Wait, I have to adjust my bat

Maracatu New York had a little parade Sunday at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which the group was using sort of as a warm-up for the big parade on Tuesday. It turned out to be your basic two hundred adorable little kids in adorable little outfits, all of them exactly two feet tall and tumbling all over each other in excitement. Several tiny little Darth Vaders chasing two tiny little Luke Skywalkers, tiny little walking pumpkins and bumblebees running pell-mell between my legs, tiny little ninjas counting their candy, innumerable tiny little princesses and little mermaids, an amazing tiny little green swamp monster, and dozens and dozens more. I'm not normally a kid-lover but this particular crowd was beyond adorable, radioactively cute.

It was a bright sunny day, but windy and very chilly. I found the Maracatu New York guys huddled in a sunny spot packing up their workshop drums. Jorge and Scott had been there since noon doing body-percussion workshops for all the kids. Last night I'd asked Jorge what he most needed right now for his percussion-for-kids project in Recife. He'd clearly been thinking about that because as soon as saw me - well, after he'd first said "I'm freezing to death! How do you people stand this!" and grabbed the extra sweatshirt I was carrying to wrap his hands in it - after that, he said (em portugues) "One thing we need right now is someone to help translate some things into English. Website content and other information, to help raise funds from English-speaking countries." Hey! Translation, I can do that! He's also hoping to arrange more English lessons for some of the kids in his program - maybe I can help with that too, who knows. Nice to think I might be able to contribute something.

Anyway, the Botanic Garden event was pretty cool. Lots of activities for the kids, and a nice selection of bands ranging from old-time country to salsa. (I especially appreciated the free hot potato chowder, chocolate bars and hot hot coffee, backstage for all the musicians). The most popular kid activity seemed to be a long row of tables lined with kids who carefully spooning beans and popcorn into something they were holding carefully in their hands. Turned out to be a "Build your own shaker egg" assembly line. The kids had picked out an empty plastic egg, decorated it, and were painstakingly choosing their own favorite assortment of rice, popcorn, beans, etc. Then an adult sealed the two halves securely together with colorful tape (with the beans, etc., inside), and presto, each kid had his or her own custom-made shaker egg. Cool idea.

After a large amount of time fussing around backstage and admiring Maracatu NY drummer's costumes, suddenly we were onstage. I was alarmed to find myself front and center, and in front of the mic, no less - I don't know MNY's repertoire and was faking my way through all the breaks. Thankfully the parade started soon & we were off on a half-hour loop through the Botanic Garden. Definitely the cutest parade I've been part of. We were trailed by hundreds of those tiny elves, tiny Spidermen, tiny little mermaids, etc., many of whom were magnetically drawn to the drummers and kept drifting underfoot, waving their little flags excitedly around. And dozens and dozens of parents darting around with videocameras.

I was impressed with MNY. The group is five years old now, turns out, and it shows in the experience of their alfaia players. Alfaia is a type of bass drum unique to maracatu, and it's played with a peculiar backwards-whip motion of the left arm. Experienced alfaia players throw their whole body into it, and get into a sort of up-and-down dance that accentuates the whipping motion of their arms. It looks something like they're paddling a kayak down a class-5 rapids while wrestling a huge invisible boa constrictor. It would look weird if it didn't look so damn cool! Turns out it looks especially impressive when the players are all dressed as giant multi-armed spiders, fierce glam-rock stars and enormous burly clowns. (I really have to get a better costume together by Tuesday!)

I turned out to be the only shekere - hmm, maybe that's why Scott had said "I'll loan you that shekere if you come to the Botanic Garden" - so it was a really good workout for me. My stamina on shekere is not that super because I haven't been playing it much recently, but as the only shekere, I had to keep going and had to keep steady. It was one of those parades where 30 seconds into it, you think "Oh hell, this is going to hurt!" but you just have to keep going. On top of that I had a bat problem. I had a black toy bat attached to the shekere netting, which I thought looked just awesome dancing around with the motion of the shekere. But every now and then the bat would whip around on the end of his little elastic leash and wedge right under my hand. Somehow the bat's head kept getting between my hand and the shekere, just when the shekere was coming down. I kept having to stop and readjust my bat. Should have taken it off, I suppose, but it looked so cool! And in the immortal words of the Mighty Boosh (more or less) "You guys, you're wasting all your time practicing and trying to play right - don't you know it's all about how you LOOK??"

I ended up with a good bat bruise on my left hand, but it was worth it. Eventually the poor little bat was shaken right to pieces - one of his wings was shekere'd right off. I'll have to get a sturdier bat for Tuesday.