What's next?

image credit: https://www.bizboard.nl

I post stuff like this on the Facebook page, but don't often get a lot of responses, so I'm keeping it here today.

I'm wondering what, if anything, will change for the taiko world in 2017.  There's the 2017 NATC.  There's online services up already and people using the internet to give lessons.  There are more conferences and gatherings happening world-wide.  But these aren't new, even if they're growing.

What's going to be different, what's going to happen that's not happening now or not been done before?

I'm not complaining or criticizing, honestly.  Just wondering.  We might not see anything new, and that's no one's "fault".  Nor is it bad.  Maybe something big comes onto the scene and introduces a technology or opportunity we don't have yet?

Our community, as a whole, progresses slowly.  It's the nature of the art form.  There are outliers, to be sure, but it still takes years for them to affect what people do.  While there are groups that produce the highest caliber of taiko players, however you qualify that, the other 99.9% (okay, maybe 99.5%) of taiko players just play for fun.

So this post is just some food for thought, nothing more.  No one knows what the next big thing will be, how the taiko world will react, or if things will continue as they have been.  As long as people are playing from the heart, as long as people are spreading their joy with others, does it really matter?  Nah.  :)