Last Saturday I had my very first (not the last, I feel...) lesson of Japanese style drums playing, those Taiko BIG drums which - through "Dafos" on Reference Recordings label and the famous "Kodo" drummers literally shocked the audiophile community... earthquake-like rumbles and blasting, explosive forceful group drumming with great patterns, both physical and meditative as a discipline.
Masai-san of Masaitaiko drumming ensemble from Japan visited for the second, consecutive year my hometown during the still going on "Haru no Kaze" festival, a Japanese/Italian springtime happening involving ikebana, tea ceremony and, yes, traditional drumming.
I enrolled myself and left my guitar player attitude home, wearing those weird yukata-like dressing and being a drummer for two hours!
Two extremely enriching and pleasant hours, indeed... Masai-san explained rhythms patterns, and beautiful sound making on those BIG drums and myself and a group of "pupils", a total of ten people, we banged and screamed and moved following sensei-san instructions...
The beautiful dance-like movements while playing were the most difficult part for me, while after some so-so drumming, I obtained a deeep, round, strong sound from my 1 m tall and 70 cm diam. drum.
The sound coming from a group of ten drums in a 150 sq.m room with high ceiling was awesome... beautiful, ground-shaking, earthquake-like... I was both part of it in the "noise" making and enjoying the sound-waves decay, the organized "drums battles" and the patterns, at same time.
I left after chatting with the group members from Japan deeply moved and relaxed and... maybe I'm NOT a guitar player... I'm a Taiko drummer!
;-)
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