Yamato, the decade-old Japanese drum troupe, on Friday gave a joyful, thoughtful and sometimes comic performance at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

The group’s boisterous beat swept over the audience like crashing surf – the kind that knocks waders’ feet out from under them and plunges their faces into briny whitecaps. Audience members came up clapping and grinning every time, but especially during the encore when the nine-member ensemble had concertgoers of all ages echoing its cadence.

Yamato used about two dozen traditional Japanese Wadaiko drums ranging in size from 20 inches to 4 feet in diameter. In the players’ deft hands, they clutched a variety of sticks that included red drumsticks, similar to those used by American rockers except for their color, and a large piece of wood that resembled a club made from the trunk of a birch tree.

Other instruments used during the two-hour performance included the koto or Japanese zither, shamisen or Japanese lute, small cymbals, gongs and a flute.

The first act featured dueling drummers who charmed and wowed the audience, sending its youngest members into fits of giggles. Like two kids in a pitched playground battle, the two men’s muscular arms flew in a my-drum-is-bigger-and-better-than-your-drum contest. Like all great combatants, the standoff ended with the two shaking hands across their drum skins.

The second half of the program opened with “Tamashy,” the piece from which this year’s U.S. tour took its name. A study in contrasts, the violinlike kokyu was the gentle, rocking undercurrent over which the huge drums rolled in great waves of sound but never crushed.

The five women and four men of Yamato performed with acrobatic precision. Often, their arms moved so rapidly that they became a whirling blur. The distinct sound of each and every drumbeat was clear, but by sight, one could not be distinguished from another.

The Japanese drummers on Friday night gave the Hutchins Concert Hall a pulsing heartbeat that matched its blood-red walls. It also drew a large number of young adults, college students and families with young children to the MCA eager for a musical experience far outside the American pop scene broadcast on MTV.

And none of them ever again will define drumming as that sound created by the person sitting at the back of the band clutching some skinny sticks.