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 brings a bag of 10 to 15 percussion instruments, and I bring my guiro, cuica, maracas, claves, finger cymbals, and harmonica. The program is named "Salsa Sunday" and for the performance I wear a guayabera and a musician’s hat. It's 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 had 27 kids in the audience. What follows is the content that is used in the program.

Welcome to Salsa Sunday! (Ed plays 5 seconds of bongo drums).

What is Music? Music is a whole lot of varying vibrations or sound waves that fall within our range of hearing. When we perceive music through our sense of hearing, 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 (emotions like sadness and joy). Music is a sort of language that can be understood, felt, and "enjoyed by all." Most religions use music to worship God. We sing together at church because it can make us feel better and make our soul a little healthier-that’s why we do it.

How do we make music? Answers: we play instruments, we sing, we can also whistle and snap.

Today we’re going to be learning about Latin Percussion. The first part of the phrase "Latin Percussion" is "Latin." Latin America (use map of the world) is a geographic area comprised of South America, Central America and the islands located in the Caribbean Sea. 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. The Romans controlled most of Western Europe 2,000 years ago. When Romans conquered the barbaric tribes in Spain, Portugal, and France, they forced the people in these lands to use the Roman's Latin. The languages that formed in these regions are based on Latin and are called "Romance languages" which include the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian languages. Fast forward 1,500 years. Christopher Columbus sails across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 and he goes back to Europe and tells everyone about the Western Hemisphere. Later, 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.

Latin percussion is a class of instruments. Raise your hand if you have ever played an instrument. What instruments can you play? 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.

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 his music feel sad and anxious when they hear it, but in a mysterious way the same music can also get them to feel good, restored, the soul feels a little healthier.

The salsa dance is a Latin American dance. Why do people dance? Because it's fun to move to the music and it feels good! 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.

Edgar and Piedad were born in Colombia, South America. Ed and I were born in the United States: Ed's ancestors are from Puerto Rico, both of my parents grew up in Havana, Cuba (both Puerto Rico and Cuba are islands in the Caribbean Sea). 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...como aprendieron a bailar?).

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 400 years from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The slave trade was an evil, shameful way of making money and denying people’s humanity. Through its cruelty, it kidnapped, terrorized, 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. A lot of the Yoruba drums 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 represents one of the 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, we encourage the children to come up to the front and dance, if they want to. You can dance with a partner or by yourself. See if you can follow along with our dancers as they demonstrate the steps of the salsa dance. (if the kids are following along with Piedad, then I pick up the maracas and call out the steps...forward, backward, side, side...) However, I will be closely watching the dancers and if anyone dances in a venturesome, precarious, or unseemly manner, they will be immediately escorted off the dance floor (reverse psychology).

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 take off my hat and give the crowd a deep bow).