Cultural Exchange

A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call from a young man named Brian who said his sister was visiting from Taiwan, and she is a Chinese Dulcimer major who really wanted to learn about the American dulcimer. I agreed to have them come over the next day, and we spent a couple of delightful hours making music and talking about different instruments. Ting Ting is 15 years old; she and her mother spent the summer in Houston so that Ting Ting could work on her English. She hopes to attend college in the U.S. She says that music and language are her two main interests; she plays the guitar and Chinese dulcimer. It was interesting to see her dulcimer hammers, which are quite different from mine. She enjoyed playing with my ergonomically-designed hammers that I started using after my hands started cramping with standard hammers. I got out my mountain dulcimer, which she played around on, I played some of my favorite CD's for her, and I showed her a couple of YouTube clips of dulcimer players.

Ting Ting asked if I had a piece of music she could learn. Fortunately, I had an extra copy of a piece I had learned at Kentucky Music Week a few years ago, so I was able to send her home with it. She listened to me play it and started picking it out on my dulcimer very quickly, which is no small feat considering the tuning is different from the dulcimer that she plays on. I'm hoping she'll come back next summer, and we can spend some time teaching each other new things.

Ting Ting's mom took some pictures of us, which she has emailed to me. And I just love the notes she writes. She is a sweet girl, and I really enjoyed meeting her!