Most beginner music classes hand a student an instrument and a method book and call it a day. UCPAC, in partnership with the Percussion Gateway Project, is building something considerably more communal with Foundations of Latin Percussion, a free, five week immersive program taking place entirely in person at UCPAC’s Hamilton Stage in Rahway. The class is designed as a single, connected experience rather than a series of standalone sessions, and registration covers the full five week arc rather than individual dates, with only twelve seats available for the entire program.

What sets the class apart is not just its subject matter but who it is built for. Organizers describe it as an intergenerational experience for Latin music lovers age twelve and up, open to every skill level regardless of whether a participant owns an instrument or has ever played one before. Instruction blends hands-on percussion work with historical storytelling and listen-and-follow exercises, treating rhythm less as a technical skill to master in isolation and more as a shared language passed between generations in the same room.

The full program runs across five sessions between late September and early October, closing with an extended grand finale session that runs an hour longer than the rest of the class.

Leading the program is Manuel Bedoya, known widely as Manny, who has spent decades preserving and sharing Latino culture through music and percussion specifically. His own path into the art form began out of necessity rather than formal training. Unable to find a local Latin music program when he first fell in love with the sound, Bedoya taught himself to play congas on his own, practicing in his living room before eventually joining a community class that opened the door to a much larger world. That single step led to genuine professional opportunities, including performances alongside local and international talent such as Anthony Carrillo with Cimarrones, Raices Caribenas, and Scarlet Mambo, among others.

That personal history shapes the way Bedoya approaches teaching now. Having experienced firsthand what it means to learn without access to formal instruction, he has built his teaching practice specifically around removing that same barrier for others, treating percussion not as a specialized skill reserved for trained musicians but as something genuinely open to anyone willing to sit down and listen. For a program built around the idea that music can bridge generations within a single family or community, having an instructor who taught himself the fundamentals from scratch gives the class a credibility that a purely academic approach could never quite replicate.

With only twelve spots available across the full five week run, interest in Foundations of Latin Percussion is likely to move quickly. For families, longtime fans of Latin music, or anyone simply curious about where the rhythms behind salsa, mambo, and Afro-Caribbean percussion actually come from, the program offers a rare chance to learn those foundations directly from someone who built his own career from the same starting point many participants will be arriving from themselves.