by JohnnyConga » Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:25 am
"Pan" was a Cuban who would travel to Cuba by boat to bring back the Caoba wood to make his congas, even his hardware was "hand made' his claves, and especially his maracas have been used by some of the greatest Soneros like Hector Lavoe, Adalberto Santiago, Ruben Blades,and many more... "Pan" also had his own "grupo folklorico", where he had created a small following of rumberos and drummers, who he had taught himself...when i met him in a "barrio" in Caracas(which a local conguero had taken me), i remember how small his apartment was, and there were bongo shells claves maracas one un finished conga in a corner, in his living room....In our introduction I told him i was a percussionist at the time and had just performed at the Hotel Tamanaco with Sergio Mendes, and he knew the name, then he picked up a "tambora" and told me to play something, i was like "really?"...he said yes, so rather than play a merengue on this untuned tambora I played a guaguanco on the 2 ends, and he started to sing and i sang along with him , and when he saw i could do that, it was then he smiled and asked what would I like from him....which was what ever was available, which were a Bongo Bell, Claves and maracas...i paid for it and I told him I would stop by the next day to pick it up. Well Sergio decided we were leaving, a day earlier, and I never got to pick up what I had bought from "Pan con Cueso"....."JC" Johnny Conga...