Aber Taiko ran a children’s taiko workshop on Saturday the 14th of May 10-11am at St. Paul’s Parish centre, De la Beche Road, SA2 9AR.
The children – from 6 to 9 year olds – stood in front of our big drums, sticks in hands and learnt a simple and fun Japanese song. That song was written by Yoshikazu Fujimoto and taught to us by James Barrow. Simple rhythms, group work, and some stories of the Japanese group, KODO.
Ursula Frank and Heather Murray, founders of Taiko Mynydd Du gave us three workshops. First was a family workshop where parents and children learnt a piece called ‘Godzilla’ written by Ursula and inspired by the music of the original Japanese film.
The adults then had a beginner’s workshop where we learned a simple version of a classical Japanese piece called ‘Buchi Awase’ and in the more advanced workshop we learnt another piece written by TMD called ‘River’.
But it is not just the songs that we learnt – we learnt the basics of stance, movement and strike. We tried playing as a group – listening to each other and engaging with each other. When this is accomplished, any song we play would be so much more interesting and engaging both for us and for our audience.
This workshop was kindly funded by the Arts Council of Wales.
The first taiko day in our project was lead by James barrow of Taiko West.
In the morning we had a children’s workshop – 9 children attended and learnt a simple rhythm.
They also had a go at James’ big O-hira daiko!
Then an adults beginner’s workshop, which was full to the brim:
