BONGO FEVER

The series of books by Trevor Salloum under the Mel Bay imprint provide a ton of information to beginning and intermediate bongo drummers. There are three books in the series:

Mel Bay’s Fun With Bongos Book/CD Set
Mel Bay The Bongo Book
Mel Bay Bongo Drumming/Beyond the Basics Book/2 CD Set

Fun with Bongos is for the beginner, The Bongo Book for the intermediate student and Bongo Drumming: Beyond the Basics is for the advanced student.

I don’t own Fun with the Bongos, so I can’t really comment on it, but I do have the other two. This post will cover The Bongo Book, with a future post to come on Beyond the Basics.

The Bongo Book seems to also have information that would be targeted to the novice, since it explains how to hold the bongo, care and maintenance, as well as basic strokes and patterns. The book has useful exercises that are much like snare drum rudiments to improve your chops, and it contains many different patterns in both Cuban and popular music styles. The book also has great interviews with famous bongoseros, including Jack Costanzo, Armando Peraza, Jose Mangual and Candido Camero.

My main gripe about the book is the low volume of the CD recording. It’s unfortunate, and hopefully Mel Bay can rectify this in future pressings.

If I had to recommend a book for the complete novice, I’d probably pick All About the Bongos by Kalani, but The Bongo Book is still a worthwhile purchase since it contains a wealth of patterns.

Thanks to Trevor Salloum and Mel Bay for contributing to the bongo canon!