Taiko drummer to take his art on tour

TOKYO -- When Eitetsu Hayashi goes on the road, he doesn't travel light.\nFirst, he has to pack three big traditional drums, each weighing about 900 pounds. Then there are another 20 smaller drums, cases, sound equipment -- two tons of stuff. At least.\n"It isn't easy," he said.\nHayashi's next stop is the United States, where he will perform in New York and California. After that, Japan's premier solo player of the taiko drum goes straight to one of Japan's oldest temples for a festival marking its 1,500th anniversary.\n"I don't have any time to rest," he said in a recent interview.\nHayashi is a groundbreaking figure in Japanese music.\nIn the 1970s he helped establish the Ondekoza ensemble, which lived in a communal style and honed their skills with an odd blend of musical and physical training -- including marathon running -- on Sado, a remote island where exiles were sent during Japan's feudal period.\nHayashi left after ten years to join the splinter Kodo drum troupe -- which today is perhaps the world's best-known taiko group and continues to hold a popular concert each year on Sado. He started his solo career in 1982. In 20 years, Hayashi has performed in 40 countries.\n"When I started out, the traditional drum was so commonplace that no one considered it as having artistic potential," he said. "It was just something to be played at festivals."\nTypically, that's where taiko drums are heard in Japan.\nBuddhist priests often use small drums to pound out a beat as they chant prayers, and drums are an important accompaniment at such events as the Buddhist Festival of the Dead, when families welcome back the spirits of their dead relatives.\n"The Japanese drum is a religious tool, not something created for entertainment," he said.\nHayashi, who's 50 but looks much younger, has taken the instrument well beyond its traditional boundaries, fusing the more conventional Japanese rhythms with jazz, rock, classical and other musical genres.\nSeen live, Hayashi's performances are a tour de force, both physically and musically.\nUnlike a musician playing a Western-style drum set, the small but muscular Hayashi plays his big drum standing up, and with the drum raised. That means he must keep his arms at about shoulder height while doing his pounding.\n"People who see me do a two-hour concert often comment on the arm strength it must take," he said. "But it actually gets at your lower back and legs as well. If I don't practice for three or four days, I feel it."\nThe full, resounding music of his drums, which look like giant wooden barrels, has also caused some problems for him when playing with orchestras.\n"It's so loud the musicians close by tend to cover their ears," Hayashi said. "I understand why, but it's still not a very good feeling."\nWith its exotic flavor, Hayashi said that in many ways he has found it easier to win over foreign listeners to his music than his fellow Japanese.\n"I always thought we would have appeal to foreign audiences," he said. "But I wasn't so sure about Japan."\nOverwhelmed by American pop culture, Japanese raised after World War II tend to have little interest in the country's folk music. Until an Education Ministry edict this year, it wasn't even taught in music classes at public schools.\n"Kids are raised on modern, American pop music," Hayashi said. "Ask a Japanese kid to sing a traditional Japanese song, and he'll be at a total loss. Obviously, there's something wrong about that"