We’ve had a great summer of informal, all-welcome taiko gigs, and we’ve decided that it’s the best way to be. Everyone I talked to, whether they played or watched, was inspired by our ‘everyone welcome’ attitude to playing. It’s something we talk about a lot in class, and is something that comes up in conversation about taiko groups, and what it is to become one…at the very start you have to begin with an intention. What do you want people to feel when they’re playing, and what do you want people to feel when they’re watching our taiko gigs? And if you get that right, decisions come more easily from there.
So, when, last September a few of us started a Repertoire Class to learn taiko pieces and practice them so we were confident playing them in pubic, this question was raised. There was a resonance within us as individuals and as a group that while there may be players who want to and are able to commit more hours per week to playing, this doesn’t mean that those unable to do so shouldn’t get a chance to play. We wanted to form something that welcomes and supports people to join us. We wanted to create something where the happiness of people came before how ‘good’ it might look, although we’d strive for togetherness there where we could! We wanted to work on new pieces, but also tick-over the ‘oldies’ so that we always knew the same repertoire as the other Taiko Journey groups around Devon.
I personally love it when people who have never met each other before can join together and play the same thing and immediately be connected through that experience. Taiko gigs where everyone is welcome, whatever their experience or perceived ‘ability’ is something that was a bit of a risk – would events be happy with what they saw? Yes. More than happy, excited by what they saw. Would the group be able to keep it together with so much unknown? Yes. More than we expected, and some beautiful spontaneous moments would never have happened if we didn’t take the risk.
So, from the Duck Race, to the Torbay Half Marathon and many places in between, after this summer, I am very much looking forward to the next year. This time with more people, taking more risks, and having more fun please. Thank you to everyone that got in touch to book us, everyone who drove and car-shared to get to the far-out fields, and to everyone who spent their time and money with us so that we could go to these taiko gigs. It makes so many people happy, so just keep drumming!
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