Page 4 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - Feb 9, 2022

4 HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK FEBRUARY 9, 2022
The good vibrations keep coming from taiko virtuoso Kenny Endo, who lives life marching to the beat of his own drum.
Who else can say they’ve performed for Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, have a day proclaimed to them in Honolulu and, most recent- ly, be named to the United States Artists’ 2022 class of Fellows? None other than triple threat Ken- ny Endo, one of the world’s most prolific taiko performers, compos- ers and teachers.
nonetheless. It was just last week when Endo was recognized next to 63 fellow artists across 10 creative disciplines, including architecture and design, dance, film, tradition- al arts, visual art and writing. The organization at the helm of the project, United States Artists, puts an emphasis on supporting a broad register of creative people — an ef- fort even more pertinent now given that some artistic avenues, like En- do’s performing arts, have taken a backseat due to the pandemic.
If he’s not performing taiko (above), then Kenny Endo (right) is teaching it, like in this photo (top right) that dates back to Taiko Center of the Pacific’s debut in 1994. PHOTOS COURTESY KENNY ENDO
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Those grand feats only brush the surface of all that Endo has accom- plished. And while the latter is only the most recent, it was an honor,
Long before his impressive list of accolades, though, Endo was just a boy in Los Angeles who was entranced by the beat of a drum.
“When there were parades, I would always run down just to hear the cadence of the drums because I like that vibration,” he remembers.
jazz, funk and Latin. He was pas- sionate about playing the drums and was even a member of his high school band and orchestra, but it wasn’t until he witnessed a performance by the San Francis- co Taiko Dojo, which is the first kumi daiko (ensemble drumming) group to form outside of Japan, in
1973 that he had that “aha” mo- ment, thinking, “This is what I want to do with my life.”
As he entered his teenage years, Endo would jam out to rock’ n’ roll — namely The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Cream — and became rapt by
“When I saw taiko for the first time, it was the sound that you could feel down to your bones that pulled me in,” he recalls. “It
i other musical genres includi
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