The world loves to stop me from doing my do…
When I was having my breakfast this morning, I saw a bird on my window. I thought “How cute” and moved on. However, after a while, it started bumping itself against the window…
“Dumbass”, I laughed, “it’s a window.”
Then I wondered if it’s leading me to a quest because it has been incessant with the sound. After following the dumb bird 5 times, I thought, “It speaks a language I don’t understand. I’m too naive for this. The bird’s too clever for me.” As I walked back, I saw my own shiny reflection in the window and went “ahh, The Bird, in fact, is very clever…” and started working after closing the door, knowing that the knocking wouldn’t stop in a while.
My new Song-on-Loop! I’m in love with this because it feels flowy and tacky at the same time. It’s got taiko drums in the background, a jumpy melody on top, and a short choppy rap. Though the song has a lot of traditional instruments, the melody is still very ‘pop’. One day, I’ll know what I actually mean by flowy-choppy-tacky-… but for now, it’s just boom-cha-duk-duk or la-la-la. One new thing I’ve learnt this week on this is that the reason I think J-Pop feels more “natural” and not just catchy is because it’s been influenced by Jazz. Jazz has less structure than Pop (which is repetitive for the familiarity) and thus, J-Pop more chords, verses which don’t follow the same tune, and key changes. Me likey.
When a dance performance has smooth, flowy moves with a strong rhythm pattern, it creates a melody which doesn’t exist. I found that very captivating. You don’t need to dance to a piece of music, you can make music from a choreography. In addition to the dance choreo, Summer Riot also has the Taiko Group performing, and I just love the Taiko performance! I took a Taiko class when I was at Stanford and discovered the concept of ‘performance’ apart from the drumming.
Drama is the only word which comes to mind. The wild dramatized swings, the high energy, the rhythm of the entire group and the most important thing, believing in it. Feeling it and living it are both very important. I can still hear my drums teacher telling me “You have perfect rhythm, but no feels”. Burn. Did I mention, like other martial arts I learnt, you have vocalizations where you yell “HAH”, or “YA”.
楽しいだ。