my choro camp dilemma

One of my major goals this year was to really improve my pandeiro playing, but it's fallen by the wayside. It's turned out to be a season of caixa, repinique, surdo, tamborim - but not pandeiro. I've squeezed in a few lessons here and there, but without regular classes, and without a group to play with, my poor pandeiro has taken a back seat.

Pandeiro is a problem. I have worked hard on it over the last two and a half years, on and off. The "on and off" is because I go through maddening cycles of hand injuries with pandeiro. For such an innocuous-looking little tambourine, it's a real beast! It's notorious among percussionists as a "six-hours-a-day" instrument, a "two-year instrument". And the thing has teeth - I've had at least 11 pandeiro injuries. It took six months just to be able to hold the thing without pain. I've had bone bruises that took months to heal, four or five separate kinds of tendonitis, tiny strained hand muscles that I'd never known existed, nerve damage, persistent hand cramps, wrist trouble... each one put me out of commission for a month or more. All told, I've spent as much time not playing as I have playing!

Pandeiro's also emotionally loaded for me: associated with a lost friend, a pandeiro teacher who I still miss. The original reason that I came to Brazil was to simply look for other pandeiro teachers. When I first came to Brazil last year, all I had was a little red card with the names of 2 pandeiro teachers written on it: Marcos Suzano and Celso Silva. I didn't have any other information at all about Rio; I didn't even have a map, or even a guidebook. I didn't know anybody, had no contacts, spoke no Portuguese, had no friends here, came alone. Just had that little card with those two names. I bought my ticket, and got my visa, and quit my job. I tucked the little card into my passport and got on the plane.

That was a year and a half ago. The card is still tucked in my passport.

In retrospect, it was an idiotic thing to do. But that's how important pandeiro was to me, and that's how determined I was to keep going on it, and not let the loss of that one teacher stop me. Miraculously, I found both Suzano and Silva, and studied with them both. And I found other wonderful teachers too. I have had 10 great pandeiro teachers at this point (8 Brazilian, 2 American). I've been very lucky.

But more injuries happened. More time slipped away... Teachers got busy, disappeared. Caixa and third surdo started sucking up my time. And I can't practice! I've been living in an apartment where I can't make any noise, not even pandeiro. Eventually I found a nice spot outside to practice, but a guy started harassing me. The next week I switched to another spot, but another guy started harassing me. Later, I found a third spot that seemed safer. Under some trees, shielded from view. But then the rains started.... and didn't let up for a month.

So I'm out of practice, and frustrated!

I'm still chasing that ghost, wanting to be a Real Player and not just a "good student". I want to play for real. It's not exactly a practical thing to be working on - there's not any market for pandeiro in the US, and I doubt I'll ever even find a venue to play it. But still it keeps calling to me, and somehow I feel like, until I can really be a GOOD pandeiro player, REALLY good, I'll never be able to rest (and never be able to let that friend go). I've put so much time and heart into pandeiro. And it's such a cool little drum. I don't want to stop halfway.

So, here's my current dilemma. I have the opportunity, if I want, to go to the Escola Portatil's famous choro camp next week to study pandeiro 3 hours a day, for a week, with the great Celso Silva. At first I thought, whee!!! perfect!!! But then I realized - oh, why oh why does the camp have to be this next week, of all weeks of the entire year?? The week before Carnaval??? When all the escolas are having their last, biggest and best rehearsals? And all my groups, groups I've spent months playing with, will be deciding who can parade with them in Carnaval? And today I found out the choro camp is a ten-hour journey away. (one way!) so, there go two more days for travel....I'd miss all the weekend rehearsals.... goodbye Sao Clemente, goodbye Monobloco, goodbye Mocidade.

What to do?

unique baterias

Another busy night tonight.... Bangalafumenga, Sao Clemente, Trapiche Gamboa, then the obligatory "but we still haven't drunk our 15 chopp beers yet" and resulting two-hour visit to the justly famous Bar Belmonte in Flamengo. GREAT night. It was especially fun to have such a good gang to hang out with - a mix of my choro gang and my escola gang.

more about the name-that-escola recording:
first off, I got some email responses, and yup, most of you got it!
1. Imperio Serrano
2. Mangueira
3. Mocidade
4. Beija-Flor

some more info:
1. Imperio Serrano - because of the quad bells. (this could also have been Grande Rio; but only Imperio has enough quad bells for them to be that audible from across the caixas and surdos).

