Fire at Diaspora

Just a short note today with some sad news: I went to the Diaspora Arts Center this afternoon for my candomble class with Bira and orixa dance class with Nem, and found Nem sitting outside looking very still and thoughtful. "No class today" he told me, then said almost as an afterthought "We had a fire." A short-circuit that destroyed their office. Nem lost all his files, photos, everything, and his computer; and the whole place, both floors, is completely black with soot. Luckily nobody was hurt and the building did not catch fire, and the drums on the floor above are ok (though black); so they will be able to paint and rebuild. But it is a blow and I don´t know where Nem will find the funds even for the paint. He doesn´t know either...

I went upstairs and was appalled at the watery, sooty mess that used to be Diaspora´s friendly, welcoming little lobby. Nem´s mother was there, sitting in the smoke-blackened dance hall. She´d hired two guys to string up some temporary lighting, and was going through a little pile of the stuff they´d been able to salvage: some little statues; one computer monitor; a completely black dance poster on which you could almost read the word "Dance".

I gave Nem the money I´d been planning to spend on the candomble classes.

Diaspora is one of those great, shoestring, community-run nonprofits that really makes a difference in the community. Nem is dedicated to preserving Salvador´s cultural heritage and passing it to the next generation. He runs dozens of dance and drum classes for local favela kids, and was in the middle of putting together a Christmas pageant with them. He insists it will go on as planned, December 20th, somehow. "I have to keep going. I have to somehow keep going, and keep looking forward," he said.

Anyone who wants to make a donation... even just enough for a can of paint... can contact Nem at:
aacdiaspora@bol.com.br

Running with Bianca

Today I moved from the delightful Village Novo, down in the beach area of Barra, up to Pelourinho. This was partly to be near the drum classes and partly because I´m saving every penny to try to buy a good timbal. I already miss the Village Novo and its lovely bright rooms with the stained-glass windows, and the beach and fantastic rooftop terrace, wireless internet and actual hot water (!), but I´m afraid I´m back down to a hostel budget again. So now I´m at the Albuergue dos Anjos in Pelo. It´s not nearly as classy as the Village Novo, and definitely not the place to come for a peaceful night, since it´s directly across the street from Pelourinho´s absolute noisiest stage. But I kind of enjoyed falling asleep last night to Olodum. My little room there is very tiny and spartan, but it´s clean and cheery, with a good new fan (sleeping well in Brazil is all about the fan!), the bathrooms are clean, and it´s only 30 reais (US $12 per night) including breakfast and a half-hour free internet per day. And the staff is friendly and does a good job guarding the place from the Olodum crowds - they lock up the main doors as soon as the Olodum fans starts to gather.

Yesterday I was killing time while my friend Pat got her hair cornrowed after timbal class with Macambira. I ended up sitting on the curb drumming a little bit with my drumsticks. The hairdresser´s little daughter sidled over to me, asked to borrow my sticks and started whapping them around in that aimless way kids do, not really even looking at what she was doing, twisting around to look at her friends, kicking her flipflops off, absentmindedly banging the sticks the whole time. Except, in her random, inattentive way she was drumming out an absolutely perfect reggae clave that was perfectly in time with the street band drumming a few blocks away.

Her name was Bianca and she was `almost 9´. I had my digital camera out and took a few pictures of her, then a little movie, and next thing I knew she was directing me through movie after movie, starring BIANCA THE SAMBA DANCER! Part 1, part 2, part 3... She studied each one intently and then would insist on trying to make a better one with more elaborate choreography. (I´ll post the final masterpiece tomorrow)

Then I let her take a few pictures, and after about 3 or 4 I could see her suddenly realize `oh... some pictures come out PRETTY if I pick something pretty to take a picture of!´ - and she grabbed me by the hand and we were off on a pell-mell tour of Pelourinho so that Bianca the Photographer could take approximately 300 pictures of all of her favorite places and things. She dragged me into six or seven stores, in each of which she´d stop in front of her favorite toy or piece of art and carefully take 2 or 3 pictures of it. Her photos rapidly improved in composition and lighting, till she was carefully framing each one and making sure her fingers didn´t block the lens. We ended up in her aunt´s shop with Bianca taking a series of (rather good) pictures of her aunt´s beautiful straw-and-cloth weavings and artwork. She took a minute to review all of the photos (she´d figured out the review function by herself) and we both agreed on the best ones.

By the end we´d spent almost an hour together and were pretty good buddies. I offered to buy Bianca something for a couple reais, but I told her I only had a few minutes left because my friend needed to leave soon. Bianca gave me an intense look, and immediately went into hyperdrive. She grabbed my hand again and this time we really raced in earnest - she was desperate to get me somewhere in my last couple minutes. Where was she taking me? What was the 1 thing that she wanted so badly that she would run like this? We RACED through Pelourinho, really pellmell, tripping over the cobblestones in the dark, and finally pelted into, where else, the ice cream shop! I should have guessed! Kids are kids, all over the world! Bianca tore into there like a bat out of hell and yelled at the guy `A really big piece of chocolate cake and a large chocolate brigadeiro FAST!´ (a brigadeiro is a gooey ball of a sort of sticky chocolate mousse, covered with chocolate sprinkles.)

I felt a little sorry for rushing her so much and told her she could stay and eat the chocolate cake in peace and I could find my own way back, but she said `no, no, no, I have to take you back!´ The guy brought out one of the largest pieces of chocolate cake I have ever seen and Bianca wolfed the thing down in about three enormous bites, then carefully wrapped the gooey chocolate brigadeiro in a twist of paper so she could carry it safely in one hand, grabbed me again with her other hand and off we went racing through Pelo again, back to her mother´s cornrowing-stall, where sure enough my friend Pat was waiting for me with her magnificent cornrows all done.

As we left, Bianca was already chomping her way through the huge brigadeiro. I had forgotten that kids have a separate stomach just for desserts.

The real Olodum

Flew up to Salvador last Tuesday for a week and a half fix of northeast stuff. I've had bad internet access here so I haven't done much writing, but short version.... I'm so happy with Salvador. It sucked me right back in. I feel like I've been here for months. It's already sort of hard to remember Rio!

After Rio, Salvador seems very tiny and charming. Everything is very compact; everything I need is either in the touristy beach district of Barra, where there is a tiny, cute beach right outside my charming pousada (Village Novo - highly recommended) or in the touristy cobblestoned downtown district of Pelourinho, which has all the bands, shows, drum classes, and dance classes that I could want all clustered in the same little eight-block radius. After the vast miles-long sweep of the Rio beaches and the hours-long odysseys to escolas and classes there, everything here seems very easy. The cabs are much cheaper, the people friendlier (often too friendly - I am currently avoiding 3 different guys who won't leave me alone - but that's another story), and the Portuguese seems clearer. And it's safe here, much safer than Rio.

I've had a lot of funny coincidences. My first minute here, when I walked out of the airport and was bumbling around looking for the bus, I walked up to a random clump of people to ask them where the bus was. Who should it be but Guinga, the brilliant guitarist/composer from California Brasil Camp, and his wife, plus the ten-string guitar player and full band that he was on tour with. Guinga and his wife both recognized me and invited me to the show they were playing the next night at the Teatro Castro Alves. My friend Pat and I went. It was an extraordinary show, primarily featuring the ten-string-guitar player, who uses the traditional guitar styles of the northeast countryside (beautiful resonant open tunings) with original jazz-y compositions. Backed up with brilliant percussion, sax and bass, plus Guinga. It was amazing.

And then I found out that not one but THREE dancer friends of mine from Seattle are all living here studying dance - Aileen, Ella and Gabrielle. We all had Thanksgiving together at Ella's place by the beach. Ella used her mom's fantastic recipe to roast a big fat delicious chicken (we couldn't find a turkey), plus we had a huge delicious vat of mashed potatoes, some delicious Brazilian appetizer thingys that Aileen knows how to make... it was so delicious. And it was really nice to have friends to spend Thanksgiving with. For the last couple years I've completely ignored every family-related holiday - Thanksgiving, Christmas and all birthdays (including my own) passed by like they didn't exist - and I'd forgotten what a sweet holiday Thanksgiving is, really, probably America's best. The idea behind it is so pure: Be thankful.

