On surdo at Mocidade

Saturday was such a long overwhelming day that it has blown my sense of time apart. It seemed to last about a week. I think it all took place in one day but I'm not even sure....

My friend Flavio's birthday party was yesterday, and I really wanted to say a quick hello to him before I left for Mocidade. But I made the mistake of acceping a ride to Flavio's party with some friends, who, it turns out, were planning wanted to drop by a different party first "just for a few minutes" (= two hours) "and it's also in Santa Teresa, very close" = in a remote, hilly part of Santa Teresa miles from anywhere, where not only are there no street cabs, but even the radio cabs aren't willing to come. So I was stranded... I missed the Padre Miguel bus...

Long story short, it was a Homeric odyssey, and very expensive, to get to Mocidade. I decided, either the gods didn't want me to go, or they were testing me. FOUR hours later, after missing all busses, after negotiating and waiting for FIVE different taxis who all either flaked out or their cars broke down, I finally found a willing cabbie to take me on the world's most horribly expensive cab ride all by myself all the way to Padre Miguel. Thirty-five dollars, one way!!! ow!!!! I am so broke, I couldn't believe I was spending the money, but that's how much I wanted to play....

So it was past 2 am when I finally got to Mocidade, and it felt like such a triumph just to get there.

I was, of course, hoping to play third surdo... but not really expecting anything, 'cause you never know. But there was a free caixa, so I started on that.

Caixa at escola speed is still strange for me. At first it seems very easy and I sound just fabulous. But about 15 minutes into it, suddenly I become completely incompetent, like I have never held drumsticks before in my life. It's got to be my arms wearing out, yet my arms don't feel tired - it feels more like my brain wore out. Suddenly my hands can barely even just keep the sticks alternating! It's frustrating to suddenly feel so incompetent! But there's nothing to do but keep trying, keep flogging at it, in hopes that next week, it'll be better.

So after I fried out on caixa, I kept slogging at it for a while, but was hoping to switch off to surdo & repique, where I could use a fresh set of muscles. But there seemed to be not many repiques, and I had no idea what the protocol was for surdo. Most instruments are first-come, first-served (after 2am), but not surdo. For surdo, directors point to certain people and move them deliberately to surdo. It's not ok to just pick one up. Directors especially guard first and second surdo. Foreigners usually aren't allowed on surdo, and women almost never, especially first and second.

So anyway, after a stint on caixa I started filming the third surdos, the same as I'd done last week. The lead repique player, a brilliant 16-year-old kid named Bruno, had been watching me playing caixa (during my good 15 minutes, thank god), and later noticed me watching the thirds. At the next break he began gesturing insistently that I should switch to third. He seemed to be convinced that I could not possibly understand a single word of Portuguese - he would never speak a single word to me, even when I spoke to him in Portuguese, but would only communicate in silent pantomime. Anyway, he started pantomiming, rather insistently, that I should play third surdo. Mestre Jonas gave me a thumbs-up about it too, and so I switched.

Surdo! Jonas was on third too, right next to me.

Surdo surdo surdo!

It's funny. Jonas had told me last week "You cannot show any fear" but I discovered immediately, that's easy; I simply don't feel any fear on surdo. I feel shy about other instruments - caixa, repique, tamborim. But on surdo, the moment I hook that big drum to my belt and feel its familiar weight leaning against my shins, there is no fear.

Bruno was on lead repique. I heard his call, and Jonas and I just flew into the samba. It is like: the starting gate opens and the horse charges out onto the limitless track ahead. No fear, only exhilaration.

I stayed on third for a long time, I don't know how long... many samba-enredos and a samba version of "Happy birthday" went by... I played every variation I knew, made up new ones, played off what the other guys were doing, starting trying to match the songs. I felt so comfortable. It felt like home.

People kept turning around and looking at me. I starting getting little thumbs-ups from caixa and repique players all around, and from the director who was leading. A woman in the front row, playing cuica, kept looking back at me with a wide smile.

Eventually Bruno gestured for me to switch to second-surdo. He and the assistant mestre (who was leading, while Jonas played), both mimed through a repique call to be sure I knew where to enter.

I switched to second. Played 2 samba-enredos there.

Bruno gestured for me to switch to first surdo. I switched to first. I stayed on first a long time.

