Press Room
South China Morning Post, The Review – TASTEMAKER – 26 June 2011
BEAT OUT THE MESSAGE
Kumi Masunaga is devoted to the idea that drumming can bring people together, writes Patrick Brzeski
For Kumi Masunaga, there is nothing drumming can’t do. For the past 21 years, the Japanese percussionist has been beating her drum for all manner of causes, crowds and occasions, spreading her message of communication and inspiration through rhythm.
Masunaga has drummed for charity, drummed for corporate leadership, drummed for education, drummed for drunken bar patrons, drummed for elderly, and, always, drummed for fun. In the process, the 44-year-old has touched the lives of thousands of people from a broad cross-section of Hong Kong society.
“Drumming music cuts through all boundaries – gender, age, social hierarchy, occupation,” the vibrant and wide-eyed Masunaga says of her craft. “It’s the most accessible form of music. Early on, I realised it had incredible potential as a tool for positive, non-verbal communication.”
Although she’s played drums in more than a dozen bands and music collectives in Hong Kong during the past 20 years, it was in 2000 that Masunaga founded her company, Drum-Jam Hong Kong, and started offering drum circle sessions to a variety of government and corporate clients, and community outreach organizations.
But perhaps she’s best known for her Community Drum Jam session at the Fringe Club in Central, which she has been leading every month for the past seven years; and for the Tom Lee Music Drum Circle she has held on the last Sunday of every month in the Cultural Centre Piazza for more than a decade. On Wednesday, Masunaga will host her final Community Drum Jam session at the Fringe, before the heritage site closes for an estimated eight to nine months for renovations.
Masunaga, who describes herself as “a very busy but happy single mum”, has only missed one session at the Fringe, due to the birth of her daughter. “I was back in the middle of the circle the next month,” she recalls. “I just had to take a few breaks to breastfeed my baby upstairs.”
Masunaga was born and raised in Tokyo and started taking classical piano lessons at the age of three. In middle school, she gravitated towards rock music, taking up the organ and guitar, and ultimately setting on her true passion: the drums. She moved to Hong Kong in 1990, where she “fell in love with the natural beauty surrounding the city and the can-do spirit of Hong Kong people”. While working as a Japanese translator to pay the bills, she continued to explore new style of drumming – African, Afro-Cuban, Japanese taiko, and others.
“Like many Japanese people, I’m fanatical about my hobbies and want to seek out the deep source of the things I love. So eventually I went to Africa to find the source of drumming and rhythm music.”
Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Masunaga made multiple solo trips to West Africa (“I’m an adventurer; I have no fear – I just went”), exploring the villages and musical traditions of Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. “In the areas I visited, rhythm is the centre of life. I would start playing my drum at bus stops and at first people would come and laugh at the funny Japanese girl, but soon they would start tapping along and sing and dance with me. I made a lot of friends that way.” In 2002 alone, she made three solo trips to Africa.
Around this time, she launched her community outreach drum sessions in schools and community centres around Hong Kong, providing drums and inviting community members of all stripes to join in. A producer from Japanese broadcaster NHK offered to sponsor her next trip to Africa, provided he could film it. She brought along two of her young female drumming students from Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, and the TV documentary that resulted won a silver award at the 2003 Chicago International Film Festival.
Since the early 2000s, in addition to her community outreach work, Masunaga has also been leading corporate teambuilding and corporate leadership drum circle sessions for a range of multinational clients. “A drumming session can be an amazingly effective tool to bring a team together and everyone harmonized and communicating openly,” she says. The result is a memorable, visceral experience that the whole team shares.
As her long run of Community Drum Jam sessions at the Fringe comes to a close, Masunaga is focusing on taking the positive vibes of rhythm to the areas that could benefit from it most. On June 5th, she partnered with the Tin Shui Wai District Council and local church groups to launch Drum Up HK!, a new public and open-access monthly drum circle session meant to encourage community unity and positive communication in the district known as “the city of sadness” for high suicide, crime and poverty rates. “Over the years I’ve witnessed so many tired and depressed people become energised and inspired by the influence of drumming, so as soon as I heard about the neighborhood’s social issues, I thought, ‘Oh, we have to bring drumming there.’ We’re hoping this can be a prototype programme that we can bring to areas in need of encouragement all over Hong Kong.”
More than 200 people of various ages and backgrounds took part in the first two-hour session, with hundreds of others looking on.
On July 5, Masunaga will be returning to Japan to lead the Japan Drum Walkkabout, a 2 1/2-week, multi-city tour designed to share “the fun and healthy rhythms of drumming with the people of Japan”. Along the way, Masunaga’s troupe will raise funds to donate to the earthquake and tsunami victims most in need.” Everyone in Japan has been deeply psychologically impacted by the disaster,” she says. “But percussion is sound in time, so it requires you to focus all your attention on the experience of the present moment. You can’t really think about the future or the past while you’re drumming in a group. You can’t think about your problems. It’s a form of group harmonization, and it always leads to a very natural and joyful feeling.” thereview@scmp.com