2. Mangueira - Instantly identifiable because of the lack of a second surdo. They just have a first surdo hitting the "2", and that is their odd little surdo called a cortador, or cutter, that occasionally fills in offbeats. This little recording captures a cortador player who does a classic sequence. (never mind about why the first surdo is called "first" if it is hitting the "2" - just accept it)

I noticed that this year, Mangueira's bateria slogan is "Bateria Surdo Um!" (Bateria One Surdo!). It is printed on all the drum heads. They were also all wearing t-shirts that said, in Portuguese, "You gotta respect my one surdo!"



(the "Dedo Colado" written on the drum head is the drummer's name - "Glue Finger"!)

If you listen to the full Mangueira recording (I posted a longer version) you'll also notice a couple other things. A bank of agogos go by - Mangueira's the only large escola that I've seen that uses agogos. And cuicas keep popping into view (auditorally), because Mangueira scatters the cuicas among the caixas and surdos instead of putting them in the front row.

Mangueira is NOT instantly identifiable by caixa pattern, or at least, not by me. The caixa pattern is not the oddity that it's been taught to be in many American groups. Americans tend to overemphasize the double-right hits, and to play the left hand way too soft. In reality - most Mangueira caixa players simply rattle along with a very classic rocketing samba swing, in which the double-right hits are either inaudible, or they are using another sticking entirely that doesn't even have any double-rights. If you really want to sound like Mangueira: forget the double-rights and work on your swing instead.


3. Mocidade - Caixas are playing pure "bossa clave", and the surdos are inverted in tuning; the second surdo (playing the 1) is lower pitched than the first surdo (playing the 2). In combination, you get this melody:
"Boom, ba-bim, ba, boom, ba, bim-ba!"
ok, maybe that doesn't make any sense to anyone but me.... but to me it is the sound of Mocidade!

Mocidade caixa players all play single-stroke (left and right hand alternating). And the caixa swing is not as strong as in other escolas.


4. Beija-Flor - the giveaway is at the break when the frigideiras (frying pans) enter! I love these little frigideiras. They swing like crazy and it's always such a kick in the pants when they enter. I decided today that I should buy one. Everybody needs a tiny frying pan to play in a samba band, don't they?
You might also detect a "shk, shk" sound buzzing softly in the background. Beija-Flor's got some shekeres. The huge kind. They're not usually that audible, but they were threading their way through the bateria just then, because Beija-Flor, like many baterias these days, enters the recuos "head-first" and has to reorganize afterwards. The baterias have to pull off the parade route and "park" in side streets, recuos, twice during the parade. Entering head-first saves time because it allows the parade to keep moving. (As opposed to the bateria walking past the recuo, stopping, then backing up into it, which puts the instruments in the right sequence for moving out again; but the whole parade has had to stop.) But after a head-first entrance, then the "front instruments" have to manuever their way to the other end of the bateria somehow.
Mangueira has trained its drummers in a complicated manuever with columns of drummers moving past each other; Beija-Flor just has the "front instruments" walk single file down a center column to the other end of the bateria. (the back instruments remain out of order, but it doesn't really matter.)

Name that escola!

I realized that several of the Grupo Especial escolas that I've recorded recently at the Sambodromo have something distinctive about their samba groove. So I made a little "Name that escola" mp3 with snippets of four different Rio escolas. Just posted it to homepage.mac.com/sambakat, in the mp3 section. If you are a sambista - can you name all four? (If you know this year's songs, you'll pick out two escolas just by that. But you shouldn't need the songs!)

More tomorrow about all four escolas. I'll also post longer recordings that showcase more of their fancy stuff.

The biggest rehearsal ever

Flew from Salvador back to Rio today... only got a couple hours sleep last night, and when I lay down on my bed for just a second at about 5pm, I closed my eyes, opened them again and it was 8pm. Damn! I'd slept through most of the Mangueira rehearsal at the Sambodromo! I thought, oh well, it's nice to mellow out now and then and feel like I don't need to rush around. I decided not to even try to go to the Sambodromo; decided just to poke around at home unpacking. So I started unpacking, feeling nice and mellow, and then sort of accidentally wandered out of the house and into a taxi and suddenly there I was, accidentally, walking up to the second recuo - and the Mangueira bateria was still there!!! They were supposed to have ended a whole half hour before, but they were only halfway through the parade.