Since then I've been hanging out on beautiful beaches in the mornings - beautiful! beautiful! beautiful beaches! (ho hum, another invite from another retired diamond dealer to another private beach cabana in yet another tropical paradise...) And taking drum and orixa dance classes in the afternoons, and seeing shows at nights. Mostly I've been in Pelourinho, where on most nights the street band Swing do Pelo and the girls' group Dida prowl the streets with a powerful bank of drummers. Pelourinho's also got six big stages - three permanent indoor stages, and three more set up on the streets every Tuesday. You can catch "rehearsals" of the Carnaval blocos there most nights. Olodum plays every Tuesday; Dida and Motumba every Friday; and Ile Aiye plays on Saturdays out in their home neighborhood of Liberdade.

Well, they're called rehearsals but they're really stage shows, with only a few drummers, some singer prancing around, some backup band, and a really terrible sound system. It's fun and all, but it is always completely impossible to hear the drummers clearly (especially the hand drums) and it is PACKED, cheio, lotato, WAY too crowded to move or dance or see anything or even breathe. I always go there perfectly happy, pay thirty reais (15 dollars) to stand there smushed tight in a sweaty crowd thinking "This is great! I'm so happy!" with stiletto-heeled girls stepping on my feet, drunk guys spilling beer on me, people elbowing and shoving for their little inch of space. I am always truly happy but after a whole half hour suddenly I'm think "That was great! Now I'm bored!" Five minutes later I'm out in the streets dancing to real drumming at last (for free), thinking "This is great! I'm so happy!" I guess the stage shows are just not my thing.

I'm taking timbal classes with Macambira, an enthusiastic teacher who runs two group percussion classes every day and who can easily take you through EVERY intro, break, groove, and clave variant of every afro bloco in Bahia. Pat and I ended up playing timbal alongside a third student who began to alarm us with the ease with which he was picking everything up. At the end of class, Macambira challenge the third guy to a speed duel, and we all took off into one of those truly lightspeed timbal sambas. I was able to keep up (!), though it was easily the fastest I've ever played timbal in my life, and I was only just hanging on. Turned out at the end that the guy wasn't a student - he's a pro drummer friend of Macambira's who has been playing in Olodum since he was a little kid. We got chatting with them both and they got into a fascinating discussion/demo about how all samba-reggae and afro-samba groups used to play the same groove, with the same clave and same third-surdo part, and how they'd diverged over time to the point where now they are all immediately recognizably by their distinctive parts. The Olodum guy played some of the "antigo" old-style claves for us. It was so interesting. Then he told me that Olodum runs a second rehearsal, a real rehearsal, every Sunday at 5pm. So we went.

It was perfect. No band, no crappy sound system. A full bank of 35 drummers or so. Tons of room to dance, lots of people leading great dance moves, and plus it's only 10 reais! THAT'S what I've been looking for! There was a singer, which gave it all that crucial melodic underpinning that I love - but just a singer, nothing else.

They spent two hours rehearsing and then broke into a full-on party. For the rehearsal part they seemed to be in the middle of judging a series of possible Carnaval songs. One after the other, different singers came on, each singing just 1 song, a cappella at first, while down in the drum band the mestre was intently following the lyrics in a big notebook he had that was full of printouts of song lyrics. Eventually the mestre would call the band in, with one of 4 basic grooves (3 versions of samba-reggae, or a funk), and accompany the song for a few more cycles. Three judges on stage scribbled down comments after each song, then on to the next song. It was really interesting to hear what Olodum's basic grooves are, just the essence, without the fills, frills and extra stuff that they'll add later.

At 7pm, their regular singer came on, and the party started. Pat and I could both feel the band relax, and their sound become much more confident and powerful, as they swung into their full familiar repertoire. The third-surdos were continually horsing around with little choreographies - one guy would start some move and all the others would pick up on it and join him for a while, and then somebody would start something else. Way in the back row, the first and second surdos were continually challenging each other with mallet-flipping and surdo-lifting moves and generally crazy acrobatic stuff, basically not paying any attention at all to the rest of the band and just in their own world of insanity, occasionally flinging a mallet accidentally down the fire-escape where some kid would have to go scramble after it. (In samba-reggae, there is a tradition that the first and second surdo players do the most elaborate, showiest, dramatic moves - because they have the most open patterns with the most room to do crazy stuff. They also have the craziest hairdos!) I recognized several of the surdo players from Swing do Pelo's street parades last year - don't know if they've switched to Olodum, or if they've always played with both groups.

I took tons of movies and taped the whole thing with my trusty, beloved Edirol digital recorder. (I love my Edirol) I always seem to be the 1 white girl way up RIGHT in front of the band, absolutely as close as I can possibly get, all alone pressed up against the security barrier, while all the other tourists are hanging way back. I get a lot of nice reactions about it, though, the players grinning at me and mugging for the camera. And I started to get a really good feel, at last, for Olodum's several flavors of samba-reggae, the several different claves, the fourth surdo part, and how it all fits together. Would love to spend a couple months drumming with them.... some other year! I noticed they did have 2 girls (one on repique, one on caixa).

When the party started, the audience tripled in size and little clumps of samba-reggae dance choreography started appearing. Pat and I ended up in different clumps, Each clump was a set of fabulous black dancers, plus either Pat or me (the sole white dancer, in each case), ringed by a bunch of white tourists holding video cameras. The Salvadorean dancers seemed really pleased to find 1 white tourist who could dance - once I tried to leave and people grabbed me with a lot of "no, no, stay and dance some more, you dance really well" gestures. Pat reported that over on her side of the hall she'd gotten the same response to her dancing, lots of thumbs-ups and delighted reactions. After seeing some of the other white tourists try to dance a little bit, we realized why they were so pleased with us! I've been around great American dancers for so many years (in fact, I always feel really clumsy next to the Seattle and Portland dancer girls) that I'd forgotten that most whites really can't dance, and it was very startling to find out that in any clump of white tourists here I will probably be one of the best dancers. Oh my god... they are so bad!!!! It is really funny. But it's cute when they try! Three years ago that was me....

In the heart of Grande Rio

Went to Grande Rio on Friday with a friend who plays chocalho in the bateria there. Fantastic evening. Grande Rio has one of my very favorite baterias and I got into the dead center where I could FINALLY see all the third surdos AND lead repiques, AND, I got to play caixa too! (after 2am when they don't really care who plays) That's actually my first time ever playing in an escola bateria. (I was surprised how comfortable it felt; it was just like playing caixa with Jorge Alabe!)

The lead repique player is usually impossible to see. This was my first good view (ever). Grande Rio had a tightly arranged core, with almost a little aisle down the middle of the bateria running from front to back. The aisle included the mestre (up front), 3 section directors all in a line, and then broadened out toward the back with 4 third surdos in a little square - all facing each other so they could remind each other of their long patterns - and a tight clump of at least 2, sometimes 3, lead repiques. (There are lots of other repique players scattered with all the caixas on both sides. But they only play the basic ride - they don't do the calls.)

