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Several students present at this meeting decided to join Den on his venture, and the group settled on Sado to begin training. However, Ondekoza developed in a manner different from preceding groups like Ōsuwa Daiko and Sukeroku Taiko: while those groups drew largely from the festival (and theatrical) styles of their immediate region, Ondekoza members set out to create a pan-Japanese style of performance. Artists from across Japan were invited to Sado to teach music, dance, and other assorted arts; the music learned by Ondekoza members included not just drumming, but assorted melodic instruments as well, and both folk and classical styles. Members then took these arts and arranged them for stage performance to be presented in concert venues around the world.
One such regional drumming style that was arranged in this fashion was Chichibu yatai-bayashi, festival music from the town of Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture (northwest of Tokyo). Originally music played on fue, atarigane, and a single nagadō-daiko in a small room on a large float that accompanied mikoshi on their processions. Ondekoza members expanded the instrumentation to feature multiple drums, arranging them on stage and adapted performance techniques in such a manner that emphasized the physicality of the drumming—and indeed, the drumming itself—and put to the background the fue melodies. Additionally, as the members had trouble with some elements of the drumming (owing partially to the fact that most Ondekoza members had no prior musical experience), they altered the rhythmic feel of the piece to make it easier to grasp. Further, the original Chichibu yatai-bayashi music is quasi-improvised; it is up to the performer to draw from a group of different rhythms and use them as they wish. Ondekoza members, however, took these quasi-improvised patterns and arranged them in a pre-determined order, creating a quasi-arrangement called “Yatai-bayashi” (Video 6). This arrangement was connected to the original festival music from Chichibu through performance practice and the basic rhythmic patterns, but it had a different feel and a different presentation style that marked it as a unique creation of Ondekoza.
Ondekoza members did not only arrange regional performance styles for the stage, as was the case with “Yatai-bayashi,” but they also developed original works and techniques for use in concerts. This process included the development by member Hayashi Eitetsu of an original performance technique for ō-daiko—requested by Den after the group received a gift of a drum several feet in diameter—in which the drummer faces the drum (traditionally, a drummer would stand parallel to an ō-daiko and hit by moving the arms across the body) (Figure 9). This new style of ō-daiko performance, exemplified in an extended improvised called simply “Ō-daiko,” would have a major impact on the growth of contemporary taiko performance, causing emerging and existing groups to add the performance style to their repertoire; for example, Ōedo Sukeroku Taiko members wrote a piece entitled “Edo no kaze” (“Wind of Edo”) that featured extended improvisations on a larger ō-daiko played using the techniques developed by Ondekoza members.
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