AND... I could get right up and see everything!! Mangueira was criticized at their last Sambodromo rehearsal for acting like primadonnas and being over-zealous about keeping the public at arm's-length. Apparently there were nasty security guards posted everywhere and reams of fencing that kept the public unnecessarily far back. Mangueira is the most famous escola in Rio, and the oldest escola, and they do get kind of snotty; they've been my least favorite escola all year because of this. (They're also rather uninventive in their samba. They rarely do any paradinhas, for example, have no fancy breaks, and never go into a funk, afoxe, or any other groove. And their quadra is too crowded to dance. And too expensive. And they won't let women watch the bateria. And...)

But they redeemed themselves tonight! They were letting everybody get right up close and were really friendly and inviting. The whole crowd could get right up to the back row of the bateria in the recuos! They'd put the fence just two feet away from the back line of drummers! (The beer vendors & escola drummers both loved this because the vendors can finally get close enough to sell the bateria some beer, and I saw quite a few players demonstrate their considerable skill at slugging back beers while never missing a beat.) And they'd opened up the frisas (sidewalk areas) on both sides of the parade route. They even had the giant south gate wide open, so people could all come in and watch the bateria at the end of the parade route. (actually, I am not sure how many of these decisions are done by the escola, the Sambodromo staff or who exactly.)

And the energy was GREAT. People were just bubbling with excitement and happiness. There was a sense of giddy joy in the air. Even when the bateria was still a half a mile away, so that you could just faintly hear a very distant "boom! boom!", people started singing along and dancing, starting their own excited parties right there with their friends, not waiting for the parade to arrive.





... and this was just a rehearsal!
(both those shots are from O Dia's Carnaval website, http://odia.terra.com.br/especial/rio/carnaval2006/index.asp)

You know... I basically came straight from Olodum rehearsal (in Salvador, late last night) to Mangueira rehearsal (in Rio today), and the energy here in Rio really is different than in Salvador. In Salvador, sure, everyone loves Olodum, and people were dancing, but there wasn't that sense of "this is MY group!" that you get here in Rio. The blocos in Salvador are not as distinctly connected to a certain geographic neighborhood, a certain community, the way the escolas are here in Rio. People in Rio seem just overjoyed to see their home team perform, almost ecstatic. All the performers are their friends and family from their home town. Where else but Rio would you hear people giddily screaming out the names of their favorite choreographer, and their favorite float designer, and their favorite music director, as if they were rock stars? There were dozens of women yelling "Carlinhos! Car-LINHOS!!!!" - Carlinhos de Jesus, who choreographs the modern dance troupe at the front of Mangueira's parades - and running up to get pictures with him.

Here's O Dia's picture of him during the rehearsal:


and my snapshot right afterwards:


And also, it seems like, in Salvador, Carnaval is for the young, but in Rio, it is for all ages. Olodum's crowd - and the entire Salvador vibe, actually - is like a nightclub crowd, almost entirely in their 20's and early 30's. (Ile Aiye was similar.) But in Rio tonight, while I was edging my way along one 50-meter stretch of the Mangueira crowd, I edged past a clump of at least 20 elderly gray-haired women who were all singing the Mangueira song at the top of their lungs, and all dancing; then past a set of young 20-somethings dancing like crazy; then I stopped to take a picture of the children's ala; then had to step aside to let some wheelchairs go by, the guys in the wheelchairs all dressed up with Mangueira t-shirts and Mangueira caps, waving pink-and-green Mangueira flags. Everybody was there. Again - it's the community, the whole community.

The crowd was in such a giddy mood that in the long wait between Mangueira and Beija-Flor, they started cheering and applauding at any little excuse. Beija-Flor's fleet of buses came down the runway: huge cheers for the bus drivers. A fire truck backed out of the recuo: more cheering. Then a HUGE roar went up from the crowd, for a tiny old woman who had crept out past the security guards and was doing a slow, fragile samba in the middle of the runway all by herself. She samba'd carefully for about 20 seconds, the crowd whooping and clapping the whole time, and then she took a little bow to an enormous cheering ovation, and then she crept back behind the security line again.

