Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2011
By far the biggest surprise of this year’s 24th Earth Celebration—the Kodo drummers’ annual music fest on Sado Island—is seeing famous abductee to North Korea Hitomi Soga campaigning for the return of fellow kidnapping victims at a stall near the entrance. It’s a reminder that Sado in the Japan Sea—where Soga was plucked off the roadside as a junior high school girl—lies as close as you can get in Japan to the Hermit Kingdom.
But there are other surprises about this year’s festival. After three decades of relentless overseas touring, the Kodo taiko drummers have transcended their roots in Japanese matsuri music. The second night of the festival begins with a set piece in elaborate costume that seems as much Mongolian and Javanese as it does Japanese.
For each year’s Earth Celebration the Kodo drummers host one of the musical guests they’ve met abroad and garnered so many influences from. These have ranged from Indian tabla legend Zakir Hussain to Romanian Gypsy brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia. The 2011 guest comes in the form of Iran’s Ranaei Family, a multigenerational group whose hypnotic thrumming on the guitar-like oud provides the foil to Kodo’s exuberant drumming, singing, piping and dancing.
Kodo’s time under the direction of kabuki master Tamasaburo Bando has also heightened their sense of drama. A lion dance piece sees several dancers tossing the manes of their fierce masks violently about the stage as they strike predator poses to the thrashings of drum and gong.
Amid the muscular drumming there is also increasing room for sequences that showcase the women among Kodo’s talents. But these are hardly the mincing dances of traditional geisha—in keeping with Kodo’s spirit these fan and parasol dances are extroverted displays of strength and grace.
One element that doesn’t surprise about this year’s Earth Celebration is the motley assortment of hippies, garden variety ojisan and obasan, and gaijin that make up its several-thousand strong audience. Kodo’s annual powwow is legendary among world music fans—and seemingly a ritual for JET teachers—and attracts a higher percentage of Westerners than even the Fuji Rock Festival.
Earth Celebration also outdoes Fuji Rock and Japan’s other big music fests by completely foregoing corporate sponsorship and crass commercialism. Not a single Heineken or MTV logo is to be found within its precincts.
Another unchanged aspect of the three-day long festival of concerts, workshops and languid-island-vibed mingling is the grand finale featuring the massive odaiko, and the encore in which the entire dozens-strong Kodo troupe emerges to whip the audience into one last frenzy of dancing. Also part of tradition is the matsuri sendoff at the pier as folks board the ferry back on the Monday.
Compared to formal Japanese performing arts like gagaku music or noh drama, the more accessible taiko with its roots in folk festivals has made a better transition to the 21st century. Kodo and a slew of fellow drum troupes travel the world, spreading the gospel of taiko and updating it with a smorgasbord of influences.
As the drummers dwindle to specks on the pier, it’s safe to say that a large portion of the visitors throwing streamers and waving farewell will be back again for what is Japan’s longest running music festival.
Kodo perform at Aoyama Theater, Dec 8-18 (listing).
