I’ve taught Sunday school at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Canaan since 2010. In 2017, I was part of a group that created a program for the Sunday school kids (all age groups combined together in the auditorium) with Ed Hill, a conga player and the sexton of the church, as our chief percussionist and me as the emcee and assistant percussionist. Ed would bring a bag of 10 to 15 percussion instruments, and I would bring my guiro, cuica, maracas, claves, figner cymbals, and harmonica. The program was named "Salsa Sunday" and for the performance I wore a guayabera and a musician’s hat. It was held on the last Sunday school class before summer break. In 2018, we added the other sexton Edgar and his wife Piedad as our Salsa dancers. In 2023, we did our last performance (for the seventh year in a row) because Ed Hill retired as the sexton later that summer. In that year we had 27 kids in the audience. What follows is the content that was used in the program.

"Today we’re going to be learning about Latin Percussion. Latin percussion is a class of instruments. Raise your hand if you have ever played an instrument. Latin Percussion defined: Percussion is the section of an orchestra that has the drums, but also includes instruments such as the Claves, Guiro, Wrist Slapper, Maracas, and the Cuica which is a Brazilian instrument used in samba music. Latin America is a geographic area comprised of South America, Central America and the islands of the Caribbean. The reason it’s called Latin America is because the language spoken in ancient Rome was Latin. Latin is a dead language, it is no longer used. When the Romans conquered most of Western Europe, the conquered territories based their languages off of the Roman’s Latin. These languages based on Latin are called Romance languages and include Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian. When the Europeans colonized North America, South America and Central America, the lands that were colonized by countries that spoke Spanish, French and Portuguese (the Romance languages) are referred to as Latin America.

Music is a sort of language that can be understood, felt, and "enjoyed by all"; regardless of the language you speak, your culture, society, or other kinds of differences. Music is a whole lot of varying vibrations or sound waves that fall within our hearing range. When music enters our ears, our brains process the vibrations, and we "hear" tones, beats and all the other things built into it. But sometimes we also "feel" something too. Most religions use music to worship God. We sing together at church because there is an inner connection between music and the soul, and singing together can make us feel better and make our soul a little heathier-that’s why we do it.

When Beethoven wrote music, he wanted people who listened to his music to feel the same thing he felt when he wrote the music. Short, short, short, long; short, short, short, long – what do you think he felt when he wrote that piece of music? He wrote that music shortly after he discovered that he was going to miss a rendezvous with the woman he loved because his carriage got stuck in the mud, she thought he missed the meeting on purpose so she left before Beethoven arrived and they were separated forever. He felt anxious and sad and that comes out in that piece of music. Some people who can open their hearts to this music feel sad and anxious when they hear it, but in a mysterious way the music can also get them to feel good, restored, the soul feels a little healthier.

The salsa dance is a dance that Latin Americans like to dance. Why do they do it? Because it's fun to move to the music! Edgar and his wife Piedad are amateur dancers that are going to demonstrate how to dance the salsa.

The First Performance is called ra ra, ra-ra-ra.

The History of Latin Percussion

Ed was born in the United States and his ancestors are from Puerto Rico. Edgar and Piedad were born in Colombia. Both of my parents grew up in Havana, Cuba, but I was born in New York. In Puerto Rico, Colombia and Cuba the main language spoken is Spanish (then I initiate a short conversation in Spanish with Ed, Edgar and Piedad...Que se cuenta?).

North America and South America were populated by indigenous people until Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic ocean in 1492. When the Europeans began moving to the Americas they established the Atlantic slave trade. This slave trade took place for 500 years from the 15th through the 19th centuries. The slave trade was an evil, shameful way of making money and denying people’s humanity. Through its cruelty, it harmed, tortured and killed innocent people, but it had a few curious side effects. One side effect was that the enslaved people heavily influenced the music of Latin America with their rich drumming traditions.

In one specific part of the Atlantic slave trade, many of the enslaved people that were brought to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Jamaica were Yoruba people. The Yoruba people are an African tribe that today number 40 million people. Most of this population is in Nigeria, Africa. They make up a fifth of Nigeria’s population. A lot of the Yoruba drums and other musical instruments were invented by them over 1,000 years ago. The Yoruba invented hour-glass shaped drums which were the precursor to the conga drums. The Yoruba also incorporated rhythmic chanting into their drumming rituals. Much of the Yoruba music is spiritual in nature, and is often devoted to a spirit that reflects one of their gods in the Yoruba religion. Yoruba drumming is considered to be one of the most advanced drumming traditions in the world. Yoruba music has had a huge influence on the music of Latin America.

For the Second Performance called Bop bop, budoop, bop bop , beedoo beedoo, we encourage the children to come up to the front and try to follow along with our dancers as they demonstrates the steps of the salsa dance.

For the final part of the program, we let the kids come up and try the Latin percussion instruments. Ed plays a beat on the conga drums, and I challenge the kids with instruments to follow the same rhythm that Ed is playing. Then we stop the music and I say for this part only one child at a time will play along with Ed. Ed starts the beat and I point to each child individually and encourage them to play their instrument in sync with Ed’s beat.

At the end I say, “Let’s give a big round of applause to our wonderful Salsa dancers Edgar and Piedad...And leading the percussion music is our star conga player, Ed Hill! And, I’m the backup percussionist Victor Alvarez” (at which point I would take off my hat and give the crowd a deep bow).