Sandy Gennaro: One of those esoteric things

Cris Cohen: You said in one of your interviews, “The consistency of a groove, a pulse, it’s inherent in our souls like a heartbeat,” which I thought was a great way of expressing it. As a teacher, how do you get students to tap into that?

Sandy Gennaro: There is a natural ability that's called “feel” that you really can't teach. You can teach somebody to play the drums, technically speaking. But it's very hard to teach that natural feel. 

I have taught seven year olds and I have taught 87 year olds to play a beat, to play drums. I could do that with anybody on a technical level, on the ingredients… right hand does this, left hand does this, right foot, left foot, etc. I can teach anybody how to do that. 

Listen, you've heard a song like “When The Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin. You learn that's not a difficult drum beat to play. Fifty drummers play it, no one will sound like John Bonham. 

It's like, how do you describe love? How do you describe when you love your wife? How do you describe how you feel? You can't. It's one of those esoteric things that you can't describe. You know it when you hear it and you know it when it's not there. But you can't put into words what you feel.