St. Louis Osuwa Taiko Drummers to Perform at Centene Center

The incredibly complex stylings of Japanese percussion will fill Farmington’s Centene Center on Saturday, Feb. 7.
 
St. Louis Osuwa Taiko Drummers will perform at 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Centene Center in Farmington. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students and available at Farmington’s Civic Center, 2 Black Knight Dr., (573) 756-0900. The performance is presented by Mineral Area Council on the Arts and sponsored by 573 Magazine.

According to Danielle Basler, arts council director, St. Louis Osuwa Taiko plays about 50 shows each year, mostly in the Midwest.

“Watching this group’s videos on YouTube doesn’t do it as much justice as seeing them in person,” she said. “The sound and rhythm are things you can feel during a live performance. The council members and I thought this performance would be especially appealing to younger and older amateur musicians, because while one might see these percussive instruments as the same or similar to Western percussion, there are different styles and sounds associated with Japanese percussion.”
 
The taiko (a barrel-shaped drum) group is based in St. Louis. St. Louis’s sister city in Japan is Suwa, where Grandmaster Daihachi Oguchi formed the original Osuwa Daiko in 1951. Upon Oguchi’s visit to St. Louis in 1986, he founded the St. Louis Osuwa Taiko, donating drums a year later. What started out being a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching children taiko, has evolved to a non-profit performance organization dedicated to workshops, classes and performances for all ages.
 
The group will also offer an opportunity for the local audience to experience playing the Taiko drums in a series of workshops after the show. The performers will provide brief instruction and then participants will be allowed to play the drums. Four 15-minute workshops are planned, each open to 10 individuals. The cost of the workshop is $5 and reservations can be made by calling the MACOA office.
 
For more information about this performance, including discounted pricing for groups of 10 or more, or to reserve a spot in the workshop, contact Basler at (573) 518-2125 or dbasler@MineralArea.edu. St. Louis Osuwa Taiko’s videos may be found on YouTube.
 
Financial assistance for this program is provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.