As a staged, choreographed performance of neo-folk ensemble drumming in Japan since the 1950s, taiko reached North America in 1968. Although the number of articles on the form has grown over the past two decades, Angela K. Ahlgren's Drumming Asian America: Taiko, Performance, and Cultural Politics is the first scholarly monograph examining taiko in Asian American contexts, followed only by Deborah Wong's Louder and Faster (Reference Wong2019). Combining historical research, performer interviews, ethnography, auto-ethnography, and theoretical analysis across six chapters, Ahlgren explores the experiences, ambivalences, and sometimes overlapping identities of Japanese American, Asian American, white, black, feminist, and queer taiko performers, positing that they (and more) cocreate Asian America and participate in its racial formation.

Reordering the book's subtitle to “Cultural Politics, Performance, and Taiko” may present its arguments more accurately. That the first chapter introduces no less than eight ways the book's ambitious objectives and rationales indicates a prismatic and ambiguous scope less about taiko itself and more about cultural politics, justifies this notion. For example, Ahlgren's themes include chapter 2's effective characterization of taiko in North America as Asian American through San Jose Taiko's neo-folk dance, Ei Ja Nai Ka?, which centers upon the embodied memories of Japanese American and Asian American immigrant labor and the cultural politics of their 1970s activist movements. Chapter 3 explores racial implications of majority-white Minnesota within Asian American contexts, particularly Korean American adoptees’ experiences, through Minneapolis-based ensemble Mu Daiko's educational outreach activities. Ahlgren provides investigations into white and black women's encounters with and access to taiko in terms of cross-racial intimacies and altered visibilities in chapter 4, followed by chapter 5's queer feminist interpretations of taiko vis-à-vis the performances of Tiffany Tamaribuchi and her Asian American queer woman's ensemble, Jodaiko, at Vancouver's 2009 Powell Street Festival. Chapter 6 concludes with a brief recounting of the inaugural 2017 Women and Taiko gathering and the debut of Tamaribuchi's new taiko-dance work, Joy Bubble, as a means to contextualize the previous chapters, reiterate taiko's vital role in social activism, and encourage greater critical inquiry within and from the form.

As one of its prismatic lenses, the book employs Christopher Small's ethnomusicological notion of “musicking,” which decentralizes artistic product and allows for multifaceted analysis of scenarios beyond composition and performance. Musicking exposes problematic points about race and culture. For example, in chapter 3, Mu Daiko performers negotiate an imposed framework of white-constructed “multiculturalism” marketing taiko as either a “World” or “traditional Japanese” performance, thereby diminishing the importance of Asian American contribution and innovation, and sidestepping any potential controversy of direct discussions on race and identity in outreach. Additionally, to investigate performer-audience encounters, Ahlgren adapts Diana Taylor's concept of “embodied repertoire” (59) and colonialist “scenarios of discovery” (60). Performers typically engage in emotional labor by patiently tolerating a mostly white audience's “repertoire of racial etiquette” (70), characterized by performative racial innocence termed “Minnesota Nice” (73). Ahlgren's examined scenarios highlight white audiences’ potential microaggressions, such as inquiries into performers’ English or Japanese language knowledge and proficiency (60–61); the literal placing of Asian American women performers by white women organizers on the periphery of an event celebrating women's leadership (62); and, on one occasion, white schoolchildren miming gunfire at Asian American performers (73).

In this case, however, musicking may not justify less attention paid to taiko's educational component in order to convey meaning or counter expectation. For example, customarily, outreach includes embodied experience, such as inviting the audience to pick up the sticks and hit the taiko. As Kimberly Powell notes in The Apprenticeship of Embodied Knowledge in a Taiko Drum Ensemble:

Were the audience to engage in embodied learning in the manner Powell depicts, to a large extent Ahlgren's concerns that implicate children—particularly later in chapter 3 vis-à-vis her reference of Mu Daiko member Su-Yoon Ko's spoken word poem—might be addressed. In such instances, the audience may discover for themselves the embodied nature of music making, as well as taiko's concomitant potential to demystify itself and Asian American culture.