One lead repique only would do the paradinhas and any other isolated little calls that did not lead into a full samba. But whenever it came time to lead into samba, the 2 (or 3) lead guys always did the call together, and they were practically glued together for that. They'd turn and face each other, repiques almost touching, and watching each other's hands, to be sure they were perfectly synchronized. There are always at least 2 lead repiques because the call is so critical that there has to be back-up in case of a problem (a dropped stick, whatever). (For the same reason there are also always a back-up flag pair, cavaquinho player, and several back-up singers, in every parade. )

I'll post a couple movies (at homepage.mac.com/sambakat). In one you'll see the lead guy in the blue shirt turn away from me - no, he's not camera-shy, he's turning to face the other lead repique in the white shirt. Why is it so critical that the repique players coordinate with each other? I think it's because sometimes they change the tempo at the call. Samba-enredos always start with just the singer, cavaquinho player, and one surdo - without the bateria. Then the repique does a call and the bateria enters. But I've noticed that very often the repique deliberately slows the tempo down. (At Carnaval last year when, Imperio Serrano's small band started off at a horrifying 165bpm - we were all terrified in Ala 9 - but then the Imperio lead repiques came smoothly in at 140.) I don't know if the little bands start off so fast on purpose, or just because they're excited!

Anyway I loved it at Grande Rio. I spent a long time watching the bateria core, and then watching all the caixas and their ten million different ways of holding a snare drum (including several that seemed dependent on the size of the beer belly). And just enjoying being there, in the huge flurry of movement, all the brilliant players all around me all playing full-strength and bouncing around, grinning at their friends. The floor was littered with broken sticks - I can't believe how hard those guys play! Grande Rio went through about 8 famous recent sambas from other escolas, then into their own samba for 2007; then, later, I got to play (yay!). And then, late at night, while trying to leave the stage unobtrusively through the back door, I almost blundered into an extremely tense-looking discussion among the singer, the mestre, the director, and all the other burly alpha-dogs of the escola. Turned out to be about tempo! "Differences of opinion" as to how far behind the beat a singer can be, before it starts to pull the bateria back. Serious, and furious, differences of opinion. Tempo is no joke in a top-ranked Grupo Especial escola. I turned around and crept down the side of the stage instead.

Forro at the Estudantina

I went with my friend Denise & her boyfriend last night to the Gafieira Estudantina for a night of forro. Last year I used to see the Estudantina's hand-painted dance banner hanging from its balcony, whenever I was walking around the Praca Tiradentes, but I'd never been up there. The Estudantina, turns out, is one of Rio's old ballroom dance halls (gafieiras). It was founded in 1932. Denise told me her mother used to come there to dance in the 1940's, and she'd come there to dance in the 1980's, and now here we were in 2006. They have a mixed selection now of forro, samba, and all kinds of modern stuff, but always forro on Thursdays.

Like most of the grand old dance halls, like Asa Branca and Democraticos, the Estudantina is up on the second floor, a big room paneled in dark wood, with an skinny balcony (1 foot deep) stretching across the entire front of the building. I could lean out the balcony and see clear across the long plaza, and make out the fuzzy shapes of people dancing to pagode way across the plaza in the Centro Cultural Carioca. Denise told me the Praca Tiradentes used to be a grand, classy place back in Rio's elegant era of the 1940's.

I'd seen a little forro before but this was the first time I had seen the "pe-de-serra" style of forro - "foothills of the interior" style, i.e., country style, the really authentic style. Zabumba, accordion, triangle, and a singer (the triangle player). Playing mostly baiao rhythm but with an occasional slower xaxado, and sometimes a faster thing that I was told later was arrasta-pe. It reminded me amazingly of cajun music - the endless flow of the triangle, the rich sound of the accordion, the voice wailing over the top of it all. The only thing missing in the was the Cajun folk fiddle. And the dancing crowd of men and women pressed tight seemed to be doing zydeco dance! I swear, it was so similar to zydeco - both in basic form, in the hip movement, and in the pressed-tight body style. (Sooooo tight it reminded me of the Simpsons episode where they go to Brazil and see all the Brazilian dances, "the Samba, the Lambada, and a new one that's very popular, the Penetrada".) A little smoother, but the similarity was eerie.

And then a player came up on stage with an odd-looking unvarnished fiddle. My first sight of a rabeca, the Brazilian fiddle. He was holding it folk-style, low on the chest; and using an old 19th-century style handmade wooden bow. (Back when bows were actually shaped like bows. And none of that tension-control stuff - who needs a fancy tension control knob when you can just press on the horsehair with your thumb?). He started playing the most incredibly beautiful solo and my jaw almost hit the floor. SO gorgeous. Then the band entered. Wow. First of all, wow, it was so beautiful; and second of all, wow, I could have been in Louisiana, it was now SO like Cajun fiddle music - the style of the melody, the way it flowed, the marriage with triangle and accordion. The only difference was just that syncopated kick of the zabumba.

It was truly beautiful. I have a weak spot anyway for folk fiddle. (I used to play bowed bass in a Hungarian gypsy fiddle band, and also have a substantial weakness for Cajun, Cape Breton and Irish fiddle traditions.) I stood there watching the rabeca player, and thought "I have been such a damn samba snob, to have ignored forro all this time." Then I danced for a long time; with my friends (Denise turns out to be an excellent lead!), and also with a couple random guys who asked, who also turned out to be excellent leads.

The similarity of the music to Cajun, and of the dance to zydeco, still puzzles me. Doing a little google'ing of "cajun and forro" today, I found that lots of accordion players have picked up on the odd similarity. And I found a note by an experienced zydeco dancer who had seen the recent documentary "Saudade do Futuro" and was amazed to see Brazilians dancing what appeared to be pure zydeco. Later I remembered that forro is thought to have been influenced from dances held "for all" (= "forro") by US Air Force stationed in Natal (just north of Recife) during World War II. Who knows, maybe there's some connection? I don't know. But anyway, it was beautiful, and it was a door into an entirely different part of Brazil.

If you go:
Gafieira Estudantina, Praca Tiradentes 79
www.estudantinamusical.com.br
The website has a flyer that you can print out and bring, for a discount.
Thursday is forro night. Expect the first band to not even start till 12:30am.

a slightly busy weekend

first off, I've finally posted some escola movies & pictures at:
www.homepage.mac.com/sambakat

It was a really busy weekend... and I'm feeling it now. Woke up today with a really sore throat, feeling rundown and very wobbly, and had to stay in bed most of the day. (Only crawled out of bed today for Bangalafumenga rehearsal). Got only myself to blame, but it's so hard to take it easy on the weekends! Seems like every Friday and Saturday, and Sunday, and Thursday, there's at least one show, sometimes two or three, that in Seattle would be the best show of the year! It's hard to pace myself (and pace my wallet... These shows aren't cheap at all.) Friday night, I had the Rio Maracatu parade and then my big Portela odyssey, and was up all night. Saturday night, I was terrifically tempted by two other best-shows-of-the-year (Jorge Ben Jor vs. Estrela Brilhante), but in the end I went to two more escolas, Mangueira and then Unidos da Tijuca, and was up all night again. Sunday, a big Ipanema frevo parade and then a fourth escola, Imperatriz; up half the night. Monday, 4 hours solid rehearsing with Monobloco.

yeeesh... apparently I can only keep up that pace for 4 nights in a row.

Some impressions of the escolas:
Mangueira was terrifically crowded, even though it's only the middle of November. (The only time I've ever been there when it wasn't packed was the very first rehearsal of the season, the first Saturday in August.) It was almost as squished as if it were January. Ick. There's no room to dance, you can't really see anything, and there's not much of a show anyway because the crowd is simply too thick. Mangueira can barely squeeze 1 flag pair onto the main floor, and that's about it. And the bateria's way too high, up in a balcony where you can't anything other than the first row of tamborims. AND... it's 20 reais! ouch! (Unidos da Tijuca was 10; Portela is 5 for men, just 1 for women; and Imperatriz let me in free.)

This year for the first time, Mangueira broke their long-standing ban on women drummers, and they now have a woman in the bateria. On tamborim. I spoke to her during a break (when she came down on the floor) and she confirmed she is the first, and I shook her hand and said congratulations. But, turns out Mangueira STILL doesn't let other women (non-bateria-members) up into the stands to watch the bateria! The burly security guy was letting lots of guys up there, including some gringos, but when I asked, he actually cringed, and said "I'm so sorry, but we're not allowed to let women up. It's a rule of the escola." He looked rather embarrassed about it, clasping his hands in a prayerful "please don't get mad at me, I don't make the rules" kind of way. He brightened visibly when I asked about the technical rehearsals, and said: "Yes! Yes, you can watch the technical rehearsals! They're on Sundays at 7pm! Yes, come and watch those!" So I've got that on my calendar for next week.

