Imagine that you’ve recently become a big fan of salsa or Cuban son. You decide you want to learn more about how the music works—maybe even take a few conga lessons yourself. On a whim, you do a YouTube search for “conga lessons”. Today, the top result is a lesson called “Poncho Sanchez- Fundimentals of Latin Music- Conga”, posted by Gordanius in 2007. It has attracted 469,226 views, which seems to lend it a bit of authority. You hit play, and Poncho Sanchez introduces himself and starts to explain the names of the different-sized conga drums in front of him.
While the video runs, you idly scroll down to the comment section. In the “Highest Rated Comments” section, a commenter seems to be defending Sanchez from a criticism that’s no longer onscreen:
Your Spanish is good enough for you to understand that this defense relies on the claim that no gringo can match the Latin touch, which is inborn in the blood of Latinos. (And if you’re me, you find this whole line of argument depressing.) Further down, another commenter criticizes Sanchez—first for pedagogical inefficiency (he could explain the same material in fewer words), but also for playing that lacks “sabor”; he’s fine technically, but he doesn’t SPEAK with the congas.
Another person recommends a different YouTube channel, and notes that these days students don’t have to rely on a single teacher’s example:
This seems like a good point, but you don’t feel qualified to compare different players’ techniques—you’re looking for beginner lessons. You back up to your search results page and click on the second video in the list, which is titled “Conga Lesson 1: Basic Tones- Nate Torres”. 68,158 views, not too shabby. Nate Torres introduces himself and promises that this video is the first in a series.
Both the teacher and the video production are far less professional than in the Poncho Sanchez example. It seems very likely that the Torres video was made for YouTube, whereas when you Google the title of the Sanchez video it looks like it’s probably an excerpt (unauthorized?) from an instructional DVD of the same name released in 2005. Sanchez is on stage or in a studio, with well-miked drums displayed from multiple camera angles. Nate Torres seems to be in his living room—or maybe more likely his parents’ living room, given his age and the visible décor. The lighting isn’t great and the sound reproduction is fuzzy. Torres fidgets with his hat and shifts in his seat; he has none of Sanchez’s gravitas. On the other hand, by 35 seconds into the video Torres is telling you exactly how to position your hand in order to get an open tone out of your drum. “What you’re going to do is have your fingers lined up just like this, close together, with your thumb out, so your thumb doesn’t get in the way.” He uses his own left hand to shape the position of his right hand, inviting you to do the same—a physical correction from an imagined teacher. He offers a visual cue for exactly where to strike the drum: “making sure that your knuckle line lines up with the rim of the drum”. Then he slowly demonstrates three strokes and looks right at the camera, seeming to ask, “Did you get it?”
When you scroll down to the comments, you see that Torres must be “prpapito3000”, the person who uploaded the video; he’s responding to comments and questions (though the last responses are from six months ago).
Both of these videos were first posted in 2007, an eternity ago in YouTube time. This no doubt partly accounts for their placement in the search rankings; they were among the earliest conga lessons uploaded to YouTube, and once they had attracted a decent number of views their view counts were positioned to snowball (among the limited audience entering a query for “conga lessons”, anyway). Neither video functions as a teaser for another online business or for private lessons with this teacher. While the Sanchez video appears to be excerpted from a commercially-available DVD, that DVD is not linked from the YouTube page or cited in detail (indeed, the title is even misspelled—probably a typo, but sometimes an indicator of deliberate evasion of copyright enforcement). Torres just seems like a friendly teenager who’s messing around with YouTube and imagining what he could contribute.
These YouTube videos and their associated comment threads offer an excellent example of amateur-to-amateur music pedagogy (how about A2A for short?). The first uploader, Gordanius, has posted a professional musician’s lesson as a public service; in the comment thread, viewers demonstrate their own expertise by offering criticism, defenses, and their own advice to learners. The second uploader, prpapito3000, is an amateur himself, but certainly knows enough to offer useful lessons to beginners; moreover, he’s willing to periodically interact with his viewers online, answering questions, offering encouragement, or brushing off typical YouTube slagging about his wardrobe with a format-idiomatic “lmao” (that’s “laughing my ass off”—and I’ve typed and deleted this several times now, wondering whether anyone who’s read this far would need an explanation). His youth and non-professionalism actually make him appealing; after all, if I’m watching this video I’m probably playing congas in my living room, too. And if I’m still just learning how to produce an open tone, do I really need to get a lesson from a venerable professional performer? It’s also quite likely that I’m only aspiring to be an amateur player myself, in which case maybe Nate Torres is a better role model for me than Poncho Sanchez. He’s certainly more accessible. Here’s a bit of the comment thread for one of his other videos:
I wonder what all this A2A pedagogy means for the future of music learning? I’m sure there are some people who would argue that Nate Torres shouldn’t be rubbing shoulders with Poncho Sanchez as a conga teacher. And after all, I’m a pro in this business myself; maybe I should feel threatened by the fact that a YouTube comment exchange can pretty much sum up a week’s discussion in my college course on Latino diaspora music (topic: is salsa Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Nuyorican?).
