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For more than 40 years, one local man has helped bring a unique form of Japanese drumming to Vermont. Stuart Paton grew up in Tokyo, where he fell in love with taiko.(Courtesy: Oren Pinhasi\/Community News Service)<\/p>\nThe Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost. WCAX was not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.<\/p>\n
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – For more than 40 years, one local man has helped bring a unique form of Japanese drumming to Vermont. Stuart Paton grew up in Tokyo, where he fell in love with taiko.<\/p>\n
Paton is passionate about spreading the word about taiko through teaching, performing, and making these special drums.<\/p>\n
For more than 40 years, one local man has helped bring a unique form of Japanese drumming to Vermont. Stuart Paton grew up in Tokyo, where he fell in love with taiko.(Courtesy: Oren Pinhasi\/Community News Service)<\/p>\n
Stuart Paton: I\u2019m a teaching taiko artist-in-residence. I teach taiko, Japanese drumming, in schools, universities.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m one of the co-founders of Burlington Taiko. We started in 1986 and we make our own drums. I am the chief taiko mechanic. And I really like making drums. We\u2019ve been together since 1986, so that\u2019s a 40-year taiko group. So, we have made a lot of taiko.<\/p>\n
Taiko, Japanese drumming, its history comes from different parts of the world. Taiko is a combination of movement, percussion, and voice.<\/p>\n
I grew up in Tokyo and I speak fluent Japanese and that\u2019s how taiko touched my life. I started my taiko study 42 years ago. My first year in college in Ohio, a taiko group from New York City called Soh Taiko, S-O-H Taiko, they performed. The next summer, I went and studied with their teacher, Mr. Tanaka, in San Francisco. A couple of years later, three of us started Burlington Taiko.<\/p>\n
Kyle Ikeda: My name is Kyle Ikeda, and I started playing taiko at Burlington Taiko in 2014. Burlington Taiko is a taiko center for Burlington. It\u2019s the only one in Vermont that teaches, performs and makes taiko drums.<\/p>\n
Stuart Paton: Favorite taiko memories, let\u2019s see… in Vermont, playing right after the rain at the Vermont City Marathon. We had our raincoats still on the drums. We hit the first note, boom! And all the water that was resting on the plastic bags just splashed into our face. It was kind of like a Blue Man Group performance.<\/p>\n
Taiko is auditory nutrition. And when we hit the drum, especially if the skin has been on the drum for years, it\u2019s mellow, it\u2019s deep. If someone hasn\u2019t heard it ever or they haven\u2019t heard it in a long time, it\u2019s nutrition.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s always people who haven\u2019t seen taiko and there are always people who haven\u2019t tried taiko. I\u2019m around for the rest of my life, and come visit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[938,20011,1379,20013,20009,20008,20007,8,17,68,2841,20017,173,20014,7123,20012,20010,20016,20015],"class_list":["post-25284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-arts","tag-burlington","tag-city","tag-community","tag-drum","tag-drummers","tag-drumming","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-marathon","tag-music","tag-musician","tag-news","tag-service","tag-taiko","tag-uvm","tag-vermont","tag-vt","tag-wcax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}