Finally, at 2am, tired of being squished and being unable to see or hear anything, I hopped a cab to Unidos da Tijuca. What a contrast. It was practically deserted - they'd finished the main rehearsal and the bateria had gotten to that stage where people start swapping instruments around to learn other parts. They let me right up into the bateria to film. The tamborims were in a tight little circle rehearsing new ideas for choreographies and joking around with each other. A caixa guy got so involved in dancing a crazy dance for me that finally a second-surdo player (the guy in the red shirt in the photo on my other site) told him to knock it off and leave me in peace so I could film the third surdos. He could see I was transfixed by the third surdos. Like Imperio Serrano's thirds, Tijuca's thirds were doing an immensely long coordinated pattern, built to match the song and the tamborim desenhos, and synchronized among all the third surdos. (I posted a little movie to homepage.mac.com/sambakat) I love that approach to cutter playing - it's so musical. It just makes so much sense to coordinate the thirds and the tamborims: of course!!

Tijuca's caixas were all played em cima (held up high). They were doing a slightly different variant of the "Viradouro basic", this one missing the last upbeat before the 1:
RllR RlRl RlRl Rlrl
... though there were some variations.
It's amazing how much better I can perceive the caixa patterns now. Last year, it was the first time I'd seen caixas really played Rio style - so fast! And with such a stronger left hand, and stronger swing, than I'd ever heard before. It just seemed a rattly blur of confusion, so much so that I couldn't even perceive any recognizable samba pattern in it. But now I can just glance at them and know right away what they are doing (though maybe I can't do it quite that fast). yay, progress....

Sunday, I treated myself to a waffle-with-honey at my favorite breakfast place, Cafeina in Copacabana (right across the street from Modern Sound), then headed to Ipanema beach for a marvelous maracatu/frevo parade, including Monobloco and Pedro Luis. The crowd was deliriously happy - and drunk - bouncing like kangaroos, singing along to every song. The frevo dancers were INCREDIBLE. It really seemed like Carnaval - that same wild, joyful, half-drunk, good-hearted spirit.

Right after the parade, I unexpectedly ran into two European sambistas - Mick of London, and Simeone of Dublin! It was especially unexpected since I had never met them before - but Mick miraculously recognized me from a picture of me that was on my blog last year! It was cool to put faces to two of the names that I've seen so often on the international email lists. I had a drink with them at the Arpoador, and got to listen to the plans they're hatching for Monobloco's European tour next year, which started to sound so tempting that I was mentally rearranging my summer schedule next year to be a Monobloco groupie.

We arranged to meet at 8pm to head to Imperatriz. I had an hour to kill and walked through the Hippie Fair (Ipanema's best street market) and then strolled along the beach playing pandeiro. It was just past sunset, at the garbagemen were doing their evening rounds to pick up all the beach trash. They heard my pandeiro, and immediately one of them jumped off the garbage truck and started dancing a magnificent samba, in his bright orange garbageman coveralls, in the dusk along the beach.

Imperatriz was a blast. Full-on parade rehearsal, passistas, little kids & everything. Great bateria (they use two caixa patterns; a long line of cuicas; plus a cymbal and an air horn). And it was a pleasant change to visit an escola with friends instead of alone.

Four escolas in three nights. The next night I dragged myself through four hours of Monobloco rehearsal the next night, which was brilliant but left me shaky with exhaustion. Then got sick, like I said - I have no idea what I did Tuesday - oh yeah, now I remember, I slept till 2pm, ate cookies and read Portuguese comic books all day. Finally managed to crawl to Banga today. GREAT fun to play with Banga again. oh!! so fun to play third with Banga again tonight!! There was only 1 other cutter there, who was very glad to have company, and we were LOCKED tight as twins; powering away on the Funk 4 (my favorite ever cutter part), bouncing our way through the frevo, slamming the magnificent samba entradas. It felt GOOD and it felt like I was really contributing, which is a feeling that I love.

I stayed for almost an hour after rehearsal chatting with people, and even almost managed to understand them.

I am very tired now.

The combis of Portela

Had a great time parading with Rio Maractu Friday night, which I'll write about in some detail later. I managed to record the entire parade and learned a few more things about Leao Coroado, and got to know some of the RM girls a bit better.

But even playing in a parade in Lapa was only the beginning of the evening. At 11:30pm, after the parade, I started on what turned out to be an epic journey to Portela, one of the great samba escolas of Rio.

It's hard to get to escolas on Friday nights - there are only a few escolas that rehearse on Fridays and they're all pretty far away. Portela, Porto da Pedra, Grande Rio. But I was determined; I've really been itching for a fix of those powerful escola drum baterias. Grande Rio would have been my top pick, but it's way too far; so after some research I decided to try for Portela, which, in theory, according to their website, should be accessible with a not-too-expensive combination of subway and taxi. So, first, an extremely long subway ride with one change of lines; then jouncy cab ride through the darkened mysterious streets of god-knows-wherever-we-were, then suddenly Imperio Serrano's quadra appeared unexpectedly, and then bing! a second later we were at Portela. "Oh! It's close to Imperio!" I said, and the cabbie said "Bem pertinho!" - very close indeed. Just around the corner.

Portela is not a touristy escola, and they were amazingly friendly to me. (Not to mention cheap - just 1 real for women! 5 for men.) As soon as the bateria started, I automatically wandered over to the stairs up to gaze longingly up at the bateria. They were tremendously strong and tight, and I was so happy to hear that thunderous, beautiful sound again. Normally escolas do not let tourists get close to the bateria, but to my delighted surprise, as soon as I appeared at the foot of the stairs, looking up, the security guy beckoned at me, led me right through the bateria and parked me right in the heart of it. I stayed there for the entire evening! COOL!!! It was just what I was wanting. (I didn't ask to play - they don't know me yet and I don't like to be pushy anyway; and plus, I wanted to look around and study each section.) The only down side was that I never got to hear the samba-enredo (the song for this year's Carnaval) at all, even though they played it nonstop for three hours - all I could hear was the drums!

Portela, turns out, uses the "no 2" third-surdo pattern that I have always been fond of:
---- --X- ---- -X-X
... spiced with very typical third-surdo runs that I already know.

Their caixa pattern was fairly typical, "viradouro-ish" but, again, lacking the 2:
RllR llRl RlRl RllR
...with a variety of rimshots and sometimes a buzz.

I took some movies, which I will post tomorrow.

I was sitting right by the stick box and kept picking up mallets and caixa sticks and repique sticks to try playing along various riffs on my knees. I learned all the breaks. They were so nice to me - even insisted that I have some of the churrasco barbecued meat that was being passed around specially for bateria members. I shared my beer around with some of the caixa players. I had such a good time.

I stayed to the bitter end, then realized that it was past 3am and I was stuck in god knows what area of north Rio with no way to get home (the metro had stopped running & there's no way I could afford a cab all the way back.) But outside I spotted a guy in a plain, unmarked white van - one of the "combis", the tiny little independent minivans that patrol the streets of Rio running on rather random, flexible bus routes. This one seemed unusually unmarked, but it was the only one in sight. I asked the guy where he was going and he said "Wherever you want!" So I hopped in. The guide books frequently recommend that lone female travellers jump into unmarked empty vans that have no other passengers, when stranded at 4am in sketchy areas of Rio, especially when carrying a $300 digital camera, $400 digital recorder and a few hundred dollars cash. Or maybe they don't recommend that, exactly, but for a while now my Rio policy has basically been "What the hell. Whatever happens, happens." Plus I have always had a good feeling about the combis.