When Beija-Flor's parade finally arrived.. wow. Their theme this year is "Africa", and several of their alas are doing forms of African dance interspersed with samba. I have never seen African dance done to Rio samba music before, and the combination was electrifying. It fits beautifully. (West African music & dance are, of course, the origin of samba.) Even the dancers who were doing straight samba seemed to be dancing slightly differently, putting some of the earthier, more grounded African moves into it. Like I said, WOW. I only wish I'd been close enough to get good videos! (I was in the bateria recuo, illegally, never mind how I got there.) Lots of the dance alas had even arranged special outfits just for this rehearsal. The men's dance alas had put themselves in African beaded necklaces, and one group was whirling around in a really cool outfit of wild stripes of white that I finally realized were just white jeans and white t-shirts that had been cut into long, long strips. They'd bought those clothes and cut them up just for this one rehearsal tonight. Half the girl passistas had gone topless, painted with white zebra stripes that somehow sort of disguised the toplessness (every nipple was discretely covered with a white zebra stripe) - somehow this made it even more attractive that it would have been if they'd just been plain nude. Another set of girl passistas had put themselves in leopard-print bikinis, and they looked, if possible, even hotter than the topless girls. It was all such a different look, compared to the usual glitter-queen high-heeled passista look, that it really changed something about the way they were dancing.

Zebra stripes, leopard tops, bead necklaces, topless dancers - it could have been cheesy, but it wasn't. This is the first escola rehearsal that actually made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Seemed like there were real African lions stalking down the Sambodromo runway. There is something about Beija-Flor. They blew me away last year too. They are just intense.

PS While I was writing this post, O Dia newspaper posted a review to the website. The Sambodromo rehearsals tonight drew a crowd of 60,000 - a all-time record for a rehearsal. Also, mangueira's main singer took ill while the bateria was in the second recuo, and was carried off in an ambulance. (I didn't see this happening) But he is ok. He has diabetes, apparently.

Start on the THREE!

My new favorite place to live in Salvador: Santo Antonio, just north of touristy Pelourinho. Peaceful, winding cobblestone streets lined with unbelievably charming, and unbelievably rickety, old townhouses, all painted in bright colors with gingerbread trim picked out in white. Lots of the old buildings are getting fixed up now, and turned into pousadas and restaurants. And touristy Pelourinho is just a short walk away when you want to get to the dance and drum classes, the bars, and the bands. (just a very short walk, but dowwwwwn a big steep hill and uppppppp another one! It´s a good workout living here!

I found some friends who knew friends who had some rooms to rent, and I ended up in the most wonderful old house in Santo Antonio. Yeah, it's rickety, there's no hot water, the electricity is very dubious, the stairs are falling apart, there are no 90-degree angles anywhere (especially not the stairs!) and I can see the sky in a few places through the crude tile roof. But I have a huge high-ceilinged attic all to myself, and it's quiet and peaceful. The vast kitchen has an incredible view of
an old convent on a hillside covered with orange-flowered trees. And the other people in the house are just wonderful to hang out with. The couple that own the place turn out to be a former dancer from the Lions of Batucada, and her husband turns out to be none other than Bira, the marvelous drum teacher who I studied with when I first got to Brazil. It was Bira who got me started on timbal! They'll both be going back to the US this year and I'm hoping we all land in Portland, Oregon, because I'd really like to study more with Bira, especially candomble, his specialty.

Meanwhile, Ramiro's samba-reggae class has been storming along. It´s all I´ve been doing. Out of bed early in the morning, a little breakfast overlooking the vast Bay of Saints, then off to drum class for the whole morning and part of the afternoon. Then the long walk home in the heat through the street markets of bustling downtown Salvador. Buy a half-liter of little orange caja fruits and suck on them like candy...finally get home...Then a shower and lie down on the couch with the fan blowing on me... think about going to some of the other excellent dance & drum classes... plan to go to Bira´s candomble class... oops, napped right through it... get up and go have a chocolate crepe after nightfall. then to sleep at midnight in my vast, cool, empty,peaceful room. Repeat the next day.

It´s been a really peaceful, wonderful way to live. I am so glad I found a peaceful part of Brazil at last.

