On the 15th July we headed out to High Street with our drums to take part in the ‘Trouble Makers’ festival. We won a commission to create a disruption in the street!
In our application we said:
“Taiko has changed our lives since we started playing. The change comes in various ways – whether it has made us more confident, gave us a purpose, made us happier and healthier, increased our ability to create and achieve our goals. In other words – disrupted who we were and enabled us to change course in our life. We would like to share this positive feeling with others. We would like to use our drums to bring unity, invite participation, and remind people of the joy of working, having fun and living together.”
We found the day quite challenging as it was pouring down with heavy rain for the whole 2.5 hours. Be that as it may, we wrapped our drums with plastic sheets and positioned ourselves on the street. We presented a mixture of songs and participatory rhythm games which attracted quite a few people and even some teens! A call and response game was first. Most notable was the ‘make a wish’ game where we invited passers by to make a wish and hit the gong to make the wish come true. The human drum machine was also lots of fun and people were happy to be programmed by us to play different rhythms for a long time. These games were so much fun! If you ever see us busking in the streets of Swansea, please come by and join us – we will always make time for some community drumming!
