Gerry and the drum academy - Part 1

As you might have already guessed (I know my dad did but did you?), I've been on holiday.

Well, I say holiday but it's probably not strictly true.  At least, not completely.

The first part of my absence is due to taking Gerry to the home of Chinese drums - Jiangzhou.  Gerry is part of his school's Chinese Drum team and as part of this, he got invited to go to Jiangzhou to up his skills at a drum academy.  As Jiangzhou is the home of Chinese drums, the people there are all proficient at it (in fact, drum classes are part of the normal curriculum).

The place itself is fairly remote so it was quite a trip just to get there.  After a 3 hour flight up to Taiyuan (near Beijing), we got on a bus for another 5 hour roadtrip.  As I said, remote.

It wasn't actually the whole drum team that went.  Some of the older children in primary 6 had just graduated so were no longer officially part of the drum team.  Understandably, they weren't able to go.  Meanwhile, some of the new members of the team, taken from primary 2, were too young to go so they weren't able to go either.  Even so, there were a group of 12 children who made the trip.

Gerry and the Thundermakers

Teacher lays down the law!

It's actually fairly amazing how much sound a group of Chinese drums can make even when they are being played by children.  We spent most of the week being verbally assaulted by a cacophony of bangs and cracks.

Practicing the basics

It's also amazing how much variation you can get from just a single drum and the drum sticks.  There are a range of techniques to vary the sounds and visuals.  Below, you can see Gerry twirling his drum sticks and banging them against each other for a more "clicky" sound relative to the banging of drums.

click, click, click, clack, click, click, clack, boom, chack, boom, chack, boom boom boom chack!