Ralph

What is your name?

Ralph Brook (@rbk.dama)

Where is home?

I live in the lovely southside of Glasgow, Scotland so that's my home. I'm also a Yorkshire pudding born and bread, so as much as Glasgow is my home, Huddersfield has my heart.

How/when did kendama/SK become part of your life and who was involved?

So kendama kind of went from 0-100 in a heartbeat for me. One day I bumped into one of my pals hanging out with someone jamming dama so I stopped and said hello. From then on out it kind of just engulfed my life and before I knew it was happening, I was playing everyday and never left home without one. In terms of SK, it's been a huge part of my journey from the very beginning. Getting to not only jam but become very good friends with some of the top players in the UK could only mean one thing, a kendama addiction. Constantly pushing myself to catch up with these slayers and then being equally pushed forward by them to up my game more and more was 99% of the reason I'm at the level I currently stand. I could talk about this all day if I'm honest but TL;DR kendama and it's community is goated.

Describe your play-style in three words.

Janky, spammy and structured.

Preferred string length/wood type/shape etc.

String length I usually have around 12-13 fingers, I try my best to also sesh some setups that are out of my comfort zone. Despite me working with wood on daily basis, I'm so unfussed about what wood my setup is, as long as it feels nice in my hand I'm happy. If I had to pick one though I think I'd be content with a nice maple setup. Now, I feel favourite shape goes without saying that Lomonds number 1 for me so I'll give a #2 as well which would have to go to Cereal Kendama’s Hybrid 2 shape. I started out playing a hell of a lot of performers, elevates and 1.5s so I cannot fault the hybrid 2.

What is your most cherished kendama memory?

Man what a difficult question, there's so many good contenders up there. I'm going to have to go cheesy for this one and say, getting surprised at Isle of dama 2023. Hearing your own name being called out along with “welcome to the team” is just an utterly insane feeling. Having everybody in the room sprinting over to hug me and just being surrounded by such supporting people for what felt like forever was incredible. Yeah that was definitely one for the books.

What else are you passionate about?

Probably would have to say my work, being a joiner/builder. I love to keep myself busy with physical activities and I've always loved to build stuff so when I found out somebody would pay me good money to do BOTH of those thing, ain't no chance I was saying no. I've done various different things in the construction area but most of my knowledge was the 3 or 4 years I've done work with my dad. Doing a lot of different things from hanging a few shelves to building whole extensions. Being able to stand back and look at a finished job thinking to yourself "I've done that", nowt like it

What music do you listen to?

I can't lie, I absolutely love anything with big bass. My guilty pleasure is blasting hard tekk through my earphones while strolling through Glasgow. That being said I listen to just about any kind of music so I could go from some mad bassy tune to a bit of Leo Sayer in a blink of an eye.

Fun fact about yourself?

I have laser eyes and can fly like superman.

Final thoughts/shout-outs

Kendama is a vibe, love you all. Shout Paul, Marius and Clarky for this opportunity. Big love to the rest of SK for such a warm welcome.