 Hi, welcome to Think Tech. We are raising public awareness about technology, energy, diversity, and globalism. This show is Center Stage. I'm your host, Donna Blanchard, proud managing director of Kumakuhua Theater. And we are coming to you live from Pioneer Plaza in the heart of downtown Honolulu. And I want to let you know just in case you are watching live, the show you just saw was not live. This is, it's October 5th. We are now here live. And if you're watching this later on YouTube, then I've confused you, and I'm sorry. My guest today is an incredible woman. I'm really anxious to introduce you to her. Her name is Yiman Mui, and she is a taiko drummer, performer, and teacher. And she has a very interesting philosophy about music and drumming. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Yiman Mui. And you'd prefer that I call you Man Man? Yes, correct. Yeah, my name is Man Man, and yes. So you are, if someone says, picture in your mind a taiko drummer, I don't picture you. I don't blame you. I will from now on. But that was not the first image that would pop into my head. When did you start drumming? I started in 2010 in Hong Kong. I started in an all-female taiko drumming group in Hong Kong, and we were kind of the only one group in Hong Kong. Oh, the only female taiko group? Only taiko group, or at the time we were the only group that focused on taiko drumming and also all-female music group in Hong Kong. Oh, wow. And were you drawn to that, had you already been drumming before you joined the group? No, I grew up playing a lot of music instruments. I learned piano. I used to play in the Chinese Orchestra. I sang in a choir. I actually studied music in college, and also I got a master degree in musicology. And I played gamelan in Bali. But taiko drumming was, that was the first time, six years ago. That's how I started. Oh, wow. Okay, now I didn't mean to do it this way, but I'm kind of wondering if you were very young when you started that. Well, I am 31 right now. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah, so a lot of people think I'm still a teenager because I'm small. So I actually started when I was 25, after I finished my master degree. And I actually used to work in the film industry doing sound editing for a couple months. So when I started playing taiko, my life just changed all of a sudden because I never thought I would become a performer or a musician. Even I was surrounded by music all my life. Even I get to learn a lot of musical instruments, but my experience that I never thought, like I never had the confidence to become a performer or to focus on music. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then you must have just taken to it like a duck to water. Yeah, it's a very empowering moment for me when I start playing taiko. Because I think a lot of time we are used to the classical music tradition where we were taught to read music and or rejoin competitions or in Hong Kong. There's a lot of examinations and that's how children grow up in that environment. Thinking music is only for the talented or you have to work very hard on your own to become a musician. First, you need to talent and you need to work very hard. I worked hard, maybe not that much, but I was told that I have a little talent. But when I told my piano teachers, I want to study music because I think music is everywhere in the world. I'm sure that's something important about it. But I worked a couple of times. I don't think you can become a performer. I don't see you could become a performer. But when I start playing taiko because I also love dancing. I love music. And taiko just gives me the opportunity to do both. And also when we learn taiko, we actually use our voice. We sing and we use movement. So it's a combination of using your mind and body and spirit to learn and to play. So that's why right away I just fell in love. And I think this is it. And so six years ago when I started, so I decided to give it a try. And that's also how I became a music teacher because I want to have a more flexible schedule to practice taiko and to focus on performing taiko. And so that's how it all started. Wow. And I apologize if you heard some sounds or if you heard some sounds while she was talking. They've had fire alarms going off in the building. We're okay. Just ignore them. You did a great job just running right through that. You are a performer. People are running through that. So you immediately felt, yeah, this was a marriage of everything that you loved. And I haven't been exposed to taiko drumming a lot. I've seen it on TV a few times. And I went to the concert at the university here. The dance. It was dance and taiko. I was in it. You were in it. Yes. That was my first big project since I moved here from Hong Kong. Oh, it was fabulous. You were amazing. Thank you. Yeah, it was great. It was a really awesome show. And it is just so stirring. You know, there's something about the drumming that rattles your sternum, you know, and the visual. That's something that, you know, clearly you have an ear. You are drawn to the sound of it. And you were working in sound editing. That's a big part of your life. But when you add the visual to it, it's just... It's important for... You're right. There is music everywhere. I absolutely agree that I don't know how to put into words the definition of why that is important to us, but it just is in our lives. And then when you can, can you express yourself along with it? That's such a healthy thing to do. Right. So now you teach. Tell us a little bit about your school. So I work at Taiko Center of the Pacific here in Honolulu. So when I moved here in 2012, I came here under a fellowship program offered by the Taiko Center of the Pacific. And the main part of it