Shake Your Booty

Guess what? I'm learning the chekere!! It's so freakin' awesome. I'd seen Janet play and I always thought it was so cool. And then I saw her play it with two other people at Drum Camp and I was thinking: I so want to learn how to play that! And then right afterwards she asked me if I wanted to learn, and I was like, YES!!! And now I'm learning!!

For those who don't know, a chekere is a gourd (or a synthetic version of one) with a net of beads tied around it that you shake to produce a very sharp sound. You can make swishy or clacky noises. But the cool thing is that it frees you up from the confines of a taiko so you can dance around or have other types of movement along with it. Janet is trying to work me up to the point where we can play at the same time and eventually toss them back and forth. Right now I'm just happy learning how to get a sound out of it. She had me work on trying to play the bell pattern on it, and she was saying that that was kind of a difficult thing to learn first thing, but then she said, "Well I know you're gonna practice it." And I am! I totally am! She actually let me borrow one of her chekeres. She wanted me to borrow her unbreakable chekere, but then she changed her mind and had me borrow a nicer one. I'm so scared of dropping or breaking it. Last night I even dreamed I was practicing with one and the whole top of it broke off, and then I had another dream where I cracked it. Oh, but I'm so excited to be learning this! The only hard thing is that my apartment has paper-thin walls, and I was messing around with it last night and then I heard a baby in the house next door start crying, so I stopped. I'm gonna try to find some secluded niche here at work and practice after hours.

My life is so cool!! I'm learning the chekere, people! How cool is that!!!?