Thursday, December 15, 2005

BOOOOOOOM
Thank you for all your happy little MyO welcome backs. It's nice to be back. So I've decided to dedicate this post to one of the best night I've had for a loooong looong time. Unfortunately it was during my break so you guy didn't hear about it sooner. Lucky for me, I wrote up a post anyway because there's no way in the green fires of hell-o kitty that I would not record a night like it and let it slip out of my memory. But man, it was too bloody cool to forget. Here it is, slightly edited:

Yamato - The Drummers of Japan
Kami-nari (Thunder) World Tour 2005

Taiko drummers!!!!! For so long I've been fascinated by these wonderful groups of drummers. Their music, their power, their stamina, their synchronization and especially their drums. And just out of the blue, I was given tickets to see their ONLY performance in Toronto. Being a drummer myself... Hmm, how should I put this? Wuuhhh, I went koo-koo.

After day-long drumming, I went downtown at around 6:30pm, had an extra-large mochaccino (I was becoming rather tired at that point.) then headed to the hall at 7:00. I dressed semi-fancy. Yeah, like you care about that...

When I got to my front row, balcony seat (high-class!), I realized I still had some time before the performance started so I decided to pass the time by "people-watching". Taiko drummers attract quite an assortment of people. While scanning the hall, my attention was caught by a bright red scarf. Wearing this scarf was one of the most beautiful girls I've seen. She was Chinese (her mother was speaking Mandarin during the intermission. I'll get to that later.), she had long flowing black hair and she seemed very reserved. Like I mentioned, she was there with her mom. Every once in a while her mother would chat with her and the girl would just give a nod. Wahh, she was soo cute!! So for a moment in time, she kinda distracted me from the main purpose of being at the show.

And then it began...

What can I say. It was bloody fantastic. There were 15 drummers, I think. I believe 5 were women. The rest were men. They wore these black samurai-like pants and black tank tops. Each drummers hair was crimped and fluffy looking. If it was long enough, it was tied up, otherwise, the fluff was left free to rock. Every aspect of the performance made me want to cry tears of joy and maybe pleasure. I'm having an insane time trying to think of a way to describe these angels of rhythm. It's impossible. Like many wonderful things in this world, it's an experience you have to be there for to truly understand what I'm talking about. I cried tears listening to them. Tears of joy. Tears of pleasure. Tears for fears (because everybody wants to rule the world. *laughs* High-fives to anyone who gets that)

Technique = Awesome
Sound = Awesome
Synchronization = Awesome
Creativity = Awesome
Costumes = Awesome
Booming the big drum to make old people go "ah!" every time = Awesome

Seriously. I'd like to go into detail but it would do absolutely no justice to the taiko drummers. I will tell you that they do have other instruments (like the flute and that stringed instrument that lays flat on the floor... I'll figure out the name soon enough.) and they've quite the sense of humour.

And just for kicks, why not check out their website? :

http://www.wadaiko-yamato.com/

Intermission time came around. The P.A. system voice person asked people to not take pictures but people did anyway. The dumbasses who used flash got told off by the staff. Since I'm smart, I used my phone camera (without the light) and managed to get a mediocre pic of their setup for the second half. Have a looksy:



Wahaha! See their set-up? Holy wow, they rocked the house. Literally. I wouldn't have been surprised if the roof crumbled on the peasants on the ground floor. It was amazing.

With that said, back to the girl with the red scarf. During intermission, I decided to go for a walk, stretch out my legs and perhaps see the girl. I was just hoping that this would be the night where I'd stop being a wuss and finally get up the courage to talk to a girl just out of the blue. It didn't go as I had planned. Honestly, I'd be content if I just smiled and said hello while passing by but noooo, I can't even do that.

I walked down the grand staircase and there she was standing beside her mom. Now in a worse-case scenario, I'd trip and fall or something, right? Luckily, I didn't. I managed to embarrass my stupid self anyway. I was going over what I would say in my head while kinda staring at her from afar. Since I wasn't paying attention, I bumped face-first into a shiny metal column. To make things worse, I was wearing my glasses so everyone around me heard a rather loud *ping!* noise. So back to my seat I went.

Thankfully, the show was incredible enough to get my mind off my dorkism for the rest of the night.

A decent, medium-sized taiko drum would cost approximately $8000 so I'm going to use my floor tom instead. It's close enough. Ever since that night, I've just felt this urge to just pound something and fill whatever room I'm in with a chest-shaking boom. Yeeeeah...

[EDIT: I talked with my boss and he might get his brother-in-law to bring a taiko drum straight from Japan. And what more? It's gonna be cheaper than usual costs! Hoorah!]






So yeah. It was a great night... Except for the stupid hitting my face on a column thing. But that doesn't matter. It's not like I'm going to see those people again. (Well. At least I hope not.)

I've a bit more to report but this is a drum post. I'll leave the beat as pure as it can be.

Cheers.

- enin -
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