Chekere Finito

Finished my chekere last weekend--more out of necessity than anything. RCW is having its grand opening on June 2nd, and we're gearing up for that. We're playing a piece called "Three Rivers" which predates me by decades and decades of experience. I'm totally intimidated, since we're playing with musicians who have been described as having "perfect timing." No exaggeration, especially since I've seen these perfect-timing musicians in real life. As percussion-girl I turned down a part to play clave for someone who was described as having centered her life around clave. What do I know?? I wanted to finally make the final knots on my chekere because my chekere is way quieter and more subtle than the chekere I've been playing. I'm playing with my teacher's teachers. I'm playing with folks who have made it possible for women to pursue drumming in the ways we are pursuing it in the first place.

Just writing about this makes me realize how stressful this is going to be. Kai to Ryu! Kanki! You don't remember this do you, but remember how much I stressed over that for the Aiko performance? And Mokuyobi. My goals for this performance are to get through Kai to Ryu flawlessly, to rework on my Kanki solo, and to have my (boring) Mokuyobi solo down. Plus we have the show during the day, and I volunteered to be on stage crew, plus the evening performances (that people are paying to see) plus more stage crew, and then meet-and-greet after the show. And then taiko teaching the following Tuesday. I spent all of today coming up with a syllabus for that.

It'll be a good learning experience. That's what I say. Plus, isn't this what I've always wanted?