TORONTO TAIKO FESTIVAL PRESENTS
Lineage: a tender sound​​
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Doors at 7:30pm | Show at 8pm
Betty Oliphant Theatre (404 Jarvis St.)
Sliding Scale Tickets from $20-$50
From the first breath and the first beat, we invite you on a journey of diasporic lineage — a story of communities made over time through the sound of taiko.
Honoured as the living ancestors of Canadian kumi-daiko (ensemble taiko drumming), San Jose Taiko (est. 1973, San Jose, CA) is taking the stage of the Betty Oliphant Theatre in Toronto, ON, as the last stop of their 2025 Rhythm Journey Tour.
Take in the levity and wisdom of San Jose Taiko’s ensemble style, as they are joined for one evening by RAW Taiko (est. 1998, Toronto, ON) and Ame no Ato (est. 2022, Montreal, QC), two groups whose lineages trace back to the day it all began…
In 1979, in Vancouver, BC, at the third annual Powell Street Festival, San Jose Taiko played in Oppenheimer Park. This performance inspired the creation of the very first Canadian taiko groups, which have since grown, reaching across multiple provinces, into the Canadian taiko scene that exists today. A player from the early founding days of Canadian taiko remembers:
“With their first beat, their first kiai, the San Jose Taiko Group showed us a way. I was going to say a way forward, but it was not that. It was simply a way. A way to look both forward and backward at the same time. A way to look both inward and outward.”
From this way that was opened, has come the preservation of traditions, the creation of new ones, and the kind of invention that is only possible in the complexity that is diaspora: always here and there, coming and going, in grief and in joy, in solitude and in community. A tender path, we sound together.
This event is produced by Toronto Taiko Festival and RAW Taiko, and generously funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and Toronto Arts Council.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
San Jose Taiko
SAN JOSE TAIKO (SJT) has captivated global audiences with the powerful, spellbinding, and propulsive sounds of taiko, the Japanese drum. Founded in 1973 by young Asian Americans searching for a way to convey their experiences as third generation Japanese Americans, or Sansei, company performers express the beauty and harmony of the human spirit through the voice of the taiko as they strive to connect people through cultural understanding, creative expression, and rhythmic heartbeat.
SJT approaches taiko as a path to social action, community development, and Asian-American identity. This includes collaborations that highlight the work of peer communities of color, and adapting education programs to eliminate racial, social, and ability-based barriers to participation. As a contemporary taiko ensemble, we take equal inspiration from the Japanese roots of taiko and other global music and movement influences, reaching 50,000+ audiences and students each year. www.taiko.org
RAW Taiko
RAW TAIKO, founded in 1998 as Raging Asian Women Taiko Drummers, is a Toronto-based organisation made up of East and Southeast Asian women and gender non-conforming drummers. They carry on the diasporic taiko tradition that grew out of Asian American and Asian Canadian participation in racial and gender justice movements of the 60s and 70. One of the few taiko groups of its kind in the world, RAW Taiko exists as a critical response and challenge to systemic and internalised oppressions. RAW Taiko plays large drums as creative resistance for social change, carving space for self-expression, education and community building.
Ame No Ato
AME NO ATO is a Montreal-based taiko duo born from the pandemic in a time which offered many opportunities for reflection and a chance to see things anew. They strive to present various styles of taiko: building from traditional festival forms as well as weaving in modern aesthetics from North American innovations and contributions to the art form. Their approach places a strong emphasis on fundamentals that is further supported by the study of the associated traditions. They aspire to share and inspire audiences through their energy and performance as they continue to develop their voice as a duo.