The amazing cross-cultural appeal of Japanese drumming and the reputation of Kodo easily sold out the Balboa Theatre Friday (Feb. 11) for the long-awaited local reappearance of the Japanese taiko troupe, sponsored by the La Jolla Chamber Music. Smiles on the faces of Music Society staffers at the Balboa were even wider than those of recently-arrived tourists from the snowbound East Coast strolling through the Gaslamp.

“Why do Americans like this Japanese folk drumming?” asked my Japanese-American guest at the bustling intermission. I thought I had a glib answer to her puzzlement, but it has taken some introspection to come up with a more comprehensive thesis.

At the outset, it is true that North American cultural consumers are not particularly adventurous. They cannot stand the piercing vocal style of Chinese opera, and the euphonious sounds of traditional Hawiian music are popular only among people who are native Hawiians or have lived there. A program of Norwegian hardanger fiddle music won’t even fill a few rows of a church fellowship hall, and advertise an Arabic oud recital, and you will draw only a few nerdy classical guitar students.

A Kodo concert is an unusual amalgam: it combines music (drumming, singing, flute playing), dance, gymnastics, sacred ritual, and drama into a heady mixture that is both serious and highly entertaining. If drumming does tap into something primal in the human psyche, what then separates Kodo from its imitators?

An important part of Kodo’s appeal is the highly disciplined enthusiasm of each drummer, as observed in the 2010 work “Stride”by artistic director Mitsuru Ishizuka. Three of the crack younger drummers commence and extend a complex pattern and are joined progressively by the rest of the 12-member troupe as the piece builds to a symphonic crescendo with drums of many sizes and timbres.

Lithe choreography is another trademark of Kodo. In Ryutaro Kaneko’s 1994 “Jang-Gwara,” several drummers trade their drums for traditional hand cymbals (jangara) and snake across the stage in animated, often amusing clusters, creating a high-pitched scintillating sonority pulsed by three large drums placed on their side and struck lustily from each end by seated percussionists.

A new work this year, “Sakaki,” clusters four drums around a traditionally clad male dancer—a Shinto priest in flowing robes—who symbolically purifies the space for the performance rituals to come.

And not all of Kodo’s drumming is loud. For example, Maki Ishii’s 1976 “Monochrome” consists of seven small drums played in a row at the front edge of the stage. The seated players tap an insistent, high-pitched roll that sounds like swarms of crickets or locusts in a nearby wood, only the effect is more like a soothing meditation than an annoying buzz.

Above all, Kodo suggests ritual at every turn, from the reverence with which the drums are moved and played to the dramatic, subdued lighting that makes each new piece appear to materialize from the ether. From the beginning of the performance, a huge odaiko—a massive drum of some 6 to 8 feet wide—dominates the center of the rear stage, bathed in its own spotlight. Its untouched presence throughout most of the program only heightens the audience's expectation of its use.

When it is time to present this drum, the stage grows dark and a lone singer intones a chant, soon picked up by several male voices. Slowly and with great solemnity, the odaiko is rolled forward on its stand, and the two most muscular drummers appear with their huge mallets.

Clad only in their ceremonial fundoshi, these men begin a somber pattern at each end of the odaiko, gradually blooming over some 10 minutes into an intense and insistent thundering roar that could be felt shaking the floor of the Balboa balcony.

If the stamina required to perform such a musical ritual inspires the listener’s respect, certainly the rigorous training that such drummers undergo in the aesetic Kodo community on Sado Island reinforces the understanding that this is an art that is built upon both physical and spiritual discipline.

The cynic might say that Americans admire such discipline, as long as someone else is actually accomplishing it. But I still believe that the enthusiasm for Kodo is rooted in a spiritual impulse manifested in an art form that tantalizes and pleases the physical senses.