Composing Sound Identity in Taiko Drumming

Abstract

Although sociocultural theories emphasize the mutually constitutive nature of persons, activity, and environment, little attention has been paid to environmental features organized across sensory dimensions. I examine sound as a dimension of learning and practice, an organizing presence that connects the sonic with the social. This ethnographic study of taiko drumming underscores an acoustemological sense of knowing that configures the practice and performance of taiko as an Asian American soundscape of (re)composed cultural identity. [music, Japanese American, Asian American, identity, race]

Recovering Heritage and Homeland: Ethnic Revival Among Fourth‐Generation Japanese Americans

“…A number of Japanese American yonsei are increasingly becoming involved in taiko, or traditional Japanese drumming. The number of taiko ensembles has increased exponentially in the Japanese American community, and they have become an effective way for yonsei youth to experience their ethnic heritage and ancestry in an authentic manner (see Ahlgren ; Powell ).…”

Sonic Cartography: Mapping Space, Place, Race, and Identity in an Urban Middle School

“…In light of scholarship at the intersection of educational contexts, sound, and the sensual (e.g., Erickson, 1982Erickson, , 2003Gershon, 2006Gershon, , 2011bPowell, 2006Powell, , 2012, this article takes for granted the following assumptions about sound: (a) sounds can utilized to examine educational contexts; (b) sounds can form educational systems of meaning; (c) sounds can denote and connote spaces, places, and identities; and (d) that such scholarship focused on sounds can be understood as part of a now longstanding tradition of interpretive research in and out of education (cf. Samuels, Meintjes, Ochoa & Porcello, 2010;Sterne, 2012).…”