is to study with Taiko Master Kenny Endo. And so since I came here... Well, before I came here, I worked a couple years in teaching the parent-child music playgroup in Hong Kong. And so when I came here, my other teacher, Chizuko Endo, she told me a lot of people asked her, like, can you teach three-year-old? Like, my children want to start learning. Like, can you teach a two-year-old or a three-year-old? But a lot of times they're like, oh, they're too young. Like, I don't know... They don't know how to do that. So Chizuko Sensei told me, why don't you try? You have experience. Why don't you try doing it? So that's how I started combining the music playgroup but just turned all the instruments into Taiko drums. And I was actually... So when I started playing Taiko, when I started teaching at Early Childhood Music Playgroup in Hong Kong, I was also exposed to the Orph Shu Work Music Education approach, which is an approach that we use games, we use singing, we use dancing, movement, and a lot of different approach to teach music to children or to, for me, is to people of all age and skill levels. So I went to San Francisco to take the training. And so basically, since I've become a Taiko drummer, I also started my teaching career. So it goes hand in hand. Like, how Taiko empowered me to become a musician and performer that I never thought I could become. And then I got exposed to the Orph Teaching approach that gave me the tools to help give the same experience to other people as well through Taiko drumming. We're showing some of the videos of the kids. It is so stinking cute to see those little guys drumming. And I bet it is... Are there any studies about what music or drumming does for a child when they start that young? I think... I came across a lot of articles that talk about Early Childhood Music Education. And definitely there is a good influence on the development, like the motor skills or the language skills or communication skills. And also when we learn how to speak and everything in our lives that has a rhythm and has a musicality to it. And also in my class, I encouraged the parent, the family to engage in drumming together. So they're not coming to the class to just learn from me as an instructor. They're actually learning from their parents. They're actually participating as a family. They make music together. They create the musical experience all together. So definitely a happy environment. It's essential for a child's children's development. And also a lot of times in the old days, music is everywhere. You would see it in... What I'm saying is nowadays a lot of people feel embarrassed or nervous to make music. But when I went to Bali to study Gamala music, you'd go everywhere. You see people just play a guitar. They sing. And children just grow up in such an environment. They all have very sensitive ears and they have great musicality. But me growing up in Hong Kong or in the big city, everywhere around the world, people tend not to just continue to be musical. Every child is born to be musical. You see a lot of babies. When they hear music, they would dance. They clap their hands. They would sing along. So teaching two to three-year-old is actually pretty easy for me because whatever you do, they will copy. But it's interesting when I teach older children or adults, a lot of people would feel embarrassed. Even a six-year-old is like, look at me. Why are you singing? I don't want to sing. But that is something quite sad for me to see because I feel like if more people can enjoy music, it's just part of their everyday life, like how big a difference our life could be and to express our self and to express our feelings and just to find our own voice, like full music. I think that's a very important quality of life. I agree. Absolutely. We're going to go to our first break. Our only break. I don't know why I said first break. Thank you very much for that. I make sure to get back to the conversation. So stay with us. We'll be back in about a minute. Hi. I'm Stacy Hayashi with a Think Tech Hawaii show, Stacy to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha. See you then. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii, every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to show you news, issues, and events local and around the world. Join me. Aloha. My name is John Wahee and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today. Served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee every other Monday. Thank you. And I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Hi. We're back on center stage. I'm your host Donna Blanchard and I'm talking with Iman Mui, a taiko drummer and teacher of taiko drumming. Okay. So the video that we saw, by the way, you were about to say how long ago was that? That was in 2013. A little while ago. Yes. Some of them still continue to play. Oh, good. Yeah. You're right. You see kids, when kids hear music, they immediately start dancing and, you know, they want to vocalize along with it and somewhere along the line, we get embarrassed about it and I don't understand why that happens. I know that, you know, of course, if you are going to become a recording artist, you know, you've got to be, you know, the cream of the crop to make that happen, but that doesn't mean you can't sing along. When I was a kid and I grew up, I grew up in a town that I referred to as Mayberry all of the time. Do you know what I am referencing when I say that? Oh. There's a show, Andy Griffith Show, that you can go to YouTube and you can watch it. I grew up in a tiny little town in God's country in Indiana and we used to sing on the school bus and it was just, this was grades, you know, not just elementary school students all the way up through high school