28 if Dulcimer Players News
Dulcimer Clubs continues
The Ozark Folk Center reports that other winners from the April 1990 Jamboree are: Solo Mt. Dulcimer - Neil Gaston (2nd) and Ann Harmon (4th). Solo Hammered Dulcimer - Randy Roderick (1st), Julia Harris (2nd), Dean Lippincott (3rd), Joe Jewell (4th) and Karen Deal (5th). Ensemble - Wally Smith (1st), Dulcimer Fusion (2nd), Gaston, Mayfield, Mohun & Jackson (4th) and Mom & The Girls (5th). John Elliott has provided us with a translation of a recent newsletter from the Japan Dulcimer Club. Their activities have included a 4th Japan Dulcimer Festival, held in Kobe in November 1989. It featured 5 groups on hammered and mountain dulcimers in concert and in workshops. The newsletter contained a profile of Mr. Neborimoto who told the readers: I first saw a dulcimer on the jacket of a
Blues Copan(?) recording. When I heard the instrument, it reminded me of an Autoharp. It wasn't until 4 years later (1979) that I met real, live players at the University of Oregon, but I hadn't forgotten that beautiful sound. The real springtime of my life didn't come until I had passed 30. About that time, I saw an ad for a h. dulcimer kit in Frets magazine. I sent for it, built it and then thought, "There's probably nobody in all Japan who knows how to play this thing!"
Actually, I had a repertoire of only 2 songs: Golden Slippers and Morrison's Jig! 1 thought something seasonal would be appropriate, so I started in on [the traditional Japanese] Cherry Blossom. But, somehow, as images of children playing in temple grounds amidst clouds of falling cherry blossoms came to my mind, the music of those images came floating naturally from the dulcimer: my first composition on the instrument. "Wait, Wait!" I thought, " I have to get this down!"
Then I heard about the 1st Japan Dulcimer Festival in 1986. I'd been building and fooling with panpipes, kalimbas, sitars and the sho (Japanese reed instrument), but here was a chance to start on the dulcimer. The year 1987 was a watershed in my musical career. In May I did my first solo performance on the dulcimer in a coffee shop in Ebetsu [near Sappora, capitol of the northern island Hokkaido]. Up until then I had dabbled in classical and samba music on the guitar, but I wanted to do something different, and it hit me that day in the coffee shop: "This is it!"
Then, as I picked up my kora, I remembered the vivid impression left by the silhouette play Night On The Milky Way Railroad, and from that source flowed another composition, the sparkling "Path of the Stars." Since then, new compositions have been born; not of me, but of the muses dwelling in my instruments. My music is like that of the Renaissance and Indian musicians. "Quiet your heart and mind, and the inspiration of the gods will come to you." 0
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