I think it was 1979. We were invited to the Powell Street Festival. I’m not sure if that was the first festival they had or not. It might’ve been. But anyways, we were brought up there. Rick Shiyomi was up there at that time. Naturally, a lot of the Vancouver folks are there now. But they invited us up, and we went up there. It was like a community festival, but they had never really seen Taiko, at least the community itself. So it was great experience for us. We got to meet everyone. For them, they were really kind of excited about what we were doing as San Jose Taiko.
So after that, they decided they wanted to start Katari Taiko. They really became involved in doing that. That was really kind of great to see that kind of happen after just a short weekend experience of meeting people and sharing what we’re doing as a group and seeing other musicians in another community, especially in Vancouver, and kind of take off with it and start their own thing also.
Date: January 26, 2005
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Art Hansen, Sojin Kim
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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