Tomorrow's the last day. We've covered a lot of varieties of samba dura, old samba-reggae, modern samba-reggae, merengue and cabula; lots of drills on entrances, exits, claves, and not getting crossed; an introduction to the "surdo bateria" that lots of blocos use for stage shows now (one player playing 3 surdos and a repique that are all mounted in a big semicircle around the player), and lots of great tips and drills on the vocabulary for timbal solos and repique solos.

Ramiro is a VERY good teacher. He also has a tendency that I love to drift off on historical/ethnomusicological tangents - usually sparked by some comment from his pro musician friend Leo (a great musician with a vast background encompassing Cuban), who is constantly piping up with a puzzled objection like "But, Ramiro, I never see the old guys playing that. They´re always playing this other thing" and off they'll go into some fascinating long talk about whether semba really is the ancestor of samba, is samba really 2/4 or 4/4 (to my delight, Ramiro is emphatically a 4/4 guy! yeah!), whether Rio-style samba is spiritually more Yoruba or more Bantu, what the relationship is between samba dura and samba de roda, why one of the surdos has been vanishing, whether flams are "before the beat" or "after the beat"... etc...

He drills us over and over again on "where's the 1", pointing out how, again and again, samba AND samba-reggae both always start and end on the 3. He's even brought in some "favorite wrong recordings" of big-name stars who did not grow up in the Salvador tradition, and got it wrong and started on the 1 instead or who even got crossed. Today he played a Maria Bethania recording of the great song "Sonho Meu" that had a beautiful classic 3 entrance, but later on the drumset player started doing lots of dull little breaks that resolved on the 1 instead of on the 3. hmm, come to think of it, a lot of the drumset players that I know in the US do the exact same breaks. It wasn't BAD, exactly, it just wasn't.... it wasn't rootsy. It sounded like a rock drummer who'd learned a samba pattern for drumset out of a book.

One student piped up, "So what if you start a song with a funny break that starts on the 1 instead of the 3? As long as everybody in the band is in agreement about it, there is no problem, is there?"

Ramiro's answer was simply: "Here is the problem. If you get used to playing that way, you'll never be able to play with guys from the street. If you invite them to sit in with you, everybody'll end up all crossed [playing the second half of the samba pattern while you´re playing the first half, and vice versa] and they'll be completely annoyed at you. And they won´t believe you, won´t respect you."

He's right. My old band VamoLa always used to start with a 6-count call that I now realize is bizarre. Basically the entire band enters crossed. I never could track down where this entrance came from - I suspect they picked this up from an unusual Mocidade call that is supposed to be done only when it comes on the heels of a two-count callout, but VamoLa got it out of context, without the two-count callout.

Within VamoLa, we were all in agreement about it, so, no problem, right? But as soon as I left Seattle I found I couldn't play with any other samba band, in Brazil or in the US, until I re-learned that entrance. I was perpetually getting crossed! After every call, every break! Even now, whenever I travel in and out of Seattle I get crossed - first when I arrive in Seattle, I'm crossed relative to VamoLa; then I adjust; then when go to another city, I'm crossed again. (Especially if I don´t have a caixa nearby to cue me.) And it´s embarrassing getting crossed! It is a beginner´s mistake; and on third surdo it is almost the worst thing you can do.

It really is worth it to learn the common language, if you want to be part of the wider community. Sure, innovate, do your thing, do whatever you want; but if you want to play with other people or other groups, learn the common language.

Brazil´d out... for one day

Fresh off my triumphant Policia Federal extension-of-stay, I had a busy busy Friday night in Rio - my last night there for a week. Saw Mocidade´s great rehearsal at the Sambodromo. They´d brought several glittery little floats, the porta-bandeira was truly incredible, and there was an entire ala of 100 choreographed robots. (their theme this year is The Future) Well, I assume they will be robots once they have their costumes! It was so fun watching the bateria go by because now I know them all, and lots of people kept smiling and waving at me, and one of my favorite directors dashed over to kiss my hand. The Queen of the Bateria had such an amazing outfit on that I actually was drawn away from the bateria for a while to go up front and take pictures of her.

But the best part was the crazy end-of-parade when the guys just didn´t want to stop playing... I´ll post a movie later.

