Shimabayashi
Helping People Get Started with Taiko
Kagemusha Taiko was founded with the mission to help people get started with taiko. This was at a time before taiko groups had websites, before YouTube, before Facebook, and certainly before TikTok! How were knowledge and skills to be shared and passed on?
There’s only so much teaching that one person can do, so sharing by VHS tape quickly followed. Then there were DVDs and booklets, then complete books, and then online video. All shared freely, without restriction – people needed something (anything!) to play.
So it was that Shimabayashi was shared all around the world. And today it’s still played pretty much the world over.
Here’s the story of Shimabayashi, told via performances through the ages…
Learning Shimabayashi
This video is from the 2001 VHS video production: Introduction to Taiko, Volume 1. It includes step-by-step instructions on how to play the main theme of Shimabayashi, taught by Jonathan Kirby and demonstrated (from two different angles) by two young members of Kagemusha Junior Taiko Group.
In order to give beginner groups something to play, particularly school groups in the UK, this composition was/is freely available to all, with a request only for accreditation when used.
This training video is clearly popular, because it has been viewed more than 6,000 times, inc a prior upload on YouTube.
Shimabayashi (2006)
2nd UK Taiko Festival took place in Exeter in July 2006. The Festival included two National Youth Taiko Concerts, featuring groups from all over England – and Scotland. The finale of both the matinee and evening concerts was an arrangement of Shimabayashi, with a base provided by Kagemusha Junior Taiko and representatives from all the other groups involved joining in. By the end of the evening concert, the finale of which is presented here, the whole audience was joining in with the song as well. Taiko is great to play, and it’s even better to play together.
Shimabayashi (2011)
With its popularity among young people in the UK now well-established, a company called “Drums for Schools” commissioned Jonathan Kirby to produce a book as part of their series on world percussion, which already included samba, djembe, and gamelan. The format for the series was fixed: 10 lessons and then a performance. Shimabayashi was ideally suited to this, and four of the newest recruits to Kagemusha Junior Taiko, with the blessing of their parents, were more than willing to take part.
Shimabayashi (2014)
Furthering the idea of playing taiko together to build community, at 10th UK Taiko Festival, we organised a special Sunday lunchtime performance of Shimabayashi, played by no fewer than 133 taiko drummers. They came from the UK, France, Germany, Japan, and USA – and there may even have been other countries represented somewhere in the crowd.
It had rained earlier in the morning, and just 5 miles away there was a torrential downpour at the time we were playing. Somehow, the sun managed to shine on us.
Shimabayashi (2016)
Shimabayashi has been taught in many schools all over the UK. Besides featuring in Introduction to Taiko, Vol 1, it was the featured composition in the Drums for Schools publication, Jonathan Kirby’s Taiko Drumming Book, which has been bought by over 100 teachers in the UK alone.
In 2016, Kagemusha Taiko were invited to perform some special concerts at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe, for schoolchildren from North Devon. The group performed Shimabayashi and many of the children joined in.
Some historical notes follow the initial video.