Hope through swing and taiko

Ahead to this MAA weekend, audiences can experience something truly unique on stage in St. Paul. Swing dance, taiko drums, and jazz music. Oh my. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. Shane Wells joining us to explain how those elements all come together to tell a pretty important story. Good morning, Shane. Absolutely. Good morning. And as you maybe heard earlier, the drums are not quiet. So we're going to hold off on starting the drums for a minute so we can learn a little bit more about them. We have Jen Weir with Taiko Arts Midwest, who has teamed up with San Jose Taiko and Theater Mu to put on this production. Thank you for having us bright and early this morning. I'm sure the folks in the building are like, why are they drumming at 6 a.m.? But we're doing it. Can you just kind of show us the parts of the drum and explain how it works? Yeah, so this drum is actually made out of a wine barrel. And in Japan, traditionally, drums would be made out of one piece of wood. But this version was innovated by the folks in California, and it has helped make Taiko more accessible. so this is you can kind of see a little bit of the staves from the wine barrel there this is cowhide stretched over the top and these are imported steel tacks from Japan and watching you play it's not a motion that stays kind of right in here it is a full body workout so you stretch your arms up so you can get the energy from the heavens you get low in your stance so you can grab the energy from the earth and then you send all of that in from your center into the drum which amplifies it back at you and then you kind of gain this cycle of generative energy you can feel it oh great good great good she says you guys are doing your job thank you so much and we're gonna let you guys show us a little bit of the performance of Swing Posium while we chat with the creator Franco Imperial San Jose Taiko thank you for being here as well okay take us back to what inspired you to start and create this show yeah you know as in 2016 this idea of joy and energy that Jen's talking about how do we apply it to a way to celebrate our community of Japantown in San Jose as San Jose Taiko where we feel we're cultural ambassadors of that community and its history and how do we celebrate history of this community in a joyful way in a way that makes history sticky because this history of Japanese American incarceration during World War it's it's something that generation is passing away how do we become torch bearers for this history and this community and we feel like joy is the answer i just it wasn't a story that i knew about i'm sure that i'm not the only one it is a hidden history yeah and in 1998 when i first joined San Jose Taiko we were doing a collaboration that included this gentleman George Yoshida who wrote this book Reminiscing in Swing Time about the swing bands and all the camps and so that became sort of a great reference and it introduced us opened the door to introducing us to a lot of people of research for the show and when it comes to taking the show on the road we were just talking about these drums they're big they're not easy to travel it was important to combine with Taiko Arts Midwest to have some of the performers the equipment yes this year we just toured it in Hawaii in three islands and we uh just started this new thing where we bring in taiko players from the local community that wasn't the original format and we think being able to collaborate with west and local taiko groups wherever we take it is just something we're going to keep from now on because obviously they're amazing and they bring so much to uh to the production yes definitely thank you the formula works i'll tell you that if you want to see the show it is happening the 16th through the 18th it's at CSPS Hall in St Paul. And again, this is a combination of Theater Moo, San Jose Taiko, and Taiko Arts Midwest. If you want tickets, theatermoo.org is the place. Back to you guys.