Sharing TaikoPeace & Taiko Pieces by PJ Hirabayashi
As instructors and performing group members at the Great Lakes Taiko Center, we are grateful for the opportunity to work and play through taiko, particularly with continuing and increasingly urgent needs to deal with the global pandemic, climate crisis, and systemic racism, in our communities. Taiko has become more than hitting a drum for us; it is a way to be in community with you all. We especially thank taiko pioneer PJ Hirabayashi (San Jose, CA) for founding the TaikoPeace Movement, with the TaikoPeace Charter For Compassion & TaikoPeace Heart Values (copied below), which we follow wholeheartedly on our collective path towards positive social change and world peace.
Meet PJ Hirabayashi, taiko drumming pioneer and founder of TaikoPeace (San Jose, CA). Photo: Bryce Craig
TaikoPeace is a movement started by renowned taiko drumming pioneer and community builder, PJ Hirabayashi, to spread the kinetic energy, spiritual vibration, and pure joy of Japanese taiko drumming for positive social change and a peaceful world. Dedicated to transforming the limiting beliefs, judgments, misuse of power and ego within the taiko community, TaikoPeace empowers the taiko community to focus its collective creativity, musicality, and energy towards positive social change and peace in co-creation and partnership with the broader arts community and beyond.
~ From Grateful Changemakers: TaikoPeace (an interview with PJ Hirabayashi)
UPCOMING EVENT w/PJ >>> Rhythm of Restoration: The Buoyancy of Freedom
Saturday, January 30th, 2021 at 12pm ET, 60 minutes (virtual, Zoom) $20
More info and registration link: https://taikopeace.love/rhythm-of-restoration
We are also very excited to be learning and teaching a couple of taiko pieces by PJ Hirabayashi in the coming year at the Great Lakes Taiko Center (in conjunction with resources on kaDON.com):
In February & March 2021, our TUE 7pm Taiko Song Study class @GLTC-Online will focus on her song Tottemo Yoi (“Very Good!”), a fun piece for all levels that weaves drum patterns, movement, and chanting.
For Fall 2021, our GLTC instructors plan to offer a study of the rhythm, dance, song and chant of Ei Ja Nai Ka (“Isn’t It Good?!”), a quintessential TaikoPeace taiko piece!
~In Community, Eileen Ho & Larry An @GLTC
Ei Ja Nai Ka is a taiko drumming song and dance by PJ Hirabayashi that celebrates the hard work of our immigrant ancestors. Video: from https://taikopeace.love/ejnk
We appreciate taiko as a precious gift.
We honor the generations of taiko pioneers who came before us.
We express and share taiko with humility, inclusivity, kindness, and respect.
We amplify movements of peace, cultural enrichment, and social justice.
We heal and lift the human spirit towards building vibrant communities.
We play taiko with our hearts overflowing with gratefulness and joy.
TaikoPeace Heart Values
Gratitude
To be grateful for the rare privilege of being a taiko player and for the many pioneers of taiko who came before us, blazing a trail.
Empathy
To show consideration for the feelings of others in favor of deepening our taiko relationships and showing respect for diverse points of view.
Community
To build more inclusive and socially conscious communities by making taiko accessible, teachable, and enjoyable to all people regardless of race, class, culture, age, gender ID, or physical ability.
Empowerment
To know we already have the power to act boldly and courageously as individuals and with our cohorts to inspire a culture of peace amplified by taiko.
Kindness
To seek ways of being benevolent, generous, and kindhearted within our taiko groups and communities.
Humility
To put others before ourselves, to exhibit deference and restraint over urges driven by ego and need to impress.
Creativity
To create with artists of all genres, freely exchange new ideas, and embrace the uncertainty that co-creativity brings with an open mind, open heart.
Joy
To make a joyful, exhilarating, fearless sound with every strike whether loud or soft, knowing that spreading joy has boundless ripples.
Imagination
To stretch the untapped potential of taiko in imaginative, disruptive ways by thinking outside the box and resisting the urge to follow conventional paths.