Sure enough the driver turned out to be a total sweetie, so much so that I might have to my revise my negative opinion of Rio men! Yeah, he did ask me out after only 4 minutes of conversation, but he did it in such a much classier way than the last several guys. Including, get this, he asked me my name. And even took special pains to try to pronounce it correctly. (By the way - the reason I'm going by Kat now, in case anyone was wondering, is that absolutely nobody can pronounce, or even hear, "Kathleen". They can't handle the "th". People usually either shorten it to Kat, or lengthen it to Katarina.)

This conversation was also marked by being the first time anyone ever mistook me for Argentine - hmm, usually if they don't peg me as American right away, they think I'm French.

My destination was way out of the driver's normal route, but he decided he would try to drive far enough so that he could find me another combi that was going back downtown. He spotted one in front of us that he thought looked promising, and decided to try to catch up with it and flag the driver down. "Hold on!" he said and floored it, and we ripped hell-for-leather down a huge long straightaway. The other combi driver immediately thought it was a race, and he floored it too, until we were both in a roaring flat-out drag race down the highway. (No, no seatbelts.) We got a little closer, but couldn't catch it.... But it was really fun!

Eventually, after a long drive and much chatting, finally the driver found a section of road near a highway on-ramp where he thought I could find a good combi heading back south to the Rio city center. He insisted on waiting with me for the next combi, which I appreciated because it wasn't the most appealling spot; dark, empty, and lit only by a trash can that was inexplicably on fire. But he parked the combi & got out with me.

The road was completely deserted. It was now four in the morning. A motorcyclist came up, driving the wrong way on the one-way road, and stopped to ask directions, and my driver launched into an elaborate set of directions accompanied by such extravagant body language that I thought he must be doing an interpretive dance. It was such a vivid scene: the wide, empty, dark, dark, street, framed by ramshackle brick buildings stretching far away in both directions; my driver dancing around balletically in the middle of the street, illustrating his directions ("You have to go OVER THE BRIDGE, and then, quick!, dooooown to the right, but NOT THE FIRST RIGHT, THE SECOND RIGHT! and then, a u-turn!, and then..." ) - leaping around like Isadora Duncan giving directions for an expedition to the North Pole; the motorcyclist, shrouded in a black jacket and black helmet like Darth Vader, nodding and nodding; and off to the side, surreally, the flaming orange trash can, dripping tendrils of liquid glowing firey plastic onto the ground.

And then, in the middle of this firey, dark, black and orange scene, a single white minivan appearing far in the distance, a gleaming white dot, motoring steadily toward us. "Um combi!" I said. "Um combi!" my driver agreed, and he flagged it down - yes, it was going to the city center. He gave detailed instructions to the second combi for what to do with me, and I said a heartfelt thanks and piled into my next little combi. What a nice guy!

And the second combi was a whole nother story. It was filled with four burly guys who, along with the driver, were all laughing and joking about something that I couldn't quite grasp. We passed a sexy girl on the street. The driver honked, the girl stepped closer - oh NO, that ain't no girl! "EU NAO ACREDITO! E A QUINTA! A QUINTA!" the driver said ("I don't believe it - that's the fifth! the fifth!") and the guys all burst into a HUGE gale of laughter, howling so hard they couldn't even sit up straight. Turns out they were counting how many transsexual hookers they could get to approach the van during a particular stretch of road. ( Something about Rio I have never quite understood is that almost all the street hookers are transsexuals - and they are an astonishing sight to see. ) So we went barreling along, veering over and honking at every possible hooker, the guys, and me, laughing nonstop about it. Eventually all the other guys left (we were up to 8 by then), and once again I got into a long conversation with the driver. This one, too, also asked me out (minute 3 of conversation; did not ask my name), but in a fairly friendly way. And he insisted on taking me all the way home even though it was out of his way; I'd been planning to grab a cab for the last little stretch from Centro to Flamengo, but he took me all the way to Flamengo.

4:45am and finally home. My night at Portela.

Nao te aguento mais

One of my great challenges this week has been trying to find a place to practice. I can't practice at all at home (it's my friend's home office, so she's always working.) The first few days, it was raining too much to play outside. But on Tuesday I finally found a little spot in the wide green park by the Praia do Flamengo (the Flamengo beach), and got in a good long stint of pandeiro practice.

It's a type of practicing I remember from Salvador: always on guard and looking over your shoulder, and always thinking about what to do if you get attacked ("Let's see, I'll fight for my pandeiro, but not for my caixa").

It seemed pretty safe in the park, actually, but a guy in the distance kept circling around and glancing in my direction, and eventually he inched closer, and finally, he came right up to me.

And he launched directly into an extremely long story about how his girlfriend left him 3 months ago. I REALLY wanted to get back to my choro practice, but it was a great grammar lesson in the various uses of "aguentar" - to put up with. I'd just learned this verb a few weeks ago and here it was in full flower: "She just couldn't put up with me any more. She said she had been able to put up with it all for a while but then she just didn't want to put up with me any more. She said she hadn't really ever really enjoyed putting up with me. She said "That's it! I'm not going to put up with you any more!" I wish I could find someone who could put up with me."

On and on and on. OK, thanks for the excellent "aguentar" lesson, kid, now it's time for you to go! I wasn't too worried about him - one advantage of being tall is that I'm not easily intimidated physically - but it was getting annoying. Finally I got out the tamborim, thinking that would drive him away, but it didn't! He just stood there and watched me practice tamborim at full volume from two feet away! Finally the inevitable sexual come-on, which I eluded with my usual sudden lapse of Portuguese comprehension ("I'm sorry, I don't speak any Portuguese... I have no idea what you're saying") and the request for my phone number ("my phone is broken") and email ("I forget").

Annoyed but amused, I packed up my drums and left. At least I got in some good pandeiro practice before he drifted over.

Six months in Brazil last year left me with a very poor opinion of the entire opposite sex, which seem here to come in only a few varieties: crazy, crude, cruel, cold, or all four in a really bad combination. There are a few exceptions (yo, Flavio, Rato!) but they're pretty thin on the ground. After returning the US I couldn't get over the American men's endearing habit of asking a girl her NAME, often before even trying to rip her clothes off; and their equally charming tendency to occasionally talk to women that they aren't even planning to try to rip the clothes off of. And sometimes the American guys get even through an entire five minutes of conversation without asking for sex! (Not that there's anything wrong with sex, but sometimes it's nice to have 1 or 2 other topics of conversation, occasionally, just for variety.) And they don't even seem to expect the woman to make all the dinners and do the cleaning.

It's almost as if the American men view women as... I don't know, almost like human beings or potential friends or something. Strange, huh? Now that I'm back in Rio I'm having a little trouble readjusting.

Rio Maracatu redux

This week I've been hunting down my old blocos Bangalafumenga and Rio Maracatu, and trying to figure out the escolas' ensaio tecnico schedules and whether or not the street rehearsals are running yet. My great triumph was finally getting my cell phone reactivated! YEAH! Only took a week.

And I've been basking in the US election results, which have had front-page billing in the Rio newspapers for several days now ("Bush perdeu o controle do Camara e Senado - Rumsfeld e retirada"), and which has made me feel, for the first time, not completely ashamed when I have to tell people that I am American.

Back to music.
Turns out Banga's moving this week to nice new digs in Botafogo, which I'll put here for anyone interested. While I'm at it, here's my other stage blocos' class schedules too:

Bangalafumenga
Rua das Palmeiras 26, Botafogo
Monday is the beginner class, Tuesday intermediate, Wednesday advanced. All classes are 8-10pm.

Rio Maracatu
Fundicao Progresso, in the very, very furthest back room way back on the left. (ask at the front desk for directions)
The Fundicao is the multicolored building right by the Arcos da Lapa. Any cabbie will know where it is.
Classes are Tuesday 6-8pm, and Thursday two classes in a row, 4-6pm and 6-8pm, all levels (but most players are intermediate/advanced).