So far, though, I’m more than happy to have help from both Sanchez and Torres in the classroom.
There's a whole lot of music instruction stuff on YouTube and my impression is that it's widely varying in quality. I've looked at some of the trumpet stuff (my main instrument) and . . . . There's a series of videos put out by the US Army music corp (or whatever it's called). They're well-produced, but I'm wondering what beginner could go through them in order and really get going. For one thing, the players doing the demonstrations are good players and, on one level, that's good. No, that's essential. Because you need the sound in your ear.
However, a beginning trumpeter is not going to get that sound off the bat, nor anything like it. They may well go blue in the face just trying to get any sound at all. It's not clear to me that they'd gain anything by hearing the crude sound of another beginner, though it might give them so reassurance that, yeah, they're not hopeless because the noise coming out of the horn sounds like a dying duck.
My impression is that that particular series of lessons might work better as during-the-week refreshers for someone who's also working with an experienced instructor, one who could, in fact, assign some of those videos as part of the lesson. Some of the other trumpet stuff I've seen is just worthless. The player is maybe not particularly good, but also really has no concept of how to teach.
As for the two videos you've looked at, I'd think that the Torres would be more useful to the absolute beginner. He spends more time on the basic tones, which is important. While the tuning of your three congas - ha! if you've got three congas - that seems to me almost useless to the beginner. And why tune them to E, G, & C? It's not like congas are pitched instruments that have to be retuned when you switch from one key to another. That seems a little fussy to me. I've worked with some superb conga players who don't tune to a pitch-pipe. I mean, I've never in my life seen or heard a congero retune their drums in order to make the bridge on "A Night in Tunisia."
To be blunt, I think the man's grandstanding. He seems more intent on playing the role of the sage master than in actually being useful to the beginner. Your absolute beginner is going to be lost with that pattern Sanchez demonstrates. And so forth and so on. Sanchez is demonstrating some basic stuff, sure, but I'm not sure how pedagogically useful it is. It's almost more like a demonstration for some ethnomusicologist to use in teaching about Latin percussion. There it could be more useful because you're not trying to teach someone to use their hands. You just want to get certain sounds in their ears.
And then there's the clave. Sanchez is assuming someone who's familiar with the clave. If you've grown up with Latin music, of if you've become familiar with it, then, yes, you know what the clave is. But you may not be able to play it. You certainly don't need to be able to play the clave in order to play on the congas and develop some basic technique. But it's not clear to me that you could really play those rhythm patterns unless you've also learned the clave so that you can just turn it on in your inner ear when you're practicing.
I think the amateur versus professional definition assumption here might be an either or fallacy that limits the discussion to a cloistered view of what actually happens on the street. Consider, for example, Mahalia Jackson; if she continues to sing as a volunteer, only in the church choirs, avoiding all secular music, is she an amateur? The handing down of musical experience as living cultural artifact may be one of the last vestiges of the early guilds that developed trades through apprenticeships – the master held the secrets; that’s what made him a pro. Often the lessons are handed down within a family, like old clothes: I’m the third oldest of ten children – eight of us play music, though our parents did not. It all started with my second oldest sister forming a folk group in high school during the folk revival of the early sixties. And even today I feel like a day that goes by without some new riff coming my way is a day wasted. But that riff doesn’t have to come from a professional. Some of the most interesting come right off the street. Anyway, sorry for the ramble, but what I really wanted to mention is this great film about drumming called The Visitor, about a disaffected professor who takes up street drumming. It’s about some other things too, but I thought you might enjoy the drumming lessons. Here’s a link to the film’s site: http://www.thevisitorfilm.com/