students, they played the radio and we would sing along with the top ten music and I don't think that happens anymore. It's not just that we have changed as we've, we change as we get older as individuals but as a society, we've stopped doing that for some reason. And we, a lot of people thought music is just for the talented or for the elite and for just a small group of people. Yeah, but for me, I don't think so. It has, like, nowadays we just all, when you go on the bus, you just see people looking at the phone or people just spend a lot of time on the computer and maybe they get to listen to a lot of music but ourselves, like, engaging in the music co-activities is not, like, as often as we can, like, how we used to be. Right. And a lot of people listen to music on headphones and I love listening to music on headphones. You really hear all the nuances of it. But you don't want to sing along. Yeah. Because you won't be on pitch if you do it that way for some reason, it never works. So you have, some of those students that we saw, some of the little ones are still taking classes. Do you find that that happens a lot, that they stay with it? It depends because a lot of times when they start going to school, because when they start, they are, like, two to three-year-old, like, they, like, when they start going to school, then they start to get busy and sometimes they will have to make choices. But sometimes it's like the parents get more into it than the children. Oh, so maybe the parents come back. Mm-hmm, yeah. So I have, actually, about 10 families. They started when they were, when the children were, like, toddlers and they continued to play and some of them actually continued to take the youth classes, the children take the youth classes on their own and the parents continue to take the adult classes. And actually, a lot of them are still, like, doing pretty good. Like, I'm actually excited to see how my parent-child class actually worked in some way to prepare them to give them the foundation and they feel comfortable musically to learn more pieces as they go along. So, yeah, like, actually, a lot of them, like, still remember a lot or still, like, continue to enjoy music in their everyday life. Good. What do you, as an individual, feel like you gain from drumming? Um, wow. Well, first, it changed my life. Like, I moved here because of drumming and I became a performer and musician because of drumming and I became a teacher because of all that. So it's a very, like, it's very empowering. I wouldn't have become the person I am today if I have never met, like, started playing Tykel. Um... It is powerful. It is powerful, right. Yeah, you've seen it. It's loud. But you embody power. Those drummers on stage are powerful people. Yeah, and actually, throughout the training, it does require a lot of stamina. And so I also need to, like, other than just playing when we practice drumming, we also need to do a lot of exercise, like, to keep our stamina. And also, like, actually studying here gives me a lot of opportunity with Kenny Sensei. He introduced us to some of the classical Japanese drumming, which is, like, musically, it's very challenging. And that helps me a lot, like, to become more versatile and in learning more difficult music. Um... And so, yeah, that's a very big question. Like, yeah. It's a big question. I'm sorry, I kind of threw that out there, but thank you did very nicely with the answer. When you're learning Tykel, are you... I was in a band when I was in high school, you know, and I know the drummers had written music the same way we did. Mm-hmm. Are you looking at music? Um, sometimes. But most of the time, we sing the rhythms. Um, so for, like, for... Like, because some of the compositions, the composer do use, like, maybe Western notation to... to notate it, or, like, some of the more traditional or classical drumming, like, they have their own way of notating and which actually require you to sing along. Like, the more you sing it, we always say that, our teacher always say that the more you sing it, like, the better you can play it. Like, you can only play it if you can sing it. And so, I kind of applied the same philosophy in my children's class. Um, so, like, in... in our regular Tykel drumming, we sing, like, what we call the kuchi shoga. Like, for example, like, something like that with, like, the specific language of drumming. But for me in my Tykel class, I turned that into singing, like, maybe nonsense syllables, or maybe just a song. Um, and then, like, because of the process of singing, then you apply it on the drums, and you play the rhythms, you play what you sing. And I found that it's actually a very efficient way, like, to learn. Like, not only for children or for people with a lot of musical background, or even for myself, like, I get a better listening experience, like, through singing. Yeah. Interesting. While you were talking about it, I was thinking, so, you have to have a strong body to drum, to do this sort of drumming. And also, I'm sure it builds your muscles, you know, so I was... So I'm thinking, this would be something great for upper arm work. Well, it's a full body. Like, it's actually really great for core training. Like, and for me, I have to do a lot of core training, like, to become better at Taiko, too, because, like, technically you don't really use your arm muscle, like, you are actually relaxed your upper body, and you go into the form, and you use your core power to get a nice sound, like, to use to move your body and get a nice sound out of the drum. So it's not just, like, muscle power. It's actually how you utilize the form, or the gravity, and to support you to get a good sound out of the drum. Oh, okay. Well, all right. I want to try this. This