Next day, packed my things for Salvador. The plane was, of course, delayed - Brazil´s in a perpetual airport crisis these days - and they didn´t feed us anything on teh flight, and then a pile of us waited at the airport bus station for an hour before someone wandered over to tell us the buses had already stopped running before the plane landed. No buses to the airport on Saturday and Sunday nights? And it´s a 70 real cab ride to town? So FIVE of us, PLUS LUGGAGE, piled into ONE little cab for the hour-long drive into Salvador. Yeesh. These 5- and even 6-passenger cab rides are pretty common, but this one was extra comfy with the complete layer of luggage on top of us. Since I am skinny I always seem to be the one sitting on the gearshift. It´s okay except when the driver needs to shift to second gear (when the gear shift sticks further back, right?). The Brazilian woman who had semi-adopted me on the plane flight kept scolding the taxi driver "Don´t use second gear! You don´t know her that well! You only just met her! DON´T USE SECOND GEAR!" and he kept protesting "But I have to change gears!" while the 3 guys from Minas Gerais in the back kept cracking up.

It was funny at all, but when I got in to my hostel at 11pm I was dead tired. And hungry. Went to one of the few places open, a little street bar with those inevitable cheap plastic tables and chairs, and ordered fish & chips. And then... had to start fending off the Salvador guys immediately! They just drift over and start insistently asking where you´re from, what´s your name, do you have a boyfriend, etc., and shouting mysterious things at you. They´re never scary or rude - just very flirty; it´s just the Salvador style. But suddenly I´d had enough. Didn´t want to deal with the guys, was depressed at the sight of the single women gringos tagging around with their "Brazilian boyfriends", vehemently didn´t want any company, didn´t want to see or hear any music or see another speck of rice and beans. A little group of musicians at the next table over was starting to play pagode, and I could easily have joined in on pandeiro....but... jeez... 76 nights of samba in 80 days does take its toll... I just wanted a night off! I´ve only had about four nights off (sans rehearsal, show, or escola visit) since November 2nd.

So even though it was Saturday night in Salvador, and a million parties going on everywhere, I holed up in my peaceful little private room, turned the fan and air-conditioning on, and sat up till almost 5am eating Cheetos and reading a completely ridiculous science fiction novel that I found in the lobby. In English! It´s the first English book I´ve read in months! (It was about time-travelling aliens who turn the Earth into a patchwork of different times, so - of course - inevitably - Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Rudyard Kipling, and the astronauts from the International Space Station all end up in a huge battle in Babylon.) Not a single word in Portuguese, not a whiff of Brazil all night.... I read the entire book cover to cover in one sitting. It was exactly what I needed. I chilled all Sunday too.

Sometimes you just get Brazil´d out...and need a night off, a night to just be American again. A night and a day.

Monday morning I was right back in it.

the original samba-reggae!

I'm back in Salvador... land of sun, samba-reggae, and slow internet connections. Of dancer friends, and weirdly pushy/friendly capoeira guys / male hookers / I-dont-know-what-they-are-exactly-but-they-sure-have-great-bodies on every street corner. Where any kid on a street corner can do a double aerial somersault.

I came up here for just a week to check out Ramiro Musotto's samba-reggae workshop this week (3 hours a day, Mon through Fri). It turns out to be EXACTLY what I've always wanted for afrosamba & samba-reggae. Finally all the pieces are coming together. Wow... there's such a difference between learning from an American who says "I learned this from a Brazilian guy in LA who said he heard it on an old Ile Aiye album, and there´s something like it in the Daniela Mercury DVD" versus "I helped record that album, and I created that arrangement for Daniela, but here is what they really played on the street."

Ramiro is the real deal. He´s an interesting case. He´s not a street musician; he´s a high-end pro. And he´s not black (which you´d think would be a requirement to teach samba-reggae in Salvador!). But it turns out he has 30 years of experience working with all the afro blocos - recording, producing, learning, working with the mestres, and, yes, playing in the street in carnaval. Plus a ton of international touring experience. It all seems to have given him a global perspective that seems to me to be richer and more complete than the teachers I´ve seen who have primarily played with just bloco. He can explain Ile Aiye´s style better than the Ile Aiye players who I´ve studied with. Plus, glory be, he can count! Not only does he know what we Americans mean by "where´s the one", he actually spent a half hour today drilling us on it. (teaching tip I picked up from Ramiro: always have somebody playing the full surdo line, especially when you´re demonstrating other instruments. It helps people get oriented to how all the parts are supposed to fit together, and where the main beat actually is.)

