Japanese immigrants brought taiko to North America during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuriess, to continue the practices of their ancestors. Nikkei communities in large West Coast supported these practices until the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, after which many Japanese traditions were forgotten. In 1969, Reverend Masao Kodani , Johnny Mori, and George Abe began the Kinnara Taiko group at the Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, eventually inspiring other taiko groups to form. The movement sparked by the formation of Kinnara Taiko became a means of regaining some of the Japanese identity lost during the early twentieth century¹.

Interest in taiko was renewed in the mid-1970s and 1980s because of the development of an information base surrounding the building of drums and performance, the first American tour of a Japanese taiko group, and the Redress Movement of Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians¹.

Today, taiko is gaining increasing popularity as an art form, becoming a means of expression that is a mixture of traditional and contemporary styles and rhythms.

Reference
1. http://www.aamovement.net/art_culture/general/ taiko.html