Central Valley Students Find Connection and Belonging Through Japanese Drumming

The tiny Central Valley farming community of Ballico in Merced County sits in the middle of acres of almond orchards. Other than farmland, there’s not a whole lot to see: a park, a small Veterans Memorial Building and a mini-mart called Mom and Pops. But head down the street to Ballico Elementary School and you’ll find there’s plenty to hear.

In the school’s auditorium, which also functions as a gym and a cafeteria, kids practice Taiko — a traditional style of Japanese drumming — year-round. They perform year-round, too, at festivals, schools and just about anywhere they get asked to exhibit their drumming skills.

On this day last spring, about 20 students played for their peers. The drummers jumped up and down as they beat their sticks on handmade Taiko drums. They lifted their sticks high in the air and then hit them hard on the drum heads. They stepped to the left and then to the right.

“Yassei Yassei” they yelled out — words meant to encourage each other.

“With Taiko, I kind of came out of my shell,” says sixth-grader Edward Souza, who credits Taiko with giving him a sense of belonging. “I got new friends. I actually got more comfortable with performing.”

Eighth-grader Lily Kubo noted how physical the art form is.

“One thing is that my forearms have about doubled in size since I began, which is always good,” Lily says, “because now I can help my parents bring in the groceries with, like, no problem.”

Lily’s family has attended “Ballico school,” as it’s lovingly called since it first opened a century ago. Back then, many of the students were Japanese Americans whose parents grew crops like peaches, grapes and strawberries. Today, the students at this small rural school come from many backgrounds.

Christine Kubo — who is a distant relative of Lily’s — started the Taiko program 16 years ago when she was a teacher at the school. One of her goals is to give kids from different backgrounds an opportunity to work and play together as a community. Another is to give them context about the agricultural region where they live.

“It’s a way of having students be able to express themselves and to do that collaboratively and maybe on the side, they can pick up a little Japanese American culture,” she says.

Kubo grew up near a U.S. Navy base in post-World War II Japan. Her mom is Japanese and her dad was Japanese American.

“You know, we saw festivals in Japan all the time, and so the people who were in these parades, playing in the festivals, people who were playing on drums were always men,” she says.

When she came to the U.S. for college, she was excited to see women playing Taiko. Eventually, she joined a Taiko group at her Buddhist temple in Stockton. She taught three of her own five children to play, and then other kids at Ballico school begged her to teach them. So she did.

“I really enjoy it when we get to travel around and teach people about Taiko and Japanese American history,” Lily says. “For me, it means connecting with my family and my heritage as well as, like, getting friends involved into it.”

Lily’s great-grandfather owned a farm that was part of a nearby Japanese American farming community. During World War II, the family was forced to go first to the Merced Assembly Center and then to the Amache Incarceration Camp near Granada, Colorado. They were there for three years before they could return home.

After the war, the Japanese American farmers near Ballico remained close-knit and gathered for celebrations like Obon to honor their ancestors. That tradition continues today for Ballico Taiko: the kids play at Obon festivals in the summertime.

Dan Kubo, Christine’s husband, has made some of the drums the students use. He learned from the first professional Taiko drummaker in the U.S., Mark Miyoshi.

“The secret to North American Taiko drums is the fact that we can use wine barrels and rawhide, relatively common materials to build these drums,” says Dan, who grew up here on a farm after World War II. His family had also been sent to Amache.

Dan has also made dozens of practice drums for the group. The practice drums are made from thick industrial cardboard tubes. The heads are made from packing tape placed in a radial design.

Whether the kids are playing on practice drums or wine barrels, they say they feel a powerful connection.

“Once you start playing Taiko, you kind of absorb it,” Edward Souza says. “You get absorbed into the song.”