eisa

Happypapa5 and I are generally in favor of letting our kids choose and develop their own interests. Having said that, if there's one thing we'd like to force, I mean strongly encourage, it's a love of music. It'd really be great if they learned to play an instrument or two or three... We're not interested in pushing a particular instrument on them, although I've had fun imagining Evan as a drummer like his dad, and Elise as a bass guitar player (and we'd really like both to learn to play the piano). Anyway, we've decided the best approach is to expose the kids to as many instruments as possible and hope that they learn to love a few.

So, when we went back to Okinawa, I had a secret mission...get Evan hooked on eisa, an Okinawan folk dance involving drums. It wasn't a terribly difficult mission, since Evan (maybe most kids his age?) loves percussion instruments. To cement his interest, we bought kid versions of the drums used by the eisa dancers.

And, as hoped, Evan loves his eisa drums and plays them at least once a day.





When I used to live in Shingu, I once saw an eisa group perform at the annual Shingu Festival in the fall. I was puzzled as to why they were there (were they invited guests? locals? Okinawans living in the area?) but was nevertheless moved by their performance. There's something about seeing eisa that really stirs the Okinawan spirit. Anyway, once we got back from Okinawa I did some searching in on the internet, and found that indeed there is a local eisa troupe right here in our neck of the woods, and that they perform at the Shingu Festival every year.

So of course, we had to go. It was a little crowded so we could do little more than watch, but I'm hoping that semi-regular exposure will help the Okinawan spirit grow in Evan & Elise, too. I'm also toying with the idea of us joining the group...





Elise did not get to see the eisa dancing this time around, but she's still having fun with the drums (or the smaller of the two)...