Big Beat

On Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, a dozen or so parents from as far away as Cerritos and Simi Valley drop their children off at the Zenshuji Soto Mission on Hewitt Street in Little Tokyo for taiko practice. The children are met by Hiroko Seki and her 25-year-old daughter, Vivian, who unlock the storage room in the temple’s basement where the drums are kept. It’s a ritual that’s been taking place for the past 12 years, when the Zendeko drumming troupe began. The members, who range in age from 13 to 25, learn to perform--and along the way learn discipline and concentration.

Vivian Seki leads the practice, assigning each player a drum: the tambourine-shaped shime, the mid-sized chudaiko, the marching-type okedo, or the 500-pound, 3-foot-in-diameter odaiko. They practice three hours, always preparing for their next performance: at the Beverly Hills Arts Festival, for the Nisei Week parade. Played in unison, the drums resonate within the listener like a second heartbeat. When the troupe played at the opening of the Getty Center, much of Brentwood heard them.

“We often get asked to perform when the city wants to welcome somebody,” Hiroko Seki says.

Seki was born in a prefecture near Kyoto, where there was a lot of taiko, “but only for boys,” she recalls. “Girls couldn’t get near taiko. When my brothers played, I wanted to play so badly.”

It was watching the renowned Ondekoza troupe on one of its visits to L.A. that made Seki appreciate the power of taiko. “That’s when we realized what taiko could really be,” she say.

Six years ago, Seki took her Zendeko troupe to Japan for the first time. “We got a huge reaction from the Japanese people. ‘They’re from America and play taiko! Better than our own groups!’ We had three days, full houses.” (They’ll return in August for an international festival.) Siegfried & Roy, for their part, have recorded Zendeko to use as background music for their Las Vegas show.

When Vivian Seki’s boyfriend, James Ng, saw her perform with Zendeko, there were several adult taiko groups on the bill. “The other performers looked at the Zendeko kids and thought, ‘They’re going to ruin the day.’ But once they got onstage and performed, everybody’s mouths dropped. People told them they had the best timing and performance.”

“It was,” Ng allows, “amazing.”