Monobloco
Sala Baden Powell, Av. Nossa Senhora de Copacabana 360, in Copacabana (behind the Copacabana Palace Hotel).
Go up the stairs and into the theater.
Mondays, beginners 6-8pm, intermediate 8-10pm.

I think there are also at least 2 other bloco classes running - Quizombo at the Circo Voador on Mondays, and Odilon Costa's bloco class at Maracatu Brasil on Fridays - but I haven't verified those yet. Plus the bloco do pandeiro is running classes at Maracatu Brasil, and I saw a banner today for an all-tamborim bloco in Lapa.

Banga wasn't playing this week due to their move. But Rio Maracatu's in full flow, with a parade planned for Friday night in Lapa, and a special workshop planned for Monday with a visiting mestre from Leao Coroado. So I went scampering over today for the evening Thursday class. They took me right back in with a casual "Oh, you're back. Here, play this alfaia." It's funny, some of the people here have no idea why I left, or where I'm from, or why I came in the first place, or what I went through to come back. They just see some random gringa show up for awhile, disappear for a while, and then show up again, and they don't give it a second thought. Fair enough!

Anyway, I played shekere in a nice Estrela Brilhante piece, and then alfaia for a REALLY fun coco. Rio Maracatu has the absolute heaviest alfaias in the entire world - I think they're made of solid neutronium - and it just about destroyed my shoulder, but it was GREAT to be playing a real bass drum again and get my mallet arm really working again, really swinging high, and the coco groove was super cool.

The Leao Coroado mestre was also there today, and he gave a fascinating demo of the stuff he'll be teaching Monday. Leao Coroado is a grand old maracatu group of Recife that plays an old, purist version of maracatu. It is more or less (on both alfaia & caixa):
X--X --X- -X-X -X-X
.... actually, come to think of it, it's quite samba-ish, which makes sense given that the old style of maracatu is supposedly one of the main roots of samba. But somehow the voicing of it makes it sound more like maracatu than samba.

Afterwards I dutifully went over to Leo, the registrar, to pay for the class and have our usual confusing conversation about class schedules and payments. But at the end he asked "Will you be here for Carnaval?" I said yes, and couldn't help smiling so broadly that I think he suddenly realized that it is a big deal for me to come back to Rio. He suddenly grinned back and said "Oh! Welcome back!" I said "THANK YOU!" and he added "Oh, and, come play with us tomorrow - we are doing a night street parade here in Lapa! Be here at 9pm! Well actually, 7pm, so that you can be sure to get a drum."

All right then!

On caixa in Monobloco

Started playing caixa with Monobloco today! rah!

Monobloco is Rio's most famous, largest, and probably the most skilled bloco. (though Banga is coming in a close second, these days.) They were the first "modern stage bloco" - founded about ten years ago on the then-revolutionary ideas of solid music education, running classes all year, and a complex repertoire of a wide variety of rhythms (not just samba). Monobloco does huge stage shows every Friday in Lapa's largest hall, the Fundicao Progresso, throughout January and February. It all leads up to their famous Ipanema beach parade on the Friday after Carnaval - it's the last parade of the season and it draws an immense crowd.

I wasn't quite ready for Monobloco on caixa last year, but this year I thought I'd take a shot at it. (I'm planning on third surdo in Banga.) So I trooped over to the Sala Baden Powell just in time to watch the end of the beginner class. Junior Teixeira, the tamborim leader who I took a some classes from last year, spotted me and came zooming over to give me a nice warm welcome-back, and then introduced me to the caixa leader Freddy. Freddy turns out to speak fluent English and he kindly took the time to explain the whole set-up for me:

There's a huge "beginner" class (6-8pm Mondays), which in the US would be called "intermediate". Most of them - not all - will probably get to play a few pieces in the January stage shows, but they won't be formally part of the Monobloco bateria.

There's a huge "intermediate" class (8-10pm Mondays), which in the US would be called "advanced". Freddy said "probably 90%" of the intermediate class will qualify for Monobloco for the full stage shows & the parade.

And then there's the "advanced" class, which in the US would be professionals - well, except - "We didn't have any time to actually do the advanced class this year" said Freddy, "so we're hoping that they'll just all remember everything when we start playing the shows. We're hoping to arrange a couple rehearsals right before the shows start. I hope."

And then there are the Monobloco pros, which in the US would not exist.

So I jumped on in on caixa in the "intermediate" class. (Freddy was kind enough to give me the benefit of the doubt - "If you say you're a musician, I'll trust you.") I haven't played caixa in over a month now, and felt horribly clumsy and stiff. We jumped right into full-on samba, and Freddy immediately switched personality gears rather terrifyingly, from the warm and friendly guy I'd been chatting with into a formidable and ferocious mestre. He was constantly scanning his section with some superpowers I hadn't noticed till then, particularly the burning red laser eye-beams, and cupping his ears to use his bionic hearing so he could focus on hearing one player at a time. He didn't let a single player slip through with a SINGLE sloppy hit. And he'd parked me right smack in front of him so that he could keep an extra-intense laser eye-beam on me. I swear it was burning a hole right in my caixa.

As soon as we started, I thought, oh hell! I can't play this thing at all! - but then I had the curious sensation of it all coming back and spreading down through my hands - all those neurons and muscles going "oh yeah, caixa!" I could almost feeling them all waking up, yawning, the sleepy little caixa neurons slowly getting out of bed, and over about ten minutes my rusty playing progressively coalesced, smoothed, got consistent, and then louder and stronger. It was weird - an almost physical feeling of cogs clicking into place. Oh yeah... Caixa! As time went on I saw Freddy visibly stop worrying about me, and the laser eye-beams started focusing on other players. Whew.

For samba we'd started with straight chatter (RlrL) and then pure Viradouro. A few simple samba breaks; but basically pure samba, no flash. We went after that into a nice coco, with a really cool interplay of surdo, repique & caixa.... well, anyway, it was really really fun and I'm totally psyched to be playing caixa with Monobloco, and I went bouncing down the street afterwards, elated and feeling like I am where I am supposed to be.

THEN, to top it off, I met my friend Denise (of the great tour company Rio Hiking - if you want a nature fix while in Rio, they're the people to call). We went to Carioca da Gema for the BEST ever night of pagode & samba. It was the exact same magnificent singer and band that I'd seen there with Justin and Robyn last year! my all time favorite band! It turns out they play there every Monday. The singer, Richa, is a big guy who is always all dressed in white. He has the most indescribably silken voice that makes every song feel like you're floating down a river. He went through the most beautiful selection of classic sambas from past Carnavals, backed up by Paulao Sete-Cordas (a god of the seven-string guitar, as his name tells you, "Paul Seven-Strings" - in Brazil, master musicians are named after their instruments) and a percussion line-up that was so perfectly locked, in such a perfectly smooth and relaxed and sweet way ... I could not believe how wonderful the music felt. Denise and I started to samba. As soon as we started to dance, ZING, out of nowhere a handsome black dude with long dreads came levitating over the floor to me like he'd been pulled on a string, in that magical sideways glide of great male samba dancers, apparently using some sort of Brazilian anti-gravity samba shoes. He started chatting to me in Portuguese; hey, I'll take that as a compliment to my dancing.

He danced with us both, everybody danced, and we all danced and danced and danced.... till finally the band had to stop....

I thanked Richa for his amazing singing. Denise told him I'd "come to Brazil for six months just to play surdo" and he said congratulations to me - "Parabens!"

Here's two coco caixa grooves from Monobloco:
Coco groove 1 (written in clumps of four 16ths. Z is a right buzz, z the continuation of the buzz)
RlrR lZzL
(this may not sound like a coco in isolation, but it lays against the repique & surdo parts in a really cool way that makes it all come together as a coco.)

Coco groove 2. This one is different the fourth time around.
RlrL rlRl
RlrL rlRl
RlrL rlRl
RlrL rL-L

Rodrigo won a Grammy!!!!

