Bon

This evening was the annual Bon celebration at the Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens, which are about 45 minutes North of where I live, up in Delray Beach in Palm Beach County.

Bon at Morikami

For those of you who don't know, Bon is the traditional Japanese summer celebration to honor and remember the ancestors and those who have gone before us. Even if you don't personally believe that the dead somehow actually come back to visit us--which is the traditional basis for Bon in Japan--or even if you've been lucky so far not to have lost any friends, classmates, family, coworkers or even just casual acquaintances to death, I think it's a nice idea to somehow remember and celebrate those who have been lost from your life, even if they're just people you've lost track of over time. They don't have to be family or friends, either--just someone who made even the slightest positive impact or memories in your life who is no longer in your life for whatever reason. (Besides the family members my family have lost, I remembered some classmates from high school and college who haven't been part of my life for decades but whom I still remember with great fondness.)

I have to admit, though, my primary reason for going to Bon is that the Fusho Daiko taiko group was performing. I love Fusho Daiko, although I hadn't heard them for a while (the last time was over a year ago, I think). I haven't heard that many taiko groups since I moved here to S Florida 8 years ago, but before that I heard several at events in Portland and Seattle (each of which had at least one taiko group) and several times throughout the years at the NW Folklife Festival in Seattle over Memorial Day weekends. Fusho Daiko is one of the best I've ever seen/heard.

The routines FD perform are excellent for several reasons. They are just some very good pieces of music (I know that a lot of people will say that taiko is boring musically because it's all drums and percussion; each drum, however, is capable of being played to produce several different tones of different pitches and timbres; tones in different pitches and timbres combined in different arrangements make melodies). ("It has a great beat and you can dance to it.") They also use a whole bunch of different physical arrangements of drums of different sizes including the really big ones (I was once told that the largest drums were once used to actually delineate the size of villages--you were still in the bounds of the village if you could still hear the big drum). And all of the performances and performers are quite dramatic, with huge arm movements--they really put their whole bodies into their playing.

FD also used several different lineups, including their basic students, their advanced students, and the advanced performers. I like that, too.

I will also admit that all the performers are in very good physical shape, and that most of the guys seem to be handsome and good looking--if you're into handsome, good looking guys. Me, I thought all the ladies in all the FD lineups this evening were all very attractive--every one of them. And those ladies can DRUM as well and hard as the guys, including on the biggest of the drums, and still look attractive and sexy, too.

Next Friday is "Sushi & stroll" at the Morikami, with performances by S Florida's other taiko group, "Ronin Taiko", which includes some members of FD as well. I'll be there.....