This past semester my co-teacher took a class at a community college in Kaohsiung every Friday night to learn African drumming and African dance.
She let me listen to their songs and practiced the drumming styles for me at school and I was really interested in what she was learning. She arranged for me to come and take one class with her on a Friday night in April.
The class was from 7 to 9 pm and involved two parts, which each lasted one hour. The first part was drumming and the second part was dancing. The first part focused on the kassa drumming style and was taught my an older Taiwanese man. Everyone sat in a circle and followed the teacher. Shuting played her big djembe drum which I took a picture with:
And I played a miniature version that she brought for me.
After an hour of drum beating we took a break and then the class split up so that half of us were drumming and half of us were Kassa dancing. The dance instructor took over to teach the dance while the other class members making a beat for us to dance to.
After some web research I learned that Kassa is a harvest dance. Kassa is important during the harvest time when workers migrate far from their homes to harvest crops and live in makeshift camps. During the day drummers play Kassa beats to support the workers in the fields.
About a month after my initial visit, Shuting had a performance that I went to see. She was chosen to be one of the dancers, while the majority of the class held the beat and sang call and response style lyrics. I posted a video of her performance here:
http://www.dropshots.com/kaitlynmcg2#albums/African Drumming
It is also because of her drumming experience that I recruited her to be the drummer of our dragon boat team!
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