Friday, October 14, 2011

Yamato!

This evening we went to Yamato: the Drummer of Japan performance. What fun! It is a contemporary Japanese drum corps (I guess you would call them a drum corps.) I thoroughly enjoyed myself! If you have a chance to attend one of their performances, I certainly would try.

We asked Grad Student Gillian to order the tickets for us, and she got us seats in the 2nd row: perfect! We could see the up-close movement of each drummer, the dancing, the sweat, the eye contact between the group. It was so much fun to be this close.

The first thing I noticed when these 20-somethings bounded onto stage was how buff they all were - the men and the women. At intermission I read about their daily routine. They start their day with a 10K run (6.4 miles), and spend the rest of the morning in weightlifting and other conditioning. Afternoons are spent in rehearsal, and evenings are individual drum practices.

All the exercise is a small wonder, in that these performers are all over the stage, hauling their drums and dancing and coordinating everything in precision. Their drumsticks were not the traditional American sticks, but rather something akin to anything between a rolling pin and a baseball bat. The drums are as small as a snare drum, and as large as maybe twice the size of a bass drum. And the performers use small cymbals and a couple of stringed instruments for which I have not yet discovered the names. That's on tomorrow's to-do list.

I am amazed that these drummers could remember what to do and when to do it - switching drums, calling out (calling out what, I don't know - they're Japanese and I am not.) In music, one has measures and phrases and key signatures and more to give a musician cues as to where they are and to where they are going. Percussionists must have a different brain , because I could not perceive how this group could A) communicate, B) follow the lengthy and changing beats, and C) coordinate all the dance, the beats, the lugging of drums (allthewhile making it look totally effortless).

A good time was had by us all!

1 comment:

Melissa G said...

Wow! That sounds like an amazing experience - impressive!

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