Percussion instruments can instill a strong and special feeling in an audience even if played with little preparation. Because they have this special characteristic, they are often used to dispel evil spirits. Indeed, the evening drums and morning bells of Buddhist temples and the ding-dongs of church bells have the power to rouse people from deep sleep with their pure and unsophisticated sounds.

The awesome ceremonial inferences of percussion are now being put to use by performers. From traditional drumming a new path is being charted. The most famous troupe in this area is Japan's Ondekoza, and now Taiwan has its own version.

U Theater's Sacred Drummer is a different kind of percussion show than is common in Taiwan. For the performance, the drums are lined up in a row. The six to eight solemn-faced drummers involve their entire bodies in the drumming process, giving the sounds a grand and ceremonious air. These performances are often held outdoors, to attract crowds at a store's grand opening gala or at a realtor's new property sales event.

The moment these drums start, the murmur of the surrounding crowd dies down as they are awestruck by the sounds emanating from the drums. A recent tour of Taiwan took the performance on a 600 kilometer journey from Pingtung in the south to Taipei in the north. The troupe traveled by day and at night played at temples with religious and folk performance troupes.

Ondekoza awakens the heart

Many people who have seen a Sacred Drummer performance, while being moved, also detect a strong Ondekoza influence which detracts from the group's originality. Troupe leader Huang Chi-wen says very openly that he has seen Ondekoza performing and was struck by the immense power which the performers drew from their instruments. This experience exposed him to a new concept of drumming. Perhaps, he concedes, the concepts behind the two types of music are similar, but the troupes come from two different schools of percussion studies.

In Japanese, the word Taiko means "great drum." This word forms part of the troupe's Japanese name. Taiko drums are used in ceremonies intended to ward off natural disasters, disease, and evil spirits, as well as more tangibly in war and as fire alarms. Harking back to one's cultural roots was all the rage in 1960s Japan. Many Tokyoites got their cultural fix by visiting Japan's Sado Island, known for its living folk culture. Some learned the local traditional percussive arts. With an abandoned schoolhouse as their base, they embarked on a program of patient training and rigorous exercise including a daily run of 5,000 meters. The students learned that while drumming, every bodily action-from breathing to using arm muscles-had to be done in a particular way. And that's how the Ondekoza, which is also known as the Divine Children of the Drum, became famous around the world.

Lin Yu-ping went the island to observe the troupe. Liu says that upon striking the drum, the whole wooden classroom resonated as if the room itself had been struck. The resultant sound, he recounts, cannot be described as music, nor as rhythm, but rather as a direct assault upon one's body, which "awakens your entire being." The visitor is quite shaken by the experience.

International acclaim for Ondekoza has subsequently sparked interest in Taiko drums from other parts of Japan. Currently, the Taiko Drum Alliance boasts more than 5,000 member groups that practice regularly and go on tour during festivals, bringing added color to the communities they visit.

Semblance of a mother's heartbeat

Sacred Drummer's origins are rooted in the Lion Drum of mainland China. Huang, a Malaysian overseas Chinese, began martial arts studies at the age of twelve in an academy which also taught lion dancing. During New Year's celebrations, the lion dances would be brought out for their agile displays. The young Huang watched and heard the dancers drilling every day, and so soon knew the performance by heart.

When Huang came to Taiwan to study, he joined the local Cloud Gate Dance Theater, and then began teaching the lion drum at the U Theater. It was while discussing drums with U Theater leader Liu Ching-mei that the two discovered they had a common interest in Ondekoza and in finding their inner selves through drums.

Not long afterwards, Huang went to India and met a monk, who said something that made him wonder who he really was, so he began meditating under a tree. While meditating, Huang came to believe that man invented drums in an effort to recreate the sound of a mother's heartbeat. Six months later, he rejoined the U Theater and officially began training for Sacred Drummer.

Bearing flowers and daggers

"Drumming is like holding flowers in one hand-the power of tranquillity, and holding a dagger in the other-to fell monsters, overcome tigers, and rid one's mind of thought," Huang describes. He asserts that performing is not one of the factors which draws him to the art so much as sharing his gift with other people. Audience members have told him of losing all thought while listening to his performance, and reverting to immediate sensory perception only.

However, if stress is placed on communication at the spiritual level, is percussive agility really relevant? Or is skill a prerequisite for reaching that plane? Folk music scholar Lin Ku-fang believes that Sacred Drummer uses both spiritual energy and physical surroundings to create this atmosphere. But the drumming technique isn't extraordinary.

In response to this sort of comment, Huang agrees that "people are not born with an innate ability to play the drums. Beginners in our troupe cannot initially even hold the drumsticks properly." However, though players may become quite nimble with the stick, Huang believes agility plays a small part; the emphasis is on the spiritual more than the physical.

To take part in Sacred Drummer, new performers must sign a three-and-a-half year contract, with minimal salary. The daily routine begins at 7:00 am at the troupe's mountain facilities at Laochuan in Mucha, just outside Taipei. First, they water the flowers, practice sacred dances, and study taichi. At 11:30, drum and gong training begins. Drum lessons resume in the afternoon until it is time for gardening at 4:30, an activity which has the added benefit of preparing the troupe members for one of their new performances entitled "Gardening". The routine keeps the musicians in close touch with nature, including the sounds of insects and birds, which are absorbed by the musicians and whose influence can be detected in their subsequent drum music-"the epitome of comfort," explains the contented Mr. Wen.

Ah, to never stop

For Sacred Drummer, a new piece is being developed called "The Sound of the Tides," which incorporates metal percussion instruments, including various sizes of gongs. "One time in a Korean Buddhist temple," recounts Huang, "I heard the monks ringing bells, and could feel a great power welling up inside me and my heart opening."

He feels drums both shake the very souls of men and have the function of a powerful tranquilizer "much like the power of hypnosis." For example, when playing the drums, children within earshot play for awhile and then take a nap. Bells and other metal instruments stimulate the ear much more easily. Indeed, their ability to assault the senses make them ideal for waking people from their rest.

The troupe repertoire currently consists of only a few pieces, but Huang believes that those few constitute a lot of territory to be delved into and explored. "Playing a single piece twenty times gets it into my blood, while playing a piece one hundred times brings it into my heart, but no two interpretations are ever the same for me emotionally." This perhaps resembles the Chinese mentality, which believes the pursuit of a goal is never a straightforward process. "Even the simplest of Taichi movements can take a lifetime to master, and the process of reading a single book can take a lifetime to conclude," notes Huang with a smile.

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According to U Theater, "Sacred Drummer" is not so much a performance as an attempt, through drumming, to reach inside oneself and find one's roots.