This has been a long time in coming, and much looked forward to! We’ve known Marie and Debs who organise and run Kontaani for quite some time now, firstly though our workshops and the festival network, but increasingly for their massive support for what we do, attending many of our events, workshops and private lessons, but they most notably stand out for their huge enthusiasm for this music on a scale on a par with our own and it’s something we rarely see. Over all this time getting to know them, and more recently some of the other Kontaani team we’ve talked and enthused much over the idea of going along to lead a workshop at one of the regular Kontaani public workshops. Having found a date that we’re all free, last night Jamie and I travelled up to quiet and peaceful Langley Village Hall, above Macclesfield to deliver a Drumroots Djembe and Dundun workshop and to temporarily make Langley not quite so peaceful! With Marie’s worries that many of their enthusiastic regulars were unable to make it, we were expecting a fairly small class but were happily surprised to receive a room full in which there wasn’t space for many more. (more…)