pation and production within a shared understanding of sound references, an acoustic
knowledge of cultural practices. Also notable in this example were the ways in which the
pedagogy of taiko itself shifted frame from the traditional aural teaching of kuchishoka to
the popular jazz style of scat singing. That Franco was able to shift from one to the other
uidly indicated a slippage in the acoustic dimension of kuchischoka and revealed a
connection with the jazz pedagogical and performance style of scat singing. These types of
improvisational moments highlight the ways in which individual and collective activity is
not just a response to a situation, but involves appropriation and production of cultural
artifacts (Holland et al. 1998). The musical improvisations are social improvisations
within ever-changing social and material conditions (Holland et al. 1998:17). These
activities could variously be thought of as forms of authoring. The mix of individual
musical perspectives establishes complex interrelationships that introduce new elements
into the soundscape of taiko. The slippage among the terms Asian, Asian American, Japa-
nese, and Japanese American, discussed earlier in relation to cultural authenticity, is given
further acoustemological dimension in this example that reveal the hybridity and ambigu-
ous nature of identity categories.
Composing Cultural Borderlands through Sound
Musical experimentation is critical for a group whose philosophy is based on sound as
an identifying, Asian American marker. As an art form, taiko seeks to sustain an Asian
American identity as it is produced through sound, as well as both disrupt and transform
these aesthetic practices through self-conscious attention to hybridization. SJTs preoccu-
pation with the question, what makes taiko taiko, showed a willingness to contest, create,
and recreate the identiable borders of taiko music, and, by extension, the borders of a
recognizable Asian American experience and identity.
In closing, I revisit the argument set forth at the beginning of the article, which concerns
the ways in which sound congures a social world of practices, artifacts, and identities.
Sound was embodied in a personal, sensory manner, and the participants of San Jose Taiko
actively and collectively composed ssures in the concept of cultural identity and authen-
ticity. Fissures, as Wong denes them, are where the making and unmaking meet
(2004:229). In her ethnographic study of taiko, Wong has discussed the ways in which taiko
remodulates racial categories such as Japanese, Japanese American, Asian, and Asian
American: the sensual, sounded body passes through these noisy historical constructions
and emerges asserting yet new presences (2004:229). In musical terms, modulation refers
to an alteration or adjustment in tone, pitch, volume, or scale. Remodulation, in relation to
the arguments I have made in this article, refers to instances in which experimentation
with compositional form and the actual sounds of taiko directly refer to and indeed
congure larger concerns with a culturally authentic identity.
Powell Sound Identity 115
I have drawn connections between Holland and colleagues gured worlds and its
related concepts, underscoring the ways in which the creation of and improvisation with
cultural borderlands through sound explorations were important activities regarding the
establishment of a taiko identity. The sound explorations, as well as the sentiments
expressed through interviews, reect concerns with cultural authenticity constructed
through innovations and inventions with form, which, paradoxically, pointed to the hybrid
and amorphous nature of identity in practice. Ladson-Billings (2000) has argued that the
epistemology of race as it appears in research and in the popular media culture often
presents xed racial categories. Sarah Gatson (2003) argues for a perspective on multira-
cialism that, rather than a separate category, is dened through a connection to many
identities simultaneously. Perhaps a new ethnic and racial epistemology will acknowledge
the weblike structure of identities that we inhabit and the corresponding elds of activity
that call for multiple acts of knowing and being in the world.
The implications of such an approach underscore the importance of multi-sensory
ethnographic projects (Feld 1996:84) as a means for rendering the lived and embodied
experience of critical social issues. Acoustemology is just one example of broadening our
contexts of study to include the aesthetic and sensory realms of existence, the ways in
which sound is a mediumof and for knowing. Those engaged in ethnographic work might
seek to give voice to other kinds of sensory possibility and reality not typically accounted
for in education research.
