Unschooled Music

My son Jonathan is keen on drumming. Recently he showed me the website of a South African drummer named Cobus Potgieter.

Cobus is rapidly becoming one of the best known drummers in the world. To give an example, this clip, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

455,080 views to date!

And Cobus Potgieter is completely self-taught. As his YouTube page comments, "he started learning even before picking up his first drum set. After returning from the 2001 outreach, he browsed the web in search of information about drumming. He ended up by downloading every free video and article he could get his hands on. All he has learned has been taken from free educational resources found on the internet, through YouTube videos, and from playing along and listening to a lot of music..."

Interesting!

John Holt dreamed of a world where people would be free to share knowledge and learn things that were of interest to them. He dreamed of schools becoming community resource centres. Sadly, that dream did not come true. But I think that Holt would have been thrilled about the internet and particularly about the freedom people are finding in sharing and discovering interesting things via YouTube and other social media.

Cobus comments: "I am not a professional drummer of any kind. I've been playing since middle 2002 (almost 8 years). I've never had any lessons (other than listening to music and watching drumming videos), and I am just a guy who LOVES drumming and all things rhythm. I have an insane admiration and respect for the craft that is drumming, and I have a never-ending desire to be the best I can possibly be, I don't play drums or practise because I have to. I play because I can't help it..."

Viktor Emil Frankland wrote that: “…success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge…“.

Cobus Potgieter's YouTube page
Cobus Potgieter's website