back from Salvador

whew... just got back in to Rio... and have finally managed to post some Olodum movies & lotsa Salvador pics, including Thanksgiving, and 8-year-old Bianca's view of her home city, to:
www.homepage.mac.com/sambakat

Salvador is another universe. When I'm there I find it hard to remember Rio, and vice versa. They each seem completely all-consuming.

While there I was taking 2 drum classes a day with Macambira, who stormed us through several forms of samba-reggae, "samba dura", "samba normal", ijexa, seis-por-oito (6/8), and afro-samba. It was clearly all just the tip of the iceberg. Salvador is so great for hand drummers because they put hand drums in absolutely everything: bossa nova, samba, classic rock, everything, it's all got hand drums. For me it was really starting to fly. Macambira uses a different slap than I'm used to - sort of half-closed sharp POP without the bright ring. I still like the bright ringy slap, but was intrigued by the clean-ness of the POP, so I worked on that, with partial success. (There's also a floppy center slap, different than the bass) It felt good to focus on just timbal for a while and really work up some speed and fire, and try some solos. There is something about it; when it gets going fast there is such an adrenalin rush! I wish I had a couple more months ... a couple years, even ....

On my last evening I happened to meet Olodum's main teacher, who turns out to be the guy that who screens foreign musicians who want to play with Olodum. Apparently the deal is, you take a few lessons from him, and he checks you out to see if you can play in the main group. As soon as he was pointed out to me I said "OH! It's THAT GUY!" Over a year ago, on my first visit to Salvador, I started following a street band around in Pelourinho, and I was totally impressed with one particular surdo player, who could rip off the most blistering rolls with complete precision, while laughing the whole time and doing some crazy dance move and also teasing the guys on either side. I never forgot him. Well, that's Olodum's main teacher! So, it'd be fantastic just to get some lessons from him! and now I have his cell number! ha! I've got to go back to Salvador, for sure.

Back in Rio tonight, I gotta shift gears quick - Sambadromo rehearsals have started. But I missed the first rehearsal tonight when my plane was delayed. Brazil's had a crazy series of enormous airplane delays for the past month, mostly related to a confusing semi-strike by the air traffic controllers, in turn due to anger about the terrible crash of a private American jet with a Brazilian 737 over the Amazon last month. The Americans all survived; but the Brazilian 737 went down with no survivors. (this all seemed very remote to me, until this week when I realized I was on that very flight path & same airline, Gol. My flight to Salvador was the first leg of Gol's long flight that hopskotches up the coast and then heads to the Amazon.) The air traffic controllers were furious at the American pilots' insinuations that Brazilian air traffic control might have been at fault. It's all gotten intense media scrutiny - huge articles in the weekly newsmagazines with full-color graphics and timelines of the flight paths, etc., the whole nine yards. There is a huge investigation going on, and it is clear now that air traffic control was at least partly to blame. Recordings released last week show the controllers in Brasilia verbally authorized the little American jet to fly at the same altitude as the Gol jet. (but there are still some inconsistencies) It doesn't help that there's a huge radar black hole in the area of the Amazon where the crash occurred. Turns out that Brazilian air traffic control does not actually have radar coverage of all of Brazilian airspace, due to the vastness of the Amazon.

I think it's been embarrassing for the Brazilians, who seem to feel perpetually like a first-world mind trapped in a third-world body, and it has prompted one of those periodic Brazilian soul-searchings of "Why can't we get ourselves organized? When are we going to stop being a "developing" nation and be developed, already?" And having it just lead to a month of maddening, pointless airplane delays seemed just to make everyone feel worse.

And of course the loss of the 737 was just plain tragic. I think it has somehow rubbed salt in the wound that the little American plane, and everyone aboard it, survived - a handful of rich American jet owners and a New York Times reporter, no less.

So, it touched my life tonight only in this tiny, insignificant way of missing the Vila Isabel rehearsal at the Sambodromo tonight. Which doesn't really matter at all....