He´s got stories of famous musicians coming to Salvador, hearing a bloco a couple times, misunderstanding something, then recording a cd with the misunderstood rhythm, which was then played on the radio, which was heard by the Salvadorean musicians - who then changed their style in response! "If you´re not careful, you contribute to killing the very thing you love."

So, his point was, learn the original stuff and get it right.

We started off with the oldest rhythms of both Olodum & Ile Aiye. Ile Aiye´s original rhythm, which was the very oldest samba-reggae, is almost extinct now. The cds on which they play it are out of print. Ramiro said "There is one place in Salvador where you can still hear it, only on Friday nights. I want you all to go see it so you know I´m not lying! This rhythm was real! It is what all the afro blocos really used to play! Ile Aiye invented it, all the other blocos copied it, and they all played it for many years unchanged, till Olodum started innovating."

It was so interesting to see the antigo (old) style. It really was samba and reggae, plain and simple. Surdos and repiques doing samba, caixas doing reggae. Just one major innovation: a fourth surdo, doing a roll. The repique was even played with hand and stick back then. (It was Olodum that switched to 2 baquetas for repique, a technique they borrowed from candomble.)

All sorts of similarities with samba that I´d never perceived before came leaping into view. How have I never noticed before that they both always begin and end on the 3? That Olodum´s "merengue" is pure Mocidade samba, just with the caixa pattern moved to repique, and with Portela´s third surdo? That the third surdo in samba-reggae is playing a pure samba pattern? (actually, I know why I have never noticed this - it´s because American blocos tend to play samba-reggae with only the first, second, and fourth surdo, eliminating the third surdo.) And I never had even known Ile Aiye´s antigo repique pattern, which turns out to be the same rare, beautiful Rio repique variant that I´d seen in Odilon Costa´s book of Rio samba.

So it´s been cool. Two days into it and looking forward very much to the next three.

The Policia Federal

whew, I got my extension of my tourist entry card so I can stay my full 5 months intead of just 3 months. In the interest of helping out anyone else who has to do this, here's the info. (anyone not needing to do this can skip this post)

On a typical tourist visa you are allowed up to 180 days per year in Brasil. The "year" is not the calendar year; it's a year that starts on the date of your first arrival in Brazil. Your 180 days can be all consecutive, or a series of separate visits, as long as the total of days in Brasil is not more than 180. When counting your days, include both the day you arrived, and the day you leave.

However, you are usually given just 90 days when you first arrive. Later, while in Brasil, you can ask to have it extended for another 90 days. This involves going to the policia federal and filing a formal request for an extension of stay. It's pretty routine, but here's the nuts & bolts just in case.

When you first arrive in Brasil, you fill out a white piece of paper, and show it to a bored-looking man who will scrawl something on it and hand it back to you. This is your tourist entry card. Do NOT lose it. Check what he scrawled at the bottom for the number of days you can stay. Usually he'll have written 90, but this is not guaranteed. He can use his own discretion. If you are a young guy - a typical untrustworthy young ruffian - he might give you just 45, or 30. Make sure you check, so that you don't accidentally overstay your alloted number of days.

Near the end of your allotted days, book a morning to go to the Policia Federal to ask for the extension. (Lines are much shorter in the morning.) I never could find out when exactly you are supposed to ask for the extension. One tourist website said to do it at least two weeks before your days run out.


1. Bring:
- your passport
- your white tourist entry card
- a credit card, or other proof that you have sufficient funds for your stay in Brazil
- proof of a return flight out of Brazil (a printout of an e-ticket is fine). If you will be leaving Brazil by bus, bring a tidily typed sheet of your whole planned itinerary in South America, and a printout of whatever ticket you have out of South America. Basically they are looking for assurance that you will not be staying in Brazil forever.
- the name, address & phone number of a Brazilian friend for a personal reference
- enough cash for the R$67 fee, and also for a visit to an internet shop to print out a form.
- if you want, you can print out and bring the "GRU" form (to take to the bank with your R$67 fee) before you actually go to the policia federal. But it has to be printed on the same date that you go to the policia. See below.

2. Go to the Policia Federal.
In Rio, they are at Avenida Venezuela 4, in Centro, right next to the Praca Maua. Make sure you are on the Avenida Venezuela side of the building - there is a different entrance on the other side for other things. Go in and say "Turista?" to the woman at the main desk. She will send you to area #2, over to the right. The people sitting in the chairs have usually sorted themselves into a little line, so, take the last chair. One by one they will go in the door for a little interview.

