Ei Ja Nai Ka: The Spirit of Belonging
BY HANNAH-JASMINE BRUNSKILL
“Even a single experience of taiko shared with the values of TaikoPeace gives a loud and present voice to the message “what you do matters… YOU matter. You belong.””
Come to Bethlehem, build taiko drums and work with Palestinian teen-aged girls to perform at a festival. It was a ridiculous notion, and I couldn’t quite believe I was saying these words to PJ as I invited her to embark on this unknown journey with me. Pear was instrumental on both sides of the pond in encouraging us to respond with a resounding “Yes!”. And so we all arrived in Tel Aviv with taiko drums, luggage, and materials to make and play 15 drums for a week of work – me, Pear, PJ, and ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka?’.
CHALLENGE
At first, everything seemed to challenge us. We had to make the drums on which we were to teach the workshops, yet the drum bodies hadn’t even been made. It was unclear where we were supposed to work, the room suggested far too small, participants arrived late, some never arrived at all. There was no continuity of workshop participants – we would work hard making progress with one group for a day and then never see them again, and no-one seemed to know what was going on: nothing seemed clear despite months of planning.
FEAR
There was an unfamiliar ‘care-less’ attitude in class: chatting, mocking, disengaging, distracting self and others that was challenging and exhausting. Framed by uncertain logistics, chaotic organisation and the feeling of absent external support, it was easy to lose heart. How would ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka?’ get taught? How are we to put together a performance? We don’t really understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How is a Japanese-American song/dance going to feel a good fit? What are they all thinking? Why were we asked to work with this group of people? What difference could taiko make here? Why have we traveled so far to accomplish so little? How could I have dared to bring Pear and PJ into this scenario with so many unknowns? In addition to this, the political situation was heating-up with escalating military presence, violence and lock-downs. The impostor syndrome weighed heavily around me and our old friend Fear whispered words that echoed into the quiet corners of my mind: “you aren’t enough, it’s not working, you don’t belong here.”
How can you make progress when you’re in an environment that is so uncertain and volatile? The emotional environment was constantly changing, making planning the way we were used to futile. On a micro-level this was our experience as workshop leaders. For the Palestinian communities, this was the challenge faced daily. And as I write this in Spring of 2020, it is the epitome of what we are all living with. Uncertainty on this scale almost paralyses our senses and responses.
“We love this dance because it expresses belonging to our motherland.”
TRUST
Reaching out to one of the Israeli project workers, I heard words that have never left me: “Don’t try to change the world, just do what you do”. And so we began to let go, learning into the discomfort of the unknown, to focus not on the enormity of the situation in Palestine, but instead on what it is we knew how to do – meet people as openly as we can, to share our stories through words, dance and drums with the intention to make a connection that might be part of a bigger shift.
We talked to one group of girls. These young people had not experienced workshops before or worked together as a group in this way. Some had experienced raids in their homes the night before with members of their family now missing. Out of five, none had ever danced in a group before or performed on stage, three had never before played a musical instrument. It was that day we met Worod, Sara and Diala.
These three girls became the heart of the project for me, and through their eyes I could really see the magic of ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka?’ at work. Having learned the steps to the dance first, they came back the next day and moved to the drums, quickly taking up the role of leaders in the wider group in session and then later on-stage. They wanted to talk, share stories, get as much from the experience as they could, and give as much in return. Performing with them on stage at the end of Star Street in Bethlehem was an experience that I can still feel. The drum-beats that resounded through the streets transcended any previous taiko performance for me. It was not the most professional. There was no time to rehearse, we’d never performed before, the stage was slippery, the sun had been so hot, I was 5 months pregnant, I fell over…in many ways it was a hot mess. But in amongst the micro and macro unrest, the grounding resonance of the taiko seemed to carry our intentions far into the crowds. The singing bowl, song and the words of the charter read by PJ and translated by Worod into Arabic moved something in all of us, and in those in the crowd who felt moved to talk to us afterwards.
“I felt the spirit of belonging.”
At the end of the week, we recorded interviews with the girls about their experience. When we received the translations, we were blown away by the awareness, sincerity and authenticity in their words: “I thought it would be hard. As I started doing it I felt confidence, I felt that I can do anything, that I have power and energy. They say a woman is not strong. With this, I felt a woman can do anything. She is strong, she has power, she has energy” - Diala Shomali. "I felt the spirit of belonging." - Sara Khair. "We love this dance because it expresses belonging to our motherland." Worod AbuAita:
To me, this bears the heart of TaikoPeace. When we play taiko, and dance ‘Ei Ja Nai Ka?’ we experience a universal human bond to our land, the earth. And when that connection is made, when we feel that we belong here as beings unbounded by race, religion, gender, circumstance, we work together and feel empowered. And so to my old friend Fear who asks: what difference can a workshop, a weekly class, a taiko performance make? I say this: Even a single experience of taiko shared with the values of TaikoPeace gives a loud and present voice to the message “what you do matters…YOU matter. You belong.” It is a simple message that has been missing in so many lives. And because we carry that message in our hearts as we travel our paths, we can steer our own lives to a better future, and so the ripples make bigger waves and positive social change is closer.
“I thought it would be hard. As I started doing it I felt confidence, I felt that I can do anything, that I have power and energy. They say a woman is not strong. With this, I felt a woman can do anything. She is strong, she has power, she has energy”
THE PJ EFFECT
We’d travelled so far, like other artists, to be part of this festival, to build community and help re-envision a future of love and harmony. I saw and felt taiko as a tool of transformation more clearly there than anywhere. I am so grateful to PJ Hirabayashi for the life work that she has undertaken – her light shines so brightly that I recognised an ember within myself and learned to trust it. To work with Pear and PJ there was to wake me up – to follow my heart to where it is called, to stay open, to trust, to collaborate, and keep in mind Ei Ja Nai Ka’s message of belonging.
The drums have been left in Bethlehem in the hope that the young people there will continue to honour their intention: drumming for peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hannah-Jasmine Brunskill is the Founder and Director of Taiko Journey, leads a community taiko collective, and Zasso, a performing taiko group in Devon, UK. HJ was a 2012 recipient of the Winston Churchill Fellowship to deepen her taiko knowledge and experience taiko around the world. She brought the first TaikoPeace workshop to the UK in 2012, and Ei Ja Nai Ka to the UK Taiko Festival for the first time in 2013. A School for Social Entrepreneurs graduate in 2014, HJ committed to make Taiko Journey's social objective to nurture and sustain the wellbeing of individuals, organisations and communities through taiko.
