Homemade Craft Katsugi/Okedo

Taiko groups have found lots of different ways to cope with the pandemic. Some have been streaming concerts, others posting videos and doing online workshops. While we’ve done some of that, we also wanted to come out of seclusion with more than we entered with, so we decided to make our own Katsugi/Okedo drums and learning to play them.

We did our earliest experiments following the example of Genki Spark (making three shime and an okedo), but when we got serious this last year, we took further inspiration from Taiko Rabbit Unicorns from Outer Space, and everybody made a drum.

Since we began production later in the year, not all of us have had the time and weather for decoration, but already you can see some decorated drums, and the makings of quite a few more awesome finished pieces. One notable piece of ornamentation many of us have applied are vinyl decals (as seen on drum heads and some drum bodies), produced using our own art by one of our members.

You can expect an update later in the year when more decoration has occurred, but we thought we’d share out work in progress.