Carved Culture's first percussion book, the Complete Kashaka Player, began with a simple request from our audience: show us how to play the kashaka shaker. It's a fun instrument but controlling its movements can be surprisingly difficult for beginners. I didn't know how to play it properly myself at first. Seeing that people wanted help motivated me to learn and practise so I could share what I discovered and help others get started.
My First Kashaka Resource
I published a kashaka tutorial video that received just under 30,000 views. I also made a one-minute Short that reached 294,000 views and gave new players a quicker introduction. The response encouraged me to break down the techniques further and make the instrument more approachable.
From Techniques to a Book
As I learned to play, I realised how much coordination and timing the kashaka requires. Explaining individual movements helped me understand them more deeply and gave beginners a way to build confidence one technique at a time. Those lessons naturally grew beyond a single video into a resource people could revisit while practising.
Introducing Our First Percussion Book
That journey led to The Complete Kashaka Player, a downloadable eBook written by Ryan Bomzer to help people develop their kashaka playing. It marked Carved Culture's first dedicated percussion book and showed how listening to our audience could shape what we create next.