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.