Meet Our Correspondents

Wendy

Hi, I’m Wendy and have been with Harisen Daiko since early 2018. My son Kai started coming in the spring of 2019 to help while we prepared for our big sci-fi convention show. He’s now a full member and will travel with us to Nagasaki as a ninth grader.

I’m very excited for this trip because I have spent the majority of my life enthralled with Europe and its history, while only reading about Japan on the sidelines. I lived for two years in Germany and Denmark, so I know those cultures intimately. What I have been learning about Japanese culture through taiko and in language class in some ways is very similar to German culture, but much is also new and refreshing. However, since I was a child, I learned and eventually taught at college about Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the atomic bombs. Therefore, I am very much looking forward to visiting wartime memorials with my son also. 

Kai and I are both relatively new to taiko: I started early February of 2017, while he just months later in June. However, because taiko took such firm hold of me, in addition to several workshops in the Twin Cities with talented drummers from Canada, California, and Japan, I have also gone to four weekend-long workshops around the US, one in Europe, and I’ll go to one in Germany March 2020 as well. I have drummed with Japanese drummers here and in Europe, but I am so very excited and grateful to Harisen Daiko that we will be able to experience taiko in Japan as a participating group. I think it is an amazing opportunity for me and my son. He will have to miss a lot of school, but we will both learn so much with this cultural exchange that we can bring back to our lives in Minnesota.

Kristin

Hello there! I’m Kristin, I’ve been with Harisen since it formed in 2012. I got started in taiko when I joined my college’s student-run group in 2008, so I’ve been playing for over a decade now! 

Since taiko has been a part of my life for so long, it has become a very important influence on me. I love the energy and collaborative creativity of performing as a part of an ensemble, and I have made many friends through taiko, both in my college group and in Harisen. Music is a unifying force that transcends language and cultural borders, and it is a great honor that Harisen Daiko has been invited to perform with some of our fellow drummers in Nagasaki, Japan. It is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I am nearly beside myself with excitement.

I am also very excited to be able to share the experience through this travelogue! I am a scientist and an educator by trade, and I firmly believe that intercultural exchanges such as this help create global understanding and a society of peace. I have actually been to Nagasaki before, and this message of peace is one of particular import and prevalence there. As one of the only two cities on Earth that has been the target of an atomic bomb, the consequences of war are indelibly impressed on the city and its people. Aside from the fun experiences that we will have, I also hope to spend some time reflecting on the hope and necessity of peace at the Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park.

Julie

My name is Julie Schramke, and I have been with Harisen Daiko since 2019. I fell in love with taiko when we saw a performance in 1996 as the guests of our exchange student, Kazayuki Sakai. The excitement of music that I could feel as well as see has hooked me ever since. I have taken classes over the years with many groups, both as personal learning and as part of my training for my Masters degree in Music Education with an emphasis in Orff-Schulwerk. I am a K-8 general music teacher at Achieve Language Academy, a public charter school in St. Paul with a high southeast Asian student population. Japanese language and culture has high interest among my students, and taiko at my school is always a big hit. I also have been on staff at Concordia Language Villages Japanese camp for the past ten summers, teaching taiko to villagers in an immersion setting.

I am looking forward to connecting with students in Nagasaki, and sharing music with them. I have been to Japan, but never to Nagasaki, and am excited to share what I see and hear with our vicarious travelers through the blog. I am also excited to see the learning process in Japan with Japanese students, and to use what I have learned to become a better teacher. 

I truly believe in the power of music to change people for the better, and that music will have a vital role in creating a more peaceful world. It is my hope that by traveling to Nagasaki, and sharing music with the students of Nagasaki and as part of the Kunchi Festival, we will be helping to promote peace and unity.

Holly

Greetings! I'm Holly. I’ve been with Harisen Daiko since July 2016, but I started my taiko journey about five years ago. I am absolutely excited for this opportunity to travel to Nagasaki and share this unique experience with the students there! I am looking forward to drumming alongside them and the cultural exchange we will have! Music is very important to me, as is the art of taiko and the wonderfully connected global community that it brings. I believe that music can be a powerful and unifying force that transcends the barrier of language and can bring healing, understanding, and peace.

So, what else do I do? I'm a print production specialist and freelance artist with a BFA in illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to Japan twice before to visit friends that were working there in the JET program. One friend was working in Saitama, near Tokyo, and my other friend was working in Kameoka, which is near Kyoto, so we got to visit many of the surrounding areas, as well as experience the Gion Matsuri! We even braved Osaka in a typhoon! I am very excited to visit Nagasaki as I’ve never traveled there before! I hope to explore more of its history and visit important sites while I am there.

I plan to operate the Harisen Periscope while we are traveling. Periscope is a live streaming social media service that you can connect to via Twitter. While we stream the video live to you, you can log on to your Twitter account and interact with us! You can type in the chat box and send us comments or questions. Can’t join us live because of time zone differences? Not to worry! All the streamed video can be watched later at your convenience! Each video will be short but informative, roughly between 5 and 20 minutes depending on the activity. When the trip concludes, I plan to archive all our video footage so you can re-watch our travels anytime you’d like! I will also live tweet our progress of our journey and post photos so you can follow along that way too! Be sure to follow the Harisen Daiko Twitter feed to get alerts and updates before the streams go live!