Prota Goes Green

In the spirit of Halloween, Prota decided to dress up as one of our favorite taiko groups, Naruwan Taiko. Clad in the emblematic emerald garb of Naruwan, Prota set out to complete their costume by reconstructing one of Naruwan Taiko's signature pieces: "Release," by Diana Wu.

In many ways, I feel that Release perfectly captures the rambunctious spirit, boundless energy, and raw power that I've come to associate with Naruwan. Obviously, this is not something we could remotely emulate even with months of practice (much less the 2 hours we had for practice). As such, our intent here was not so much faithful facsimile as it was affectionate parody. I can only hope that we succeeded at least at that.

Let's be 100% clear - this is not a Prota piece, and it is not a part of our repertoire. One of my guilty pleasures is reverse-engineering taiko pieces I enjoy. I am, however, pretty hesitant to actually teach people the results of my tinkering because the last thing we want to do as artists is to misrepresent (or worse, misappropriate) another's work. Still, we figured that a Taikothon event - by taiko players for taiko players - would be as good a time as any to present this as a special performance that should be enjoyed only by members of the taiko community who would understand its nature. Plus, Diana and I get along pretty well, and I'd like to think she got a kick out of this.

So yeah. We love you Naruwan, and we're sorry. <3