Who We Are

CCs Taiko was founded by Peter Hewitt in 2010, where he discovered Taiko on holiday. Seeing a small group of young adults performing. It was from that point that the idea for CCS Taiko was created, as Peter believed in the benefits of teaching Taiko to both children and adults with special needs.

Starting at Milestone School, the benefits were seen very quickly, and the business began to continue to grow from that point onwards.

Peter has always given the group a much different style of taiko teaching experience. Straying away from very traditional taiko, giving a much more laid back and fun experience, but still keeping the core elements of taiko.

11 years later, in 2021, Peter handed the business over to his grandson: Joseph Bond, who aims to continue to grow the business, and expand on things further.

Joe has been playing taiko since around 2012, and in recent years has taken up playing drum kit, becoming a heavy metal drummer alongside taiko. We are very possibly the only taiko group in the UK to feature drum kit with taiko. This debuted at the 2019 Taiko Festival, where the group played their own rendition of ‘Little Drummer Boy’, directed by Peter Hewitt. The performance told the story of a drummer boy, who went from a snare drum, to a drum kit, and to the big drums that are taiko!

FAQs

  • Starting off, the translation for ‘taiko’ itself is quite literally just ‘big drum’!

    Taiko has been a very important and historic part of Japanese culture for many years. Its origins lie in the hundreds of temples and shrines throughout Japan, where the drums are played during ceremonies and seasonal festivals for all different purposes.

    Throughout history, taiko drums have also been used in theatre and war, with the drums being used in both and land and sea warfare. It was only recently in the 1950’s that taiko has become a performing art in itself, though some even consider it a form of musical martial art! It spread throughout the world with the help of professional groups like ‘Yamato’ and ‘Kodo’ amongst many others! Japan now has many thousands of taiko groups that all play many different styles.

  • For the most part the age range for taiko is very wide! The age range we teach from is around 8 years old to 80 years old. It may vary with other groups, but we go with this age range as under 8’s would likely struggle to play the drums properly due to the size of the drums. For those who are older they would likely struggle due to stamina.l

  • Lots! The main benefit is learning a new instrument/skill, as you’ll be playing music as well as getting some great exercise. Although taiko may not be as beneficial for exercise as say, going to the gym, you’ll get a good workout from playing since you use your whole body for taiko and not just your arms!

    Some other benefits are the social and teamwork aspects of taiko. We have a great community at CCS Taiko, with everyone being very laid back, friendly and accepting. The teamwork side is as a group we must listen to each other, both in volume and what we’re playing.

  • At school, Joe was learning drum kit as part of his BTEC music course. We originally were only going to use the drum kit in our performance at the 13th UK Taiko Festival, but we found it worked so well we decided to keep it. It’s also just another way to make us stand out from other Taiko groups, to give us a more unique sound and expand on what we can do in both performance and rehearsals.