Notes
1. See for example, the publisher Bergs Sensory Foundations Series, which includes the launch-
ing of a new journal entitled Sense and Society and includes an editorial board comprised of scholars
from such elds as cultural studies, visual culture, sensory culture and sound culture.
2. There is a growing body of research on the affects of noise and health, particularly in urban
areas of high noise. For an interesting review of some of these studies, see Atkinson (2007).
3. For example, Chichibu Yatai Bayashi style of playing is associated with a unique visual style of
drumming and melody from that Japanese provenance.
4. The development of taiko in Canada has dealt with similar concerns in terms of using the art
form as a cultural rebirth in the wake of U.S. and Canadian immigration policies, helping to support
the diaspora of not only Japanese Canadians but also other Asian Canadians (Kobayashi 1994).
5. Nikkei generally refers to emigrants from Japan or descendants from Japan who reside in a
foreign country (a country other than Japan).
References Cited
Atkinson, Rowland
2007 The Aural Ecology of the City: Sound, Noise, and Exclusion in the City. Housing and
Community Research Unit. Tasmania, Australia: University of Tasmania. http://www.
utas.edu.au/sociology/HACRU/occasional_papers.htm, accessed January 2008.
Bakhtin, M.
1981 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. M. E. Holquist, ed. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
1990 Art and Answerability. M. E. Holquist and V. Liapunov, eds. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
Berliner, Paul
1994 Thinking in Jazz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bowman, Wayne, and Kimberly Powell
2007 The Body in a State of Music. In International Handbook of Research in Arts Education.
L. Bresler, ed.; K. Powell, section ed. Pp. 10871106. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.
Bull, Michael
2000 Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Oxford:
Berg.
116 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
Bull, Michael, and Les Back, eds.
2003 The Auditory Culture Reader. New York: Berg.
Butler, Judith
1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. NewYork: Routledge, Chapman,
and Hall.
Claritas Inc.
2004 Japantown San Jose, California 2003 Estimated Demographic Report. San Jose Redevelop-
ment Agency. http://www.japantownsanjose.org/demographics.htm, accessed April 23,
2007.
Classen, Constance
1997 Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses. UNESCO 153:401412.
Cole, Michael
1996 Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Davies, Bronwyn
1990 Agency as a Discursive Form of Practice. British Journal of Sociology of Education 11(3):
341361.
Denzin, Norman
2000a Aesthetics and the Practices of Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(2):256265.
2000b The Practices and Politics of Interpretation. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd
edition. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds. Pp. 897922. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Feld, Stephen
1990[1982] Sound and Sentiment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1996 Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. In
Senses of Place. Stephen Feld and Keith Basso, eds. Pp. 91135. Santa Fe, NM: School of
American Research Press.
2001 From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology: Reading R. Murray Schafer in the Papua
New Guinea Rainforest. Acoustic Ecology Institute. http://www.acousticecology.org/
writings/echomuseecology.html, accessed May 20, 2010.
Fromartz, Samuel, and Lauren Greeneld
1998 Anything but Quiet: Japanese Americans Reinvent Taiko Drumming. Natural History
107(2):4450.
Gatson, Sarah
2003 On Being Amorphous: Autoethnography, Genealogy, and a Multiracial Identity. Qualitative
Inquiry 9(1):2048.
Gell, Alfred
1995 The Language of the Forest: Landscape and Phonological Iconism in Umeda. In The Anthro-
pology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Eric Hirsch and Michael OHanlon,
eds. Pp. 232254. Oxford: Clarendon.
Greene, Maxine
2001 Releasing the Imagination. Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Greeno, James
1997 On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions. Educational Researcher 26(1):517.
Hayase, Susan
1985 Taiko. East Wind (winterspring):4647.
Herrenkohl, Leslie Rupert, and James Wertsch
1999 The Use of Cultural Tools: Mastery and Appropriation. In Development of Mental
Representation. I. Sigel, ed. Pp. 421442. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hirabayashi, Roy
1988 Odaiko Newsletter. San Jose, CA: San Jose Taiko.
Holland, Dorothy, William Lachicotte, Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain
1998 Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holland, Dorothy, and Kevin Leander
2004 Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity: An Introduction. Ethos 32(2):127139.
