Brothers,
I just talked to Sandy about this (3/09), and he is not cool with it in any way. Not happy with it, does not want his transcriptions published on line. Sorry to say. He asked for me to ask for them to be taken down.
What i want to know is, why was he not asked before y'all posted it?
Serious business, and entirely up to Sandy, in my eyes. You see him every week, let him decide how HIS information is passed on. There is a reason Sandy does not allow filming, right?? Im quite sure he believes the information must be passed from teacher to student personally, not from student to student. The tradition may not survive the misinterpretations by relatively novice students. His tradition is so expertly refined, due in large part to how it was passed on - meticulously in this way, from Master to student.
The work of transcribing, or the money and time spent on classes is not even worth mentioning. This is this man's family tradition, not remotely represented by a students simple transcriptions of a rhythm.
One cannot represent a specific 'feel' with quarter note charts, and we all know these rhythms are not played as they are charted out, even if all the information was given to the student. Standard notation is also inadequate, unless you feel like writing it all our in 64ths or something.
The fee for the class ($15) does not give a student ownership of the information, clearly. Would it be legal to publish and sell a book of your transcriptions of Sandy's material?.. perhaps, but it clearly is not right.
Does the man have to copy right his material? As students, we are supposed to be looking out for and caring for our teachers. That is a part of the tradition as well, no doubt.
The information taught in a group class of beginners/intermediate students often does not represent the actual rhythms played in practice. Without knowing what he is, and what he is not teaching you, you can easily misrepresent the Villamil family tradition.
I am happy to share Regino's information, for example, as we had a long discussion about it. He believed the tradition may vanish, unless it was openly shared, in all forms, by all those who know anything about it. Of course he would have preferred the master to student path, thats what he believed. So I openly share any information he left for me, in the spirit of honoring him along with the tradition.
I just wished we would have talked to the Maestro about it, before posting the charts.
Tony