Lately, there is a clip of a guy who teaches Salsa on 2. In that clip, his friend and him have put an explanation about and some truths Salsa on 2. Some are correct. Yet, there are lots of flaws during his video. Because his problem is the lack of knowledge and deep understanding of Salsa on 2.
The controversy video
The truth about Salsa On2 – rebroadcast with La Epoca & Captain Salsa
Posted by Captain Salsa on Tuesday, May 1, 2018
There is a great danger inherent in calling oneself a teacher. There is great responsibility in having seekers look to you for guidance. The two Gentlemen In this video are trying to make a point about observations they have made of the world around them. Unfortunately, they are grossly unqualified to trust the conclusions their eyes have led them to. Ignorance is much more common than understanding. What there is to understand is infinite and our capacity to comprehend it, limited. Ignorance is never a surprise to me. We are all much more ignorant than we are knowledgeable. It is common for the wise to say they don’t know and only the foolish can ever state they understand.
This video about the truth of Salsa on 2 takes the infinity complex and simplifies it into the ramblings of teenagers who feel they have figured life out. In their meager stages of development, they somehow thought they saw truth no one else could see. They have acknowledged the hungry and hope to make a living selling pictures of bread. Offering no real nourishment and deceiving those who cannot defend themselves.
Flaws of his Salsa on 2?
You might have noticed the fact that they chose to count what they were doing in a most peculiar way.
- How is it that the gap between 1 and 2 is larger than the gap between 2 and 3?
- How can it be that the gap between 5 and 6 was larger than that between 6 and 7?
- Where was there room for the 4 and 8 in their verbal representation of rhythmical value?
- What about the cross body lead and the musical power it demonstrates when it explodes on the 1?
- Where was the Cha Cha Cha in this discussion?
- Where was the Son?
- How was what they demonstrated NOT Son?
- Where was the validation for calling one thing Mambo over another without referring to Son?
- What about the concept of a basic step in the first place?
- Is the basic step the Dance?
- Or is there more?
- What about transcending the basic Salsa on 2 step?
- What happens to it after 20, 30, 40 years?
- Should it still be that thing you learned when you were a child?
Peculiarities that start to tingle the nostrils as the scent of fish wafts through the air.
I have been teaching for over 30 years. I have been a student for longer. My teachers have been men of substance who with every breadth, powerfully manifested what they understood. Often they would answer my questions silently with a powerful demonstration of the answer. Sometimes without moving a muscle. With time your eyes become attuned to the living truth as it stands apart from the contrived and dead rhetoric of those that think they know. You can smell it before you can see it.
I do not fault them, nor do I believe they are malicious in their deceit. It is, as they put it, “they just don’t know.” Bruce Lee said, “To know is not enough, we must apply”. This is an old Zen Saying. No knowledge is of any use unless the transition is made to an operating, observable principle in one’s life. “Don’t tell me the answer, show me.” Manifest the truth, Don’t give me your interpretation of it.
These gentlemen are not yet there.
They are as far as from the truth as the picture of your grandmother is from your real grandmother. And yet it stares them in the face and they are unable to see it. The 1 is the 1 and the 5 is the 5. You can’t almost hit them any more than you can almost survive. The basic step is not the dance. YOU Are!
The Tumbao of the Conga hits all 8 beats and every 1/8 beat in-between. There is no such thing as Mambo outside of you. Mambo is a Bantu word meaning a conversation with the gods. A person just like you started using this Bantu word to describe something momentary that has changed rapidly from generation to generation.
There is no music that can possibly exist that is not you.
When you understand what the basic step is trying to teach you, that silly pattern is just a dirty cheese wrapper after you’ve eaten the cheese. Anyone who makes it more important is missing the point. Do not presume to have the ability to count what I am doing with my feet. I would have to dance on your chest for you to grasp it fully.
I promise you I know what I’m doing and what instruments I am worried about, and I promise you I am not concerned in the least with 123 or 234. And yet everything I do speaks to them and carries their message.
Your musical education won’t make you a better dancer if it’s stuck in your melon. You are already the music. That’s the only important thing left to understand.
* Credit & Author: Frankie Martinez (Facebook)