My old friend first surdo - this where it all began, for me, with samba. Even after all this time, there is something about first surdo, the solidity and the power of it. You stand tall, reach deep, open your ears to everybody all around you, and power down.

We'd reached the late-night Feeding of the Bateria. Rounds of guys came by passing out beers and Guarana sodas. A guy with a big tray of little pastries walked by and stuffed two pastries into my mouth while I was playing - not exactly at my request - he did the same to the director, so both me & the director had our mouths were completely stuffed full, too full to chew, and we were almost choking on the crumbs. He couldn't use his whistle any more and had to cue everything with elaborate huge gestures. He caught my eye and saw me struggling to swallow too, and we both started laughing, and then laughing more because we couldn't even laugh without spraying crumbs all over. (Through all this, of course, I KEPT DRUMMING, you can't ever stop!!)

Eventually we got into a series of old samba-enredos with complicated calls that I'd never heard before. Bruno and the director both realized I didn't know any of the breaks, and Bruno started silently coaching me through the breaks, miming each one beforehand and then trying by sheer force of will and intense eye contact to get me through it when it finally happened. But eventually, of course, I completely blew an unusual call that I'd never heard before, that came out of a long weird paradinha in a place where I thought there'd be a 4-count call after it, but nah, it was an 8-count call. I went BOOM! , just at the wrong time! Ouch!!! That was that, at the next song off they switched me off to caixa again! That's the rule - once you screw up on first or second surdo, you automatically switch off at the next song. I'd always heard about this; but it didn't feel bad, as I'd always imagined it would. It seemed to just be routine; nobody holds it against you. Mocidade turns out to be very forgiving, actually, of the learning process. They have to be; they are training up new players all the time.

So, it turned out, they were all still really pleased with me, in spite of my big ol' bad boom at the end, and assumed I'd be back on surdo next week.

I was actually pretty glad to switch off - my arms were really exhausted and I'd shredded my hand. I had been developing a variety of blisters and had been switching to some different mallet holds, each of which would avoid the current blister but then would start a new blister. By now they'd all kind of blended together... all the skin on the side of my index finger had sort of pulled loose and slid down toward the thumb. Not a blister so much as a flaying. I even got a blister on my pinky (how did I do that?) and hammered my hand into the drum rods a couple times, and the next day I realized I had a four separate bruises on my knee, I think from all the jumping I was doing with the third surdo. It'll all heal up in a week. It always does.

Afterwards.... when the bateria finally stopped for the night... I was standing around in the courtyard, and one of the tougher directors came by. He said to the guy next to him, in Portuguese, "Check it out, she played everything! Third, second, first, she played everything, and she played WELL! And she didn't make "noise", she played well!" (noise, "barulho", apparently meant bad playing. "Ela nao fez barulho nao, ela tocou bem!") "Even on caixa she played well!" - he must have walked by in my first 15 minutes on caixa, thank god!

I felt so lucky.

Then the odyssey back. Nana and the Germans had left already; I'd been completely oblivious of the time.... and now I had no idea where to catch a bus back. But Jonas managed to connect me with a bateria member who lives not too far from me, who said he could give me a ride back, but "in just 15 little minutes, ok?" (quinze minutinhos!) = two hours. But it was so interesting, sitting there in the friendly outdoor bar outside Mocidade, the pagode band playing, the clumps of players arguing about escola details ("Well, what I think is, for the cd they really should do would Grupo Acesso does, record it live! It would have so much more energy...." "We need to solve that problem where, you know how the bateria doesn't quite all fit in the recuo and they sort of end up in an L shape, and half the band can't hear the other half?" "You should have seen Imperio Serrano last night at the Sambodromo, oh my god, they have this break with the bells that's so cool, it goes like this, look, look, check it out, they go DING DONG DING and everybody crouches down....")

I heard a rooster crow. An honest to god rooster! The sky was getting light. yikes! We finally piled into the guy's little car - the driver, me, and a friend of his. It was a tiny rattletrap 2-door car with the roof coming down in back, so I lay on my side in the tiny little back seat. Both guys had their windows wide open, and a galeforce wind was howling through the car. I was shuddering with cold. They put the Samba-Enredos 2007 cd on, and put the Mocidade song on endless repeat for the 45-minute drive back to Zona Sul. It was past 7am by the time I got back home.... and I was so wired I couldn't fall asleep.