Drumming Through Princess of China: Intercultural Encounters in a Hollywood Music Video

The powerful performance rhetoric of North American taiko drumming tells a story of Japanese American and Asian American survival, defiance, and joy, but I ask whether the politicized Asian American body created by taiko can be reconciled with the performance venues actually available to its musicians. I explore how several members of the Los Angeles-based taiko group to which I belonged performed in Princess of China (2012), a music video by Chris Martin from Coldplay featuring Rihanna. This video is an unapologetic orientalist mash-up, drawing freely from Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Indian elements. Its loose narrative is based on two Chinese martial arts films, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, with the insertion of a White/Anglo hero and a dark heroine, Rihanna as a Chinese princess. I ask how and why my teacher and fellow performers would choose to perform in it as ninja-like taiko players. I offer two taiko performers’ thoughts on the shoot and the struggle for self-representation in a popular music environment with little or no cultural accountability. I conclude by reflecting on how there are no pure spaces for Asian American or Japanese American self-determination.