Seido Kobayashi

小 林 正 道

Master of the Taiko Drums

Born: 1944 in Hango, Tokyo, Japan

Died: -


Seido Kobayashi is probably the most interesting name in the history of Taiko Drumming. Kobayashi is truly the father of Taiko Drumming and the founder of both Kumi-daiko and Shinne Daiko drumming styles. On top of that, Kobayashi is the principal founder of the popular Taiko group Oedo Sukeroku Taiko , or The Drums of Tokyo. With help from his former sensei Sasazo Kineya, and four other taiko members, Tosha Kiyonari (apprentice name: Motoei Onozato), Saburo Mochizuki (apprentice name: Yutaka Ishizuka) and Yoshihisa Ishikura, Kobayashi created many of the scores and styles used by Oedo Sukeroku Taiko , and gathered the members together from his students.

Seido Kobayashi originally started Bon-dance Taiko at the age of 13 and won the 1st Bon-dance Taiko contest, which was organized by the Yushima Tenjin Shrine in 1959. The solo Bon-dance style was created by Kobayashis late brother, Seiko Kobayashi, whose company name was incorporated into Kobayashis group's name seeing as his brother's noodle factory was named Sukeroku Seimen at that time.

Now Kobayashi travels the world with Oedo Sukeroku Taiko and teaches many classes at various drumming dojos. He and his group have also played with such musicians as Jazz drummer Art Blakey for TV Asahi, and with Latin percussionist Marco Bosco. In 2003 he will celebrate his 45th year as a Taiko drummer.


To see his name in hiragana go to:

http://www.taiko.com/resource/images/letter2.gif

In a probably vain attempt to make them available, you readers with Unicode-compatible browsers can see the Kanji above. If not, then see the little boxes... and get better software...


http://www.kagemusha.com/worldtaiko.html

http://www.geocities.com/genbukan_ca/MUSIC/MUSIC.html

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