Finding stories in performance

So often we tell people what we mean when we would be better served to show them. This example is not a story per se, but an example that would make a great story. It is based on a performance I attended last week. And it a dynamic example of continuous-improvement in action. To see what I mean, check out San Jose Taiko.

Growth so often requires increasing the quality of what you do (otherwise, you grow your capacity to waste resources while you grow your capacity to produce goods & services), so part of our business is assisting companies with quality initiatives. While this may sound simple, getting people to really accept the concept of continuous improvement and apply it to their work lives has proven to be a formidable challenge.

San Jose Taiko grew out of the Japanese tradition of drumming in time of war and festival. Taiko remains a popular format in Japan, where local festivals and civic gatherings often include Taiko performances. San Jose Taiko hails from the Japantown section of San Jose, CA. All its members were born in the US. They have been performing outside of their Buddhist temple for at least a dozen years, and have been playing as a group for 34 years.

Saturday’s Taiko at COCA in University City, MO, was as much performance as demonstration. Between routines, the musicians explained that each time they approach the drums, they do so with the attitude that something can be improved. While San Jose Taiko says that they continue to improve, it was not evident to me that anything needed improvement. In an hour-long performance resembling a synchronized martial arts demonstration as much as music, I did not discern so much as a missed beat.
That “attitude” of continuous improvement is the first of Taiko’s four principles, as the group members explained.

Second is “key” or energy, which is the life-force and enthusiasm that is so evident in their performance. While pounding the drums, the performers share encouragement with one another, with loud, guttural monosyllabic outbursts that would seem menacing if not belayed by their beaming smiles back and forth. “We pass energy among us, and to the audience. And the audience passes it back to us,” one musician said.

In each performance piece, six or more performers stood behind or near their drum in a specific pose, or kata, which resembles a martial arts pose. Katas, which translates as Form, is the third of Taiko’s four principles. As in many martial arts traditions, there are no written instructions, but a vocabulary of movements which is passed down from teacher to student. In Taiko, the student learns the kata vocabulary one pose at a time. The kata vocabulary also includes various grips of the drum sticks, or bacci, as well as drum-striking techniques. Over time, students assemble the vocabulary into routines or full katas just as a martial arts student assembles jumps, kicks, punches blocks and grabs until the individual movements coalesce into a recognizable routine.

Taiko is just as acrobatic as martial arts. Players jumped and spun from drum to drum, swinging and striking at drums with large baccis that could have easily caused injury if intercepted by a fellow player’s elbow.

Taiko’s fourth principle is musical technique. This concept is perhaps most familiar to us in the Western mindset, and most often the subject of training and improvement initiatives. But in Eastern traditions, it is the last of four improvement principles. The drummers’ performance was rich with call-and-response, syncopation, timing changes and intricate drumming routines. Their performance often reminded me of kind of precision and virtuosity that I have seen in a big university marching bands and drum lines.

Watching the performance it occurred to me that Taiko could serve as an apt case study in team-based continuous improvement, or Kaisen. The highly coordinated movements and percussion performance would be a dynamic example of team performance improvement in action, literally. Video segments of their performance and practices may demonstrate kaisen techniques. Right now this is just an idea. But look for Taiko in a future BentonsEdge quality training video.