First off, the news:

1. Bangalafumenga leader Rodrigo Maranhao, my surdo teacher, won a Grammy this week!!! For Best Brazilian Song!! He beat out Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque! I can't believe it! Actually I can believe it - he's always been a great songwriter (he co-wrote one of my all-time favorites, "Rap do Real") and the level of musicianship that he displays in teaching & leading Banga is extraordinary. It's for "Caminho dos Aguas", a song of his that was recorded by Maria Rita. This is huge news and such a wonderful leap forward for his career. I am soooo pleased for him. Oddly enough I was even there - that was the night I left New York and I was staying right next to Madison Square Garden where the Grammys were happening. I kept having to walk around the side of it for one reason or another, that day and the day before, and saw all the preparations, the red carpets and spotlights, the security guys setting up the fences, the long lines of people starting to form. But I'd had no idea that Rodrigo was nominated.

PARABENS, RODRIGO!!!

2. And, I was emailing Junior Teixeira today about tamborim stuff. He's one of Mangueira's tamborim leaders. And he confirmed the rumors I'd heard earlier: Mangueira is now accepting women into the bateria. This year for the first time. WOW. Hell has frozen over! I never thought I'd see the day. At last I will be able to get close enough to see what the hell that caixa pattern is. I probably can't play well enough for Mangueira - but I'm sure as hell going to go to their technical rehearsals and watch.


And my Saturday night update:
After the Escola Portatil, I was planning to go to an escola that night, but got hijacked when I discovered Bangalafumenga had a show! At the Teatro Odisseia in Lapa. Made my way down there - caught the very last subway car of the night at 11:59pm. The Odisseia was completely packed - Banga's drawing a big crowd these days. (I didn't yet know about Rodrigo's Grammy.) I was originally planning to swing by Mangueira afterwards, but in typical Rio style, Banga didn't even go on till 12:30am, and I was there till 3am. Shouldn't have let that keep me from Mangueira, but I've got to work Sunday....

In Lapa I was feeling a bit out of place at first. Brazil in general, and Lapa on a Saturday night in particular, can do that to me. The Odisseia seemed filled with a sea of identical 5'5" honey-skinned 21-year-old girls, all with identical long, shining brunette hair carefully laced with identical blonde highlights and in identical flippy little skirts and (nearly) identical haltertops. I always feel a foot too tall, two decades too old, and very much alone. And the roar of the music and crush of the crowd make it completely impossible to understand anybody. In Lapa I have to revert to "Descuple, eu nao falo portugues".

But I cheered up when I got a big smile from Dudu, Banga's tamborim leader - while he was in the middle of surprising me with a beautiful conga solo (I had no idea he could play conga). (Later he asked hopefully "You'll come and play with us again?" and seemed delighted when I said yes.) Then a guy I squished past in the crowd made me feel a little better by grabbing my hand and giving me an elaborately courtly kiss on the back of the hand, and a bow, apparently for no other reason than that I had squished past him. Ah, Brasil.

Then I spotted a clump of people waving frantically at me from clear across the hall. I couldn't see who it was, but thought I recognized one of the Banga players, so I pushed my way partway there, but got roadblocked and then completely physically jammed in a thick clump of people. I felt felt someone grab my hand and literally yank me the rest of the way - pulling me bodily clear across the floor, out from the clump of people, POP, and almost off my feet. it was one of the Banga surdo players, a powerfully built guy who could probably have lifted me over his head if he'd wanted to. He pulled me right into a huge hug of Banga players that included my friend Olivia and some of the Banga tamborims. They seemed so pleased to see me!! It was such a sweet welcome back. Olivia and I almost couldn't let go of each other, we were so happy to see each other again. She said, "How long were you gone? It seems like you were just here last week!" She'd echoed my thoughts exactly. It seems like just a week ago.

I stayed and danced all night, cheered with everybody else when Rodrigo announced "Gracas a Deus, eu ganhei um grammy! Um GRAMMY!!!" He was visibly beside himself with the delight and amazement of it and I was so happy for him. Had a beer, got tipsy. Couldn't stop following the third-surdo patterns in my head to every song Rodrigo sang - he's arranged Banga bateria patterns for every song and apparently I remember I almost all of them. The Banga tamborim players beside me tapping out the tamborim patterns. Couldn't understand anything anybody said. Staggered to bed at last, happy.

Escola Portatil: 55 violoes in the big parade

For a pandeiro player, one of the great advantages to getting to Rio before mid-December is that the Saturday choro classes at the Escola Portatil are still running.

For those who don't know, choro is an old-fashioned instrumental music, featuring mandolins and guitars, sometimes flutes and other wind instruments, and always a pandeiro. I think of it as a sort of Brazilian bluegrass-jazz - it's got bluegrass's old-school retro feel, love of tradition, and appreciation for virtuosic master instrumentalists, but blended with a classy urban feel.

The Escola Portatil ("portable school") is a little music school that runs classes in only choro instruments, only on Saturdays, right near the Pao de Acucar. Classes run from about April to mid-December (the Rio school year). They also run a week-long camp in January. Anybody interested in choro should get to the Escola Portatil. (I'll put a link in the sidebar.) The teachers are some of the best choro players in Rio, and the students are all local Brazilians, all ages and both genders, and all levels. There are classes in all the separate instruments from 9am to noon, and then at noon, all classes unite in the shady courtyard for a massive choro ensemble, "Furiosa Portatil" (a play off all the escola baterias who call themselves "Furiosa Bateria").

For a pandeiro player, choro is the most rewarding genre (I think) because, as the lone percussion player, you have much more responsibility, and much more power and everything you do, good or bad, is heard very clearly. Good choro players can practically play the choro melodies right on their pandeiro, and it demands complete technical mastery of the instrument, particularly in the finger-bass and the left-hand turn. (Many people think the finger-bass and the left-hand turn were invented by Suzano, but they are actually classic choro style. Suzano adapted them for other genres.) Escola Portatil runs three pandeiro classes in a row on Saturdays: advanced pandeiro at 9am, beginner at 10am, intermediate at 11am, all taught by either Celso Silva (one of the all-time great choro pandeiro players, and son of the legendary Jorginho do Pandeiro), or his son Eduardo, who is a magnificent player too.

I can never seem to get over there in time for the advanced pandeiro class (9am on Saturday morning? after having usually been up till 5am at some escola?) - and that class would be a stretch for me anyway, since "advanced" seems to mean "already a professional player with total mastery of all technique and doing beautiful solos". Not quite there yet. So I dropped in on the intermediate class instead, which was really fun - first a workout in 6/8, then a set of fun riffs and tags that can be dropped in at the start or end of a choro phase. Eduardo was teaching; he sang choro melodies for everything he did, emphasizing how the whole point of the riffs is that they emphasize and support the melody. I was impressed by how precisely crisp and powerful his playing is; it made me realize that some of my phrasing is a little muddy and lazy.

At noon we all trooped out to the big courtyard, scrambled over some mossy stone ruins past an army of guitarists and flute players, and took our places in the far back rows of the enormous Furiosa Portatil. At California Brazil Camp this year, some players were frustrated with the size of the choro ensemble - "Six pandeiros? You only need one!" They would have been appalled at the size of this ensemble. I counted:

20 pandeiros,
3 snares,
1 surdo,
1 tamborim,
1 cymbal,
28 cavaquinhos,
55 violao (guitar) !, about a fifth of them seven-string guitars. I have never seen so many guitars in one place. But even so, I couldn't hear the guitars at all because of the:
20 flutes, plus some more who were hidden behind a tree,
7 clarinets,
7 saxophones of various types,
6 trumpets,
1 trombone,
... and last and completely inaudible audible, 3 mandolin players huddled together around a single music stand.

Plus an audience of probably 100 people. Friends, family, and passersby, all sitting on the lawn watching. It was the size of an escola bateria. It was amazing. It looked to me almost double the size of last year. It's so cool to see choro generating such interest among young new players; it had almost died out a decade or so back.

