CONGA

Every Saturday, I’m taking a Conga lesson and it has been almost 8 months since I started learning it. You may wonder what the “Conga” is.

The conga is a musical instrument which has an African origin. It is a tall, narrow and single-headed drum and the sound is produced by hands. The conga is one of the musical instruments for composing SALSA or SON music, which originally comes from Cuba in Latin America. The reason I know this musical instrument is because I’ve been doing salsa dancing for a long time. I was interested and wanted to play some musical instruments to make more fun of the dancing. At this time, I found the Conga lesson near my house and I started taking lessons.

I feel that playing the conga is more difficult than dancing Salsa. As for dancing, the body can be moved without working my brain harder, but as for playing the conga, we sound out rhythms by using the right and left hand separately while standing and stomping the feet. It seems that I’m training my brain as well. I always feel exhausted after the lesson. Normally, Conga players perform while sitting, but we perform standing up. This is more fun than a sitting style, because we can feel the sound through the whole body.

My dream is to make an amateur band with my friends in the future. I’m not sure whether my dream will come true or not, but now I’m practicing with keeping the dream.