Undaunted: Into the Open, Raging Asian Womxn Taiko Drummers

Rarely do taiko performance and taiko scholarship come together with such power, engagement, and focus, especially in a format that lives on past a live performance or event and is easily accessible to a broad range of viewers. Undaunted: Into the Open by Raging Asian Womxn (RAW) taiko drummers is a stunning video presentation that captures the performance aspect of taiko together with a critical lens into who the practitioners are and why they do what they do. The film offers a compelling, one-of-a-kind presentation of Asian American and Asian Canadian taiko drumming, practitioners, and contemporary issues in Asian American communities across North America.Undaunted is a video of RAW's 2019 concert presented December 5–8 at the Betty Oliphant Theater in Toronto. The film includes all nine compositions from the original program with six videostories presented in between as interludes. Founded in 1998, RAW has moved through different members and organizational models beginning first as a feminist collective and now with an artistic director leading RAW's collaborative works. The group remains committed to playing taiko drums “as creative resistance for social change, carving space for self-expression, education and community building” (https://www.ragingasianwomxn.ca/). Now in their third decade, RAW's commitments remain in clear focus and are aptly represented in their name:Raging: A reference to the power and potential of rage and anger in fighting systems of oppression. RAW continues the legacy of marginalized individuals, communities, and movements recognizing the value, need, and use of rage and anger in fighting oppression. Audre Lorde is cited throughout the program notes of Undaunted and on RAW's website: “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change” (1997:280). Rage and anger are also not new to kumidaiko (ensemble taiko drumming). As featured in Yoshitaka Terada's 2010 documentary on Buraku drummers in Japan, Ikari (“anger” in Japanese), based in Naniwa, Osaka, developed their name with an intentional focus on bringing attention to the ongoing discrimination of Buraku individuals and communities in Japan.Asian: The video interludes interspersed between the performances in Undaunted lay bare lived experiences and realities of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians today. Themes include mental health, chronic pain, living in systems of oppression as marginalized individuals, as well as solidarity, struggle, hardship, survival, and change. Current RAW members speak about racism, sexism, grief, navigating gender norms and body imagery, suicide, multiraciality, self-discovery, self-care, and growth.Womxn: RAW remains one of the few all Asian and all womxn taiko groups in the world. RAW is known for their commitment to creating “womxn-empowered environments” that advocate for trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer communities. RAW chooses to employ the term “womxn” to include racialized women, transwomen, and nonbinary and genderfluid members and shares their commitments in detail on their website and in program notes while acknowledging the contested history of the term. The 2019 concert from which the video is based brings to focus two themes of resilience and resistance. In the film, Artistic Director Park explains that they share their stories “to testify to our resilience, to resist isolation, and to put words to the vulnerability that we practice every time we step up to the drum, every time we dare to rage.” The experiences of resilience and resistance as an all Asian and all womxn group are heard in the words of the videostories and expressed in sound and movement throughout the featured performances.The nine compositions in the film include a range of repertoire from pieces listed as “traditional,” to compositions regularly performed across North America (as “open source” or shared through workshops and exchanges), to new compositions by RAW members and/or RAW community members. This combination is characteristic of many North American taiko groups in the 2020s. The two “traditional” compositions on the program “Yatai Bayashi” (arranged by Arashi Daiko) and “Miyake” (arranged by Young Park) are classic stock repertoire for North American taiko groups yet presented here as arrangements for RAW that explore what Park has described as a “feminine power” in the face of hypermasculine renditions that permeate the global taiko scene. Two “open-source” compositions (developed to be shared with taiko communities) include “Jack Bazaar” (composed by Kristopher Bergstrom, 2014) and “Omiyage” (composed by Shoji Kameda, 2004). Additionally, two compositions shared through exchanges include “Yamabiko” (composed by Japanese Defense Force in Shizuoka Prefecture) and “Yui” (composed by Ryo Shimamoto). The three original compositions on the program include “Sempu” (composed and arranged by Toronto-based musician and sound artist Heidi Chan, 2010), “Un/Haunted” (composed and choreographed by Park with soundtrack and poem by Heidi Chan, 2019), and “Kaingin” (composed by queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks from Tkaronto Pantayo).Concert footage and video interludes are all professionally produced and of high production quality. A featured aspect of the video is that the compositions all appear in their full original length. The high production level of videography captures stage production including lighting and special effects. Camera angles are skillfully edited to include both close ups of artists as well as full stage views to thoughtfully capture details and scope of choreography, movements, and costumes. The careful attention allows the viewer to see the facial expressions of the artists and their communication with one another, both being significant aspects of the group dynamic of kumidaiko. Audience cheers and responses, including kiai or kakegoe (shouts of encouragement common to taiko) are audible and provide the aural experience of the live audience.The power and energy of taiko drumming in North America as an important site within Asian American cultural production can simultaneously be about the sound, the artists, the motivation, and the experiences. The combination of concert footage and video interludes in Undaunted provides viewers with one of the most complete video presentations of Asian American and Asian Canadian taiko drumming. It is a powerful extension of two earlier videos, Big Drum: Taiko in the United States, a DVD compilation of short videos from the Japan American National Museum's 2005 exhibit of the same name, and Angry Drummers, the excellent 2010 documentary by Yoshitaka Terada about Buraku drummers in Japan. The prerecorded videos in between compositions in Undaunted present detailed and moving firsthand accounts of select RAW artists, their stories, what they bring to taiko, and often why they play. The film promises to be a valuable resource for ethnomusicologists yet also of interest to interdisciplinary scholars across many fields including Asian American studies, performance studies, and American studies.

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