by Thebreeze » Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:23 pm
tootyful said.....After all,what happens when these artisans become old and gray like some of us? Just a thought!
I agree with you on that to an extent. Being a fan of Boxing, I have seen great fighters come, reign for awhile, and then bow out when the time is right. But then a new generation of great fighters come on the scene. I think it's the same for Custom hand made Conga Drum Makers. For instance, Michel from Moperc appears to be quite young, and Peter Musser from PM Percussion as well as Manito are all pretty young Craftsmen, and Hopefully SOS will keep the tradition going if they have an apprentice or two? Matt Smith is young, so it looks like the drumming community is in decent shape for now.
What I would love to see is someone that would be able to follow in Junior Tirado's steps and make those beautiful wide staved Mahogany Congas again since he has passed away some time ago, that would be a great thing to see . I remember when I had a set of Juniors that the staves were a little wider than the usual congas out there and that was something I think was unique to Juniors although I may be wrong. Timba took over where original Gon Bops left off some years ago but that company seemed to become unstable and their prices sky rocketed. Not sure if they are even in business any more. They had a nice product .