Kenny Endo: Finding beauty in the beat

Master taiko drumming artist Kenny Endo is agile and thin, but he has been called the "Sumo Konishiki" of taiko drumming. Like Hawaii’s famed wrestling champion, Endo is the first American, non-Japanese national honored in Japan with a master’s license and given a stage name.

Endo, 62, was honored for "hogaku hayashi," Japanese classical drumming — a pretty amazing accomplishment for a boy who grew up in Los Angeles playing bongo drums.

"Like many families, after the war, my parents lived a very American life," he said. "In elementary school I played the snare drum."

By the time he was attending junior high, Endo was playing a Western drum set, pounding out the rhythms of rock and jazz, even discovering bongos.

Endo says he wasn’t exposed to any traditional Japanese percussion until he was exposed to taiko, "but when I heard the sound of taiko, it resonated in my bones."

In his high school and college years, he found taiko teachers. "I learned by day and played drums in a jazz band at night," he said.

Finally, at age 24, he knew he had to choose a jazz path to New York or a totally unknowable taiko future — and chose taiko.

HE LEFT for Japan, where two years of study turned into 10.

Living in Los Angeles as the son of Japanese immigrants, he had heard his parents speak Japanese, but says he didn’t begin to learn much about that language until he studied drumming in Japan, between 1980 and 1990.

After that Endo came to Hawaii to earn his master’s in ethnomusicology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He loved the mix of music in the islands and stayed.

The title of his concert is "TEN TEN" — the date of the event, but more important, Endo says that "ten ten" is the sound from beating a small taiko drum.

Once you know that, he says, "you will forever hear ‘ten ten,’ over and over and over, at Chinese New Year parades and obon dances and in my classrooms."

THE SOUND of his second-largest drum may well resonate through the walls of the Hawaii Theatre on Saturday as he celebrates his 40th year of teaching. The cowhide drum-playing surface is 3 feet across.

The drum itself is carved from a 300-year-old Japanese kayaki tree. It was given to Endo by a company in Japan.

His even bigger drum, by the way, lives at the Hawai’i Convention Center. The 8-foot-long drum is too large to move without a forklift.

The concert stage will be filled with world-renowned talent performing totally unexpected music.

Not giving any secret details, Endo says the first half will include his young students performing one of his original works, dancing and drumming on hand-held fan drums.

Act two has a lineup of Japanese superstars including Hiromitsu Agatsuma on the "tsugaru shamisen," a banjolike string instrument; and Hitoshi Hamada, considered Japan’s top jazz vibraphonist.

Slack-key guitarist Jeff Peterson will include selections from Endo and Peterson’s Na Hoku Hanohano-nominated "Island Breeze" CD.

The group Rhythm Summit, including Endo, Noel Okimoto and Dean Taba, will be joined by Todd Yukumoto on saxophone and flute, and artist Yi Chieh Lai on the "zheng," or Chinese zither.

Endo’s career has included opening for the Who; playing for Bobby McFerrin, Michael Jackson, the emperor of Japan, Princess Diana and Prince Charles; and creating music for the films "Picture Bride," "Apocalypse Now" and "Avatar."

For years his Taiko Center of the Pacific studio/classroom was housed in a small former church on the Kapiolani Community College campus. Now his students, ages 2 to 82, study in the auditorium at Washington Intermediate School.

Endo’s wife and concert producer, Chizuko Endo, estimates they have reached 50,000 people in Hawaii via concerts, classes and educational workshops.

Kenny Endo has often said, "The beauty of the drum is that anyone can play, at any age." In his 40th year of teaching and performing around the world, he still believes that to be true.