🌸​ Sakura Heartbreak (2020-Mar) happened. Because events like the D.C. Sakura (hm hmm hmmm) festival were taken over by COVID-19 (chiki-chanchan) noise. DON it! [CANCELED: 2020 Sakura Taiko Takeover at the Tidal Basin]

✨ HERbeat Tanpopo (2020-Feb)
​I'm sharing this song piece that HERbeat sparked with drum tracks (on the plane ride back to Michigan) and strings & flute tracks (at home still unpacking this experience). This is like all the things at once in the raw, yet to be tended to. Give us some time and we will all surely blossom beyond our dreams.

🌟 I am in awe of all the *HERbeat Women Taiko All-Stars* who came together to create and share an amazing show of love, spirit, power, wonder, leaving us in anticipation of the many magical seeds that will spread around the world and grow from this beautiful happening on Leap Day 2020 in Minnesota.

​❇️ Support HERbeat:   taikoartsmidwest.org/herbeatfilm & www.womenandtaiko.org
*HERbeat artists: Kaoly Gocoo Asano, Heidi Chan, Yurika Chiba, Chizuko Endo, Michelle Fujii, Naomi Guilbert, Mayumi Hashimoto, Pj Hirabayashi, Chieko Kojima, ManMan Mui, Anna Sato, Iris Shiraishi, Megan Chao Smith, Aki Takahashi, Tiffany Tamaribuchi, Jennifer Weir, Diana Wu, Yamada Mizue.

🖼️ Worth A Thousand (2020-Jan)
~photo, poem, percussion by Eileen S. Ho
​
If a picture is worth
A thousand words,
How many thoughts
Can the image in my mind
Hold that
A thousand words is worth
At least a mention
Seeding stories yet untold
Beginning to unfold
From a captured state
Suspended in time and
Ordered to speak in order
For each word to tell its worth
Is a thousand songs
Calling out as so many
Voices ringing out singing
With one melody seeking
Harmony and discord mix
All the sounds seeping
Through the cracks
In our souls
Each song from our hearts
Is worth a thousand
Pictures shining forth
Painting scenes from our
Past with light and dark
Tones etched into how
Now we breathe deeply so
We are able to live
And touch every
Dream of each
Picture, Word, Song
That is worth
A thousand wishes.

🌧 All The Rain Feels (2019-Dec)
​I woke up this winter morning to all the sounds of rain falling outside. The rain fell all day and into the night. Hear all the rain feels. Sadness. Anger. Joy. There is more to come in the new year, I'm sure, and I'll be listening for all the feels.

☹️😠🙂 Sadness > Anger > Joy. Three emotions are expressed through the flute melodies and odaiko phrases which are introduced sequentially and subsequently played as mixed feelings.

🎵 This piece was created with the Japanese Taiko Drums kit (center Odaiko and three different shime daiko) and flutes (Bb minor pentatonic scale) in Garageband iOS on an iPad Mini 4.

🧐 Taiko ears might also hear the underlying jiuchi rhythms on shime transition from Tenteke to combination with teKenke, then just yoKatta, and finally to tekeTen.

​👣 Longshore Walk (2019-Nov) Walking up Longshore Drive in Ann Arbor on a crisp Fall day... I walked alone with the sounds of my footsteps as crunch of gravel, ice and leaves underfoot along with the birds calling and highway driving in the distance past the cool river below.

🐾 A friendly free roaming dog named Red had just tried to walk us while we were walking our dog #SmokeytheMinPin, and after we were able to lose him to the distraction of another dog and walker, I stopped to take photos long enough to lose my own companions who eventually walked home ahead of me. 😹

​🎵This track includes audio recorded with my phone on my solo Longshore Walk. After I got home, I added the flute melody and taiko drums. Sounds to #PlayDanceDream about today.

​🌱 SOUL SEEDING (2019-Oct) comes from my experience with the loving spirit of taiko during a weekend retreat held by the kaDON team hosting Kaoly Asano sowing the seed of taiko spirit with her special song ELEVEN. After a full day feeling the transformative vibe of our inspiring teacher and the grooving pulse of our amazing drum circle, I sat in the dining hall that evening, let the rhythms spill out from my heart, and watched the tendrils unfold.

🎶 SOUL SEEDING music track was created in Garageband for iOS on iPad Mini 4. Segments of Japanese Taiko Drums (original 24 bars on two tones of chu daiko, 36 bars on three different shime daiko, 8 bars on kane) plus one live loop (8 bars of Darcy 'Soul Searching' percussion) were mixed to create this piece.

📸2019-10-18 @eileensho:  Kaoly Asano of GOCOO & Shoji Kameda of kaDON practicing in the gym between sessions at the Perlman Retreat Center near Lake Beulah, Wisconsin, during the 2019 kaDON Fall Retreat.

🎂 Happy Birthday, Dear! (2019-Sep) Happy Birthday to Yurika Yurika! ​DON worry, bday happy to my friend and artist Yurika Chiba | TaikoCat at www.facebook.com/YuTaikoCat/

🔥​ Drum for Amazonia (2019-Aug) Let’s keep talking about this. Our lungs are burning from the fire that we built. The smoke brings tears to our eyes. The sounds might fade as the heat rises. But we must keep beating our drums.

💕 Love Us Harmony (2019-Aug) Led Uber-Happily by Linda Uyehara-Hoffman!
🎶 Listen Using Headphones (to hear the taiko more clearly).
[Inspired by Leadership Uplifting Hearts at our Step Up / Step Out Women and Taiko Leadership Development session on 2019-08-13 in the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, Portland, OR. @eileensho Facebook post]