Movement and percussion

I realize that I've taken movement for granted over the last few years.

I watch dancers of all styles from hip hop to Lindy Hop, East Indian to West African. I appreciate and admire the skill in which people move like that, what with all the practice and talent and dedication required! However, what I'm getting at isn't the highly-skilled stuff, I'm talking about something more fundamental, more about coordination and internalizing rhythm in the body.

I feel like I move smoothly while dancing about with percussion, but I don't consider myself particularly "good" at it. Although it didn't always come naturally (and I still have a lot more to learn), I managed through observation and practice.

The important thing to realize is that moving with percussion combines two different skills. A lot of taiko groups give their newest members the percussion and say "just play along". It downgrades the percussion to a tertiary status, and often leads to a frustrated player. So which is more important, knowing how to play the percussion or knowing how to move with it?

Ultimately, I believe movement is the harder of the two skills, and therefore needs more attention. I can teach you how to play the cowbell in no time, but that won't transfer into how to play chappa, or shekere, or katsugi okedo. However, if I teach you how to move around, it's not all that different when you go from instrument to instrument. The fundamentals remain constant. Granted, there's something impressive about someone who can play one of those instruments really well without moving at all; it can take so much concentration that moving around only makes more difficult.

Those who do well on percussion are those who internalize the downbeat. There are so many ways to move and think about movement, but honestly that's not the important part. If you feel the music, if you know what the pulse of the song is, you don't have to think about what to play; you can let your hands figure that out.

Learning mobile percussion helps you learn how to move. That will translate directly into how well you move while playing taiko! Above all, it just takes practice. You have to take the time outside of practice to grab something and figure out "what can I do with this/these in my hands?"