It’s been so long, years and years since I wrote anything about taiko and shared it. There was a time when I wrote it quite regularly and people did read it, but then I stopped, for a long long time, working out what it was I wanted to do, and most of the time just being too busy to do anything but keep doing it. This hasn’t even been edited, and it was written late at night once I had time to myself again, and I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I promised myself that this year I’d start again….
Taiko Journey’s work so far has been to make drumming accessible to all, empowering everyone to feel the joy of being part of something – be it a one-off workshop or an ongoing community group. I’ve met so many people who had lost their connection to their innate musicality, to their humanness of holding a steady beat and co-creating a sense of joy and celebration – I used to be there too, on the edge of music, listening to and loving music and even playing instruments, but without any true feeling that I was part of that music. Taiko has given me, and since then hundreds of people, a chance to restore that connection with instrument, with music, with active body, and sense of self. Since my early days of drumming for fun (and it is a lot of fun!), the relationship has grown, allowing me to become a teacher, a community group leader, and something I never saw coming…an artist bringing an artform from across the globe into deep connection with my beloved Devon landscapes, igniting a fire that fills me with gratitude and wonder…sharing this with people is a privilege, and still so much fun.
I want to invite people into co-creativity with the drums, rather than always learning rhythms by rote to perform. Workshops call the individual to consider their personal experience, their origins, their place in the present moment, and bring this into creative collaboration with the community of drums and players in the room, to have an authentic experience unique to their own existence. I try to make my relationship with the roots and origins of taiko an active one, finding new connections with it’s Shinto traditions, new inspirations in the pioneers of cultural activism in the post world-war II Japanese American experience, and even the ancient wisdom of Japan’s Jomon period. Many of these threads of origin lead back to people’s relationship with land and sense of place in the world, just like my personal path has led me to that place – perhaps I’m finding it because that’s what is in my heart, but I am finding and following them, like holding a handrail in the dark, and I trust it’s leading me where I need to be. Japan’s Ancient Wosite wisdom saw a community of people 12,000 years ago carving stones that accurately recorded their relationship with the sun, living a peaceful life in harmony with the natural world, living in structures really similar to the ruins I now sit in on Dartmoor – roundhouses made of granite, some for living, others for sacred community work, and I sit there, now, threads in my hands, weaving them together to make my own story strong.
Spending time with Tina & Jo and their staff and volunteers at On the Hill has shown me a place where this work can truly come into existence, has inspired me to follow my dreams, and housed their embryonic beginnings. Dreaming up this future work with Tina has been a lifting, light, insightful process…fun, and serious and vulnerable and exciting. I am filled with gratitude for where we are now, and whatever happens in the future, what I have learned….
