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By: Allison Ballard

For me, September is a time of choice. Fort Wayne Taiko holds a planning meeting to discuss our direction as a group. And as an individual teaching artist, I make decisions about what direction I want to take my various classes. The choices are wide and varied. Before I whittle it down, I always gift myself with the time to review the vast array of materials I have collected through the years. It is always fun to discover a mix of songs I have composed, taught, performed and then forgotten about as well as field notes, study guides, music and other materials I have gathered from other teachers and artists.

It is Christmas in September as I sort through, pulling out whatever I feel most drawn to and filing away the rest to rediscover again at some point in the future. It’s interesting to note what catches my interest from year to year. Some years I find myself focused on choreography and “kata” (form). Other years, I am drawn to specific rhythmic patterns or meters. This year, I appear to be drawn to an eclectic mix with an interest in focusing on different things with different groups in different classes. This means I will be working with a broad range of material and indicates to me that what I’m really working on is how to integrate the wide array of styles, teachers, experiences, references and instrumentation to which I have been exposed. I am looking for ways to bring these things together into some new, cohesive wholes that reflect my own personal/cultural perspectives while honoring the traditions from which they emerge.

Because Fort Wayne Taiko doesn’t have an in-house sensei guiding the group’s practice and repertoire, we study with and are influenced by a wide variety of teachers and mentors, many of whom have very different styles and technique. One teacher will instruct us to hold a stick or stand or strike one way and another will teach us to do it a different way and ultimately we have to decide what works for us as individuals and as a group. It is a never-ending process of discovery that feeds our evolution as drummers, as artists and as people. Christmas in September. It has become my own personal tradition.