Mocidade!

First things first: my first podcast of sorts is posted. Nothing fancy, just a mp3 of Mocidade's bateria walking past me in their first Sambodromo rehearsal last night. You can hear all the different sections walking past, and then the sound truck (with the singers & cavaquinho) bringing up the rear.

(If you want the full flavor of the evening, I also posted the full 21-minute recording in which I fight my way back through the crowd to the bateria. They kept getting away from me, so you will keep hearing different sections ebb and flow past me. I managed to stay with the tamborims for a while.)

They are both at:
homepage.mac.com/sambakat/
click on "mp3s" at the top

And I'll post the lyrics below.


So anyway - Last year I kept hearing rumors of a semi-mythical German Escola Van. Apparently there was a German woman somewhere in Rio who takes a van of people to Mocidade and Beija-Flor every week. Well, I found her at last! The inimitable Nana Zeh, who turns out to be an energetic German ethnomusicologist of boundless energy and good cheer. She lives here full-time, plays tamborim in Mocidade, and is always happy either to take friends with her on the long bus ride, or, if there are enough friends, she hires a van and we all split the costs - plus her meeting place is only a 5-minute walk from my house - plus she knows Mestre Jonas and can coordinate lessons with him.

So suddenly I was in a van with a cheerful polyglot mixture of Germans, Norwegians, 1 American and 1 Brazilian. (The Brazilian woman turned out to be a biologist like me - she is the only Brazilian I've ever met who knew the name of lobo-guara, the beautiful maned wolf of the Brazilian savanna. I started to say "um lobo com pernas longas...", a wolf with long legs, and she immediately said "Lobo-guara.")

It was only 17 reais round-trip to get all the way to Mocidade! (I thought she said 70 at first, and I considered that cheap, since by cab it would cost me probably 160! ) 17 - I can afford 17! This means I can go to Mocidade every week! yay!

I had such a fabulous time there. Stayed in the bateria all night and even got to play caixa (near the end when they'll let anybody play). There was a shortage of caixas, and of straps, over on my side of the bateria, so after a while I turned my caixa over to one of the local young Brazilians who was looking around hopefully for unused caixas. Next time I'll bring my own caixa & strap so I don't have to feel like I'm cheating the locals out of a caixa.

It was an unusual experience to find myself thinking "Gee, they play kind of slow" and then find out later that they were playing at 140bpm. I've been thinking the same thing in Monobloco (which usually plays samba at 135). My sense of slow and fast has gotten warped! ah, unbelievably, now I can easily play at that speed - all that practice paying off at last... EXCEPT I couldn't hear myself at all. I have to practice playing louder.

We stayed till close to 5am - Nana is my kind of tour van operator, the kind who doesn't leave till the last drum is put away. I arranged a lesson with Jonas on repinique for Tuesday; and then got to see Mocidade again last night at the Sambodromo. This was the first weekend of the free Sambodromo rehearsals. Vila Isabel, Estacio, and Portela also played this weekend. Such fun, as always. At one point there was a Mocidade bateria director standing just in front of me on the other side of the fence. I recognized him - he had been watching me the night before when I played caixa. So I tapped him on the shoulder to say hi, and he recognized me too, & gave me a big friendly greeting. Mocidade has always been so friendly to me. They gave me and my parents an incredibly warm welcome when we visited last year. So I'm delighted to find that I'll be able to visit Mocidade more often now.

Mocidade Samba-Enredo - 2007

Divina criação
Do pó da terra ao sopro da vida
“ O Grande artesão do universo”
Legou ao homem a inspiração criativa
Ao deixar o paraíso, se fez preciso
Viver pelas próprias mãos
Com o passar do tempo
O mundo em evolução
Escravizado pela sua ambição
Vê o futuro ao simples toque do botão

Amar, viver, sonhar, acreditar
Que a alma é a fonte, energia da vida
Na máquina jamais se encontrará
A inspiração que faz nascer a poesia

Mãos que se entrelaçam
Da natureza, toda forma de expressão
Transborda em cada peça, sua imaginação
Tão belas, tão lindas
Uma cultura em cada região
Aplausos, às estrelas da folia
O sonho se transforma em alegria
Sou eu, tenho samba no pé, sou sambista
Nas mãos, o talento de artista
Eu me orgulho de ser artesão

Um Brasil feito à mão
Um só coração – liberdade!
Da emoção, eu faço a arte
Em verde e branco, com a Mocidade