Ahlgren's citation of the spoken-word poem highlights Ko's frustration regarding the cognitive dissonance surrounding racist receptions of taiko outreach, and the Orientalist, reductive histories of taiko that obscure Ko's Korean American adoptee identity. While Ahlgren illuminates the seldom, if ever, discussed complications of non-Japanese Asian American practitioners’ identities, musicking deployed as political response can lead to problematic implications. Ko proclaims in her poem, “I'm not there to educate the white ones, / helping to sharpen their appropriation skills. / I'm there for the yellow brown / to be the role model I never had … ” (80). The musicking of the poem advances the possibly racist aspects of taiko outreach, affirming Ko's awareness of “the threat of appropriation and white audiences’ Orientalist desire to consume Asian forms” (81). However admirable Ko's desire to be a role model for Asian American children, the application of musicking must be used carefully, as the result here implies a majority-white audience of children would inevitably by default expropriate the form. The result, that performers themselves therefore need not take responsibility for educating this audience, is troubling, particularly regarding one's professional responsibilities.

It would be a shame to lose the efficacy of musicking through methodological processes that ultimately obstruct notions of embodied performance. One example of where musicking, applied with a wide enough focus, has allowed us to access the decolonizing potential of Asian American cultural politics and identities, is through the integration of taiko with theater over the past two decades. Taikoproject's reGeneration (Los Angeles, 2003–2004); San Jose Taiko's Swingposium (2017); Unit Souzou's Insatiable (Portland, Oregon, 2013–2015) and Constant State of Otherness (2020); and Raging Asian Womxn's From Rage Comes (Toronto, 2013), Crooked Lines: Stories In Between (2016), and Undaunted: Into the Open (2019) come to mind.

In chapter 5, Ahlgren's interpretations of Jodaiko and Tamaribuchi bring queer discourse and visibility to taiko through lesbian, feminist, and erotic perspectives. Applying current scholarship, Ahlgren argues that the unified strength and confidence of Jodaiko's butch, queer Asian women performing with “homo-geneity” (121) renders them visible to a heteronormative society that otherwise cannot reconcile their existence. Moved both literally and emotionally by performing bodies, a diverse audience becomes “queered” through kinesthetic response.

However, despite opening a welcome line of queer feminist discourse on taiko, whether Ahlgren's argument merely suggests normatively queer possibilities or aims to qualify taiko as exclusively queer seems blurred. Perhaps the author responds obliquely to Clare Croft's critique that Euro-Americacentrism only acknowledges ballet and modern dance forms as “norms to queer” (113)? The vivid description of Tamaribuchi's o-daiko solo exemplifies the ambiguity:

Without additional clarification, the conclusion of Tamaribuchi's o-daiko solo as a “performance of desire” seems reductive, as subjective description alone cannot qualify an argument. Tamaribuchi herself cites several analogies to playing taiko, yet only one example directly references sexual desire: “having a conversation … arguing or having a fight … making love … dancing … surrendering … letting go and grooving” (132). “Making love” arguably seems less a definitive mode of performance than one of many simultaneous possibilities providing insight into how artists explain their embodied performances, especially with musical instruments.

Drumming Asian America successfully demonstrates that taiko indeed cocreates Asian America. Ahlgren's writing brings overdue intersectional perspectives to taiko, such as the depiction of Orientalism as not only external but internal to taiko performance. Additionally, the book highlights a secondary objective: not to provide answers allowing Asian America to cohere, but to advance critical conversation.

Despite such success, the treatment might not always match the necessary scope of the content. While Ahlgren acknowledges omissions due to “brevity and focus,” the book may have been more effective by providing a fuller representation of the complexity of the art form. For instance, Ahlgren critiques San Jose Taiko's Ei Ja Nai Ka? as “eclips[ing] other aspects of Japanese American history … omit[ting] internment indicates that the piece has more to do with the connection between the issei and sansei [first- and third-generation Japanese Americans] than it does with relating a complete and accurate timeline of Japanese American history” (39). However, to expect that a single piece of repertoire, intended as a joyous communal dance, somehow ought to address the darkness of wartime internment, is not only an unjustified critique but perhaps demonstrates an incomplete understanding of the choreographic project. Expanding the scope of discussion to compare the dance with actual taiko repertoire from the ensemble, such as their internment-themed DoR (Day of Remembrance, 2007), might create better analytical terrain.

Scholars with interests in Asian American studies, ethnomusicology, dance, theater and performance, social sciences, and gender and identity studies might strongly consider reading this book, albeit with an awareness of the diverse roads musicking may take the reader. I echo Ahlgren's encouragement for the taiko community to advance its own critical awareness, understanding, and engagement on issues concerning race, sexuality, gender, Orientalism, identities, and activism.