Conga rhythms for beginners

[Andy Bilham]

Hi all
I'm posting on this site for the first time, and hope someone can help me.
I teach 9- and 10-year-olds to play the congas (brave, eh? ??? ). They can mostly play a basic tumbao but where do I go from there?
I can do an Afro-Cuban 6/8, but would like to do rhythms properly - it is someone else's cultural heritage, and deserves respect.
Are there any good books or other sites (hope this doesn't upset the site rules!?) which I can source to get some ideas?

Any help on this would be much appreciated - cheers

Andy

[Mike]

Hi,
I also teach students (11-18) in a percussion group, and I´m quite amazed that your younger pupils already play a decent tumbao, because the basic sounds are hard to learn I Think.

Well, the next thing you could start could be either rhythmic improvisation, of course or teaching them every rhythm from bembe to funk..
My experience is that especially the younger pupils have not gathered enough rhythmical understanding yet so that they have a masterly overview over what the basic rhythm is or what they should play when improvisiing. NEVERTHELESS, I always try to give them simple patterns to memorize and then to play small variations on it.

Cultural heritage is one thing, but didactic reduction to what can be played is another. You can´t teach little Europeans to improvise on a quinto in rumba like ####..

To me (+my students) the motivation focuses on fun in playing and having small gigs..

As far as other ideas are concerned Latin Percussion has some ideas on its site for younger children, and another link I recently found is http://www.playdrums.com/drum_circle.html
But that is probably not suitable for your age group.

ood luck and welcome on board anyway1

[JohnnyConga]

In my experience teaching in groups. after the initial learning of "how to hit" the drum.,and you learned your first pattern, now is the time to be creative, and start teaching them "drum parts'. Give them each a different part to learn in a particular ryhthm you want them to learn, also use other hand perc,. to make it interesting for them, so they don't get bored.Also sepearate the ones that pick up quicker than the rest and give them the "lead". Give the others hand perc to play along until they can learn the "lead" parts. Every instrument is just as important as the next,emphasize that so they won't feel "left out:" if there not on the drum. Clave is just as important or a bell,etc. Hope this helps...At your Service...ps also try "group challenge" pit one group of players against the other with the object of them all coming together in the end to form one big group,playing seperate parts.....JC JOHNNY CONGA...