Holquist, Michael
1990 Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge
Howes, David
1991 Sense and Non-Sense in Contemporary Ethnographic Practice and Theory. Culture
11(12):6576.
Powell Sound Identity 117
Howes, David, ed.
2005 Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
Japantown San Jose
2011 History and Walking Tour. http://www.japantownsanjose.org/default.htm, accessed April
23, 2007.
Jewitt, Carey
2008 Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Review of Research in Education
32(1):241267.
Kim, Sojin
2010 All in the Drum: Building Taiko in America. http://www.janm.org/exhibits/bigdrum/
exhibition/article.php, accessed March 11, 2010.
Kobayashi, T.
1994 Heartbeat in the Diaspora: Taiko and Community. Fuse 12(56):2426.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria
2000 Racialized Discourses and Ethnic Epistemologies. Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd
edition. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2003 Its Your World, Im Just Trying to Explain It: Understanding our Epistemological and
Methodological Challenges. Qualitative Inquiry 9(1):512.
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger
1991 Situated Learning and Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Malm, William P.
1977 Northeast Asia and the Island Countries. Music Cultures of the Pacic, Near East, and Asia.
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Nakasone
N.d. Peripheral Cultures, Peripheral Peoples. In-house paper distributed within San Jose Taiko.
New London Group
1996 A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review
66(1):6093.
Parker, L.
1998 Race Is . . . Race Aint: An Exploration of the Utility of Critical Race Theory in Qualita-
tive Research in Education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11:
4355.
Pink, Sarah
2006 The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. New York: Routledge.
Powell, Kimberly
2005 The Ensemble Art of the Solo. Arts and Learning Research Journal 21(1):273295.
2008 Drumming against the Quiet: The Sound of Asian American Identity Politics in an Amor-
phous Landscape. Qualitative Inquiry 14(6):901925.
Rasmussen, Susan
1999 Making Better Scents in Anthropology: Aroma in Tuareg Sociocultural Systems and the
Shaping of Ethnography. Anthropological Quarterly 72(2):5573.
Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
1982 Personal Justice Denied. http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/personal_
justice_denied/, accessed May 25, 2011.
Rice, Tom
2005 Review of Getting a Sense of Listening. Critique of Anthropology 25(2):199206.
Rogoff, Barbara
1990 Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Rogoff, Barbara, and Jean Lave
1984 Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context. Barbara Rogoff and Jean Lave, eds.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rolling, James
2008 Secular Blasphemy: Utter(ed) Transgressions against Names and Fathers in the Postmodern
Era. Qualitative Inquiry 14(6):926948.
Sakakeeny, Matt
2006 Resounding Silence in the Streets of a Musical City. Space and Culture 9(1):4144.
San Jose Taiko
2011 History. http://www.taiko.org/history-traditional-japanese-drumming-rhythm-world-
beats/, accessed May 16, 2011.
118 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 43, 2012
Stein, Mary Kay, Edward Silver, and Margaret Schwan Smith
1998 Mathematics Reform and Teacher Development: A Community of Practice Perspective.
In Thinking Practices in Mathematics and Science Learning. James G. Greeno and Shelley
V. Goldman, eds. Pp. 1752. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stokes, Martin
1994 Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. New York: Berg.
Stoller, Paul
1984 Sound in Songhay Cultural Experience. American Ethnologist 11:559570.
1997 Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Takata, Takeshi
1998 The Thundering World of the Taiko. Look Japan, 43(January):502.
Urrieta, Luis
2007 Figured Worlds and Education: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Urban Review
39(2):107116.
Uyechi, Linda
1995 University Taiko: Roots and Evolution. Paper presented at Symposium on North American
Taiko, Stanford University Invitational.
Wong, Deborah
2004 Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge.
Powell Sound Identity 119