Now some pandeiro stuff. A few scraps from today's pandeiro class. (anyone who isn't a pandeiro player, skip the rest of this post)

Both these patterns go into double-time, so I'll have to write these all out in 32nd notes. I'll use clumps of eight 32nd notes (one clump per quarter note; each clump on a separate line).

Slightly different key than usual (The more sophisticated your playing get, the more complex the key to write it out! I've now got about 16 strokes on pandeiro and can no longer use just "F" to describe my 8 different finger strokes. But I'll keep the key at these 8 strokes:)
t=muted thumb bass, T=open thumb bass,
h=unaccented heel, H=accented heel
f=unaccented finger treble, F = accented finger treble
b=muted finger bass, B=open finger bass.

1. A doubletime riff for slow choro as a dramatic end just before a measure-long rest:
t-F-h-f- (basic samba-choro)
T-F-h-B-
t-F-h-f-
hb-TB-TBT (& into a big rest for the next measure...)


2. We also did a three-across-four double-time motif, fairly common for choro pandeiro, but this one's phrasing is a bit unusual because it starts just after the 1.
h-Tfh-f-
Tfh-f-Tf
h-f-Tfh-
f-Tfh-T-
T.... back into basic samba-choro.

3. Best drill of the day was a rapid series of TfhTfhTfh.... using a heel hit that was so far sideways it was almost on the back of the hand. "Almost on your arm, in fact!" said Eduardo.

that's all for now! more next week! everybody go practice!

walking the streets

First weekend back in Rio. I meant to jump right into it and charge around to all the escolas, but, unfortunately - or fortunately, I guess - I have a writing job to do for NOAA (National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Admistration) from my laptop, due Monday. It's sure nice to be able to earn a little money while in Brazil, except that it means I actually have to work instead of gallivanting around all the time. But it's a good job, good work, that feels to me like it is important. (has to do with helping poor fisher people get a few more fish to eat, saving endangered sea turtles and all that warm fuzzy stuff.)

But I have made some time to walk the streets of my neighborhood and settle in. All the little aspects of Rio life are flooding back in around me, familiar and comforting. Even the annoying things feel familiar and comforting!

Things that let me know I am back in Rio....

- sudden rainstorms and the "oh yeah, I should ALWAYS have my umbrella with me"
- wonderful tropical smells (and occasional not-so-wonderful smells)
- my hair immediately puffing out into a dandelion-head of frizz, but not to worry, because there is an enormous shelf of anti-frizz hair oils and creams in every drugstore;
- and three drugstores on every block;
- the yelping cries from great kiskadees in the trees, and the squeaky chirps of masked water-tyrants zipping around on teh sidewalks (two of Rio's most common and friendly birds. Even if you never notice them, their calls will become part of the background "Rio sound" )
- packing away every sweater, jacket, and pair of long pants, knowing I will NEVER need them;
- the rickety gas water heater in my shower. It takes every North American visitor about 2 weeks to make their peace with the water heaters.
- three-dimensional keys;
- fans everywhere... falling asleep to the whir of the ceiling fan... monstrous jet-engine fans ventilating the subways;
- the mosaic sidewalks of little white bricks, lovely and quaint but with that slightly shabby Rio look, peppered with holes where the little bricks have gotten lost;
- the endless lines of street vendors, selling: Big glass boxes of plain and caramel popcorn; fried churros pumped full of sweet goo while-u-wait; wheelbarrows of fresh pineapples; piles of bananas; neat pyramidal stacks of mangos and papayas; beautiful cut flowers; tidy arrays of used books laid carefully out on a blanket; and racks and racks of pirated DVD's.
- the clumps of guys chattering at the tiny little neighborhood bars.
- breakfast of warm pao-de-queijo (little balls of cheese-bread) and strong sweet espresso coffee;
- the sense, everywhere, of how hard everybody is working. A bustle everywhere of endless activity, people working hard, moving fast, industrious, clever, entrepreneurial, aways looking for a new idea. Scrambling to get by, but giving it their all, every day.

It makes me happy to just to walk around through the streets and see it all again.

I'm dismayed and encouraged, simultaneously, by my Portuguese. Dismayed because my own speech seems to have stalled entirely - 8 months away has really pulled me backwards, and I have lost the little automatic phrases. But encouraged because for some reason my comprehension seems to be better. I can pretty easily follow the tv soaps now. And I'm hopeful because, this time for the first time, I am living with Brazilians instead of living alone.

Finally, an economy update: Rio ain't cheap any more! Continued local inflation combined with an all-time historic low exchange rate (just 2 reais to the dollar !!! yikes!!) have cut us gringos down to size. We're not rich here any more. Cost of living here is about halfway between Seattle and New York, and I no longer feel like I have any money at all to spare. US $1.25 for a little espresso coffee, $5 (!) for a bowl of chicken soup, $1.25 for to ride a bus, $12 to get into any club in Lapa - yes, those are in US dollars. Cabs are actually more expensive here than in New York. You have been warned. But it's still worth it - because I would rather be here than in the US.

Rio's endless cycle of urban violence continues. It's refreshingly peaceful where I live, but I watched the news last night and, though it was nice to find out I could understand everything, the news was a disturbing and grim list of unnecessary deaths. Saddest story of the day: a father was having a heart attack in one of the poorer areas, and his 19-year-old son went running out frantically to get a taxi to take his dad to the hospital. Police nearby saw him commandeering a taxi, thought he was robbing the taxi driver, and shot him in the head without a moment's hesitation. Just shot him dead. It happens all the time. He was just a pizza delivery boy. A little while later the father died en route to the hospital (but, fortunately I think, without having heard of his son's death.) There was the saddest little sentence about the mother's reaction when, at the hospital after her husband had just died, she was informed of her death of her only son. "Ela passou mal" was all it said - she became ill. No shit.

just a step away

wow... I am in Rio again... and it was so easy, I just stepped onto a plane in New York and
POP
one fuzzily sleepless night later, here am in Rio.

It seems like it was just a step away. It seems like I was here just a minute ago. I have dreamed so often of walking up to Chris' apartment, and then suddenly, it was really happening, just like I had pictured: there was Chris waiting with a huge smile and a huge hug, and we hauled my stuff up the beautiful leafy walkway and up to her beautiful apartment.

I have a room of my own. I unpacked all of my stuff. This is the first time since February that I have finally fully unpacked. I took my shirts OUT of their little Eagle Creek shirt bag. I hung up my little Rio skirts. I unpacked EVERYTHING. I have been travelling for eight months solid and have rarely spent more than a week in the same bed. So I cannot express my relief and the vast sense of comfort from putting all my stuff in a room that is going to be MINE for FIVE WHOLE MONTHS. It is one clean, bright, square room with wood floors, containing one (1) bed, a closet with built-in drawers, and nothing else. I unpacked all my stuff. I UNPACKED! The sandals and bikinis, the drum pads, mallet, alfaia baquetas, my drumsticks, metronome, recorders.... the chocolate chip cookies, the baking powder. My tamborim. My pandeiro. Chris loaned me a white sheet, striped blanket, a yellow pillow, and a blue pillow. I have everything I need.

Great kiskadees were calling in the trees outside, and the most beautiful violin music was floating through the air (seems that one of the neighbors is a professional violinist), along with the ineffable mix of Rio sounds of distant trucks, children yelling in some game, and somebody banging on a pipe - there's always somebody banging on a pipe or knocking two bricks together. From the other end of the apartment, Chris chattering on the phone in Portuguese to her clients, and her cat meowing. It was so extremely relaxing. It's warm; 80's and humid, and rainy, rain pounding down outside. The air is dense of that richly familiar Rio smell, of flowers and dust and rain - I took a dozen big lungfuls of it. I couldn't get over the wonderful way it smelled. I lay down on the bed and fell instantly asleep.