sounds interesting. And the thought of just learning to the drumming part, I thought, oh, I don't know if I could even do that, but if you add the singing to it, that I could... That part of it I could learn. So what sort of... Tell me about some of the performances that you've put together, some of the programs. Well, so you've seen the Taiko Drumming Dance Concert here. That was actually, like, what I call it, my dream come true, like, putting every part of me together, like, dancing and drumming. So actually this past two years, I've been working with my friend Joe Small. He based in L.A. So we put together a show that make really bold comments to talk about, like, the hyper-musculinity culture in the Japanese culture and American culture. And also, a lot of times, we study the Japanese art form in the classroom or dojo, or maybe just in our society. We come across a lot of the issues like hyper-musculinity, gender expectations. So we did a show about it with Taiko Drumming. And so for me, it's actually a very personal experience. Like you said at the beginning, when you see me, like, you don't picture me to be playing such a strong art form of playing the big drum or, like, a lot of people think of Taiko as a very musculine performing arts. But there are actually, for me, there's, like, other aspects of Taiko Drumming. Like, even if we're gentle, we play it in a feminine way, you can still be powerful. And also, myself as an Asian, as a Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong, and I'm playing a Japanese art form, a lot of people would ask me, why do you go to the U.S. to play Taiko? Why didn't you go to Japan? Like, but Japan, going to Japan is still important, but for me, Taiko, I look at it as a pure performing arts. As it has evolved to become, like, a performing arts, and Taiko is actually growing around the world. Like, not only in Japan and in the U.S., there are Taiko groups in Europe and in everywhere in South America. And funny how, one time, when I told this story to my friend about people asking me why I didn't go to Japan, and my friend raised a really good point. He said, how come people don't ask why Yo-Yo Ma didn't go to Europe to study cello? So, like, basically, it's the same thing. Like, Taiko, it's becoming a musical instrument. And so, through the work that I've been doing, like, I'm trying, like, myself thinking about all those issues, but also trying to ask this question, like, to my friends and to people around me, like, to also, like, need to think more out of the box about a lot of things. Oh, good. I'm glad you raised that, because that was a question that I had when I looked at your bio. Why did you come? You came here. Do we have the best school? I didn't even recognize that. Do you have... You grew up around music. Do you have other professional musicians in your family? Um, actually, no. I... Why do you advocate? Well, just like, like, my... Yeah, no, but my father likes music a lot, but he is the listener. Like, he just, like, appreciates music a lot. But, like, I think in Hong Kong, a lot of families, like, they... Like, my generation, we get to expose to music a lot, but really becoming a musician is a very different story. A lot of people are like, how are you going to make money? How are you going to make a living? That's what my parents said. Study, acting, same, same. Right, yeah. So not in my family. And when I told my family that I'm moving to Hawaii to play taiko, they're like, oh, okay. Okay, have fun. They just don't really know what I'm doing, or even my classmates from school. I actually went to business school. I almost became an accountant, an auditor, instead of becoming a music major. So, yeah, a lot of friends are still like, wow, I'm glad she's really, like, pursuing her dream. Like, a lot of people are not afraid, or not even, like, have the guts to think about. Hey, that is true. A lot of people don't know what their dream is. A lot of people, when you ask what do you want, they'll come up with what they think they can get or they think they might deserve. You know, maybe that's because you have been in touch with the musical part of you that you dare to dream and go for it. Yeah. So I'm really thankful, like, and my parents are very supportive, and they're very open-minded too, like, to allow me to, like, really try to do things that, like, okay, we'll see how it works, but not really sure the outcome. But I'm really thankful, like, because my father really thinks the arts is very important as, like, to become a better person. Like, it's a very important quality that is essential. Like, it is. And that is what this show is all about. Thank you very much for being on it. Thank you for having me. And that was, and you wrapped that up really nicely too. Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate meeting you. I'm so glad I got to meet the person who put together that dance concert. It really was a dancing drum concert. It really was amazing. And I look forward to seeing more about you. And there's a yimanmui.com is your website. And also the school's website is... Tycoarts.com. Tycoarts.com. Check it out. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you, yimanmui. Sorry. There's a few other people in the studio I would like to thank. Our floor manager, Rich Prapas, who's right over there. Thank you, Rich. And we have a floor manager in training. Robert, I didn't catch your last name. McLean. Inkling. McLean. McLean. He's our new floor manager. He's right over there. Thank you. And we have a floor manager, Zuri Bender, who is in my ear. Thanks as always, Zuri. And Jay Fidowl, who somehow manages to put all of this together. Thank you for being here. We will see you next week, Wednesday at 2 o'clock at the Center Stage. Bye.