Jay Bereck's Skin-on-Skin Part 3

Jay Bereck made drums for such greats as Mongo Santamaria, Ray Baretto, Ghiovanni Hidalgo and Francisco Aguabella.
Note that Jay is retired, and is not taking any more orders.

This video is posted by Cara Bereck Levy, Jay's daughter.

About Jay

My father signs the inside of every every conga in English and Hebrew - the mark of an authentic Skin-on-Skin.

Jay developed the entire drum-making process himself, beginning with a trip we made to the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn library to take out books on cooperage, which is the craft of barrel-making. This is because the conga, as we know it today, was fashioned by West African slaves working in the rum and sugar trade in Cuba. They took barrels, stretched mulehide across the top, and recreated the rhythms of home. These original rhythms developed, changed, and borrowed from other musical traditions.

My father re-created and refined the barrel-making process. He created templates for the drum staves, cut them, fit the bottom sections into a metal ring together, steamed and bent the staves into a top ring to form the finished drum, and dried it. Once dry, he turned the drum shell on a lathe, sanded it, finished it, and mounted the hardware much of which he hot-forged by hand--and finally, mounted the skin.

I was a young teen when he began working out the process in the basement of our Brooklyn home. There was a lot of trial and error; many trips to the library. I remember a discussion we had about steam pressure and expansion--I was taking physics at the time, but I don't think I was of much help :-) Jay invented and built many of the devices he uses himself, some of which were intended to save physical effort--make no mistake, making hard-wood drums by hand is physically hard, sweaty work.

My father devoted over 35 years of his life to making some of the finest drums ever made, and I am incredibly proud of him.

The conga and its rhythms appear in a number of musical forms - but what I love best is Latin/Afro-Cuban jazz, with rhumba and guaguanco not far behind. Funny thing--when I was growing up, my house was filled with many kinds of music: classical, bebop, Gershwin (who, according to my mom, z"l, was in a class by himself) folk (not Peter, Paul,and Mary, and definitely not Bobby Zimmerman but Theodore Bikel), irreverent Tom Lehrer, the occasional cantorial, the Lomax recordings...I could go on.

But Latin/Afro-Cuban jazz was played more than any other, and for a good part of my adolesence, I dismissed it as being my 'parent's music'. Luckily, I outgrew that stupidity--had I not, my life would be an inifinitely poorer place.

I want to end this with the following anecdote: many years ago, my father was invited, by the Smithsonian Institute, to show his drums in an exhibition of folkloric musical instruments. He sent a set of cherry congas. However, when the Smithsonian wanted a set for permanent exhibition, he refused. He had a year-long waiting list of customers who had put down deposits, and he was not going to make them wait while he made a set of drums for the Smithsonian.

That's my dad.

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