3. Get interviewed.
When your turn comes, go in and talk to the agent. I dealt with two agents, both of whom inspected my passport extremely closely. Expect extra attention if you have had other types of visas in the past, or if you have a series of confusing stamps in the passport. They're always fascinated by the 30-day work visa that I had once, two years ago, for a biology research trip to the Pantanal, and then fascinated again by the jumbled sequence of entry and exit stamps for 4 trips to Brazil that I have made since then.
Even I can't understand my passport stamps any more, so I wrote out a tidy little list of the dates I entered and left, with the total of days for each visit. I keep that little list with my passport and show it to every passport officer that I meet in Brazil. It always seems to smooth things over.

The agent that I talked to gave me a brisk, efficient little interview:
1. Why are you here in Brazil? What are you doing here?
- Playing music.
2. (rapid fire, looking at me closely) What instruments do you play?
- Caixa and surdo. And pandeiro.
3. (rapid fire again) What groups do you play with?
- Bangalafumenga, Monobloco, Mocidade, and Sao Clemente!

I couldn't help smiling as I was listing my four groups, and he immediately relaxed and said brightly "Did you know that the escola of Unidos de Tijuca has rehearsals right here, every week? Right outside, right here on this street, the Avenida Venezuela. Every Thursday night. You should come see it!" Once again - get talking samba with any Brazilian, and doors start opening!

Generally - be nice. Don't get mad at the guy if you have accidentally overstayed your visa - it's not his fault.

Once you've cleared the little interview, he'll give you a form to fill out. This is the Policia Federal form and will go in their files. Then he will send you outside on a internet-and-bank quest.

4. Find an internet place & print a second form to take to the bank.
In Brazil, almost all bills are paid by taking them to any bank. You don't have to have an account at that bank - you just need the money, and a form that tells the bank who you are and where to send the money. This form is a "GRU" form, and, in this case, you need to print it out from the Policia Federal website. (This system has arisen because it's not safe for businesses to do large volumes of cash transactions themselves, and it's not reliable to send anything through the mail. )
You can print this form out before you even go to the Policia Federal, but it has to be printed the same day as your policia trip (or more precisely, the same day that you go to the bank, which you will normally do after the interview).
There is a guy outside the policia station who will be happy to print your form for 5 reais. Or, if you walk a little farther to the Avenida Rio Branco, you can find other places that will do it for 1 real. You can also return home, print it at your leisure and return to the Policia Federal another day.

The form is at the website http://www.dpf.gov.br/
Click on "GRU - Funapol - emissao de guia para pessoas & entidades estrangeiras". Be sure you click the "estrangeiras" one and not the "brasileiras" one.
You'll have to fill out the form online. Fill in name, address, etc.
"Bairro" is "neighborhood". Go ahead and enter something here, even if it's not really part of your address.
For "Unidade Arrecadadora", pick the location of the police station. If you are at the Avenida Venezuela station, it wll be the first "RJ" option, the "Superintendencia Regional" one.
For "Codigo da Receita", enter 140090, which is the code for "Pedido de Prorrogacao de Prazo de Estada", which means, "Request for Extension of Period of Stay". Confirm this number by checking the back of the Policia Federal form or by clicking the little magnifying glass for a list of all the codes.
Fill in the number of reais to be paid. The policia guy will have told you this; it's also on the website in that list of codes (click on that magnifying glass again). Right now (January 2007) it is 67 reais.
The website will create an official-looking form with your name & a barcode. Print this out.


5. Pay the R$67 fee to the bank.
Take the form you just printed out, and R$67, to any of the many nearby banks. There are about 20 banks within a couple blocks of the Policia Federal. Go through the metal-detector revolving door (hint: put your cell phone & keys in the little plexiglass box in the wall first), look for the "Caixa" (cashier) area, get your number, sit & wait....

The bank will give you a receipt.


6. Return to the Policia Federal
...with the bank receipt, your filled-out Policia Federal form, and all your other stuff. You might be re-interviewed. This is also usually when they want to see your credit card and airplane ticket. If all goes well, they'll paste a little white ticket into your passport with a new date, the date by which you have to leave Brasil.


*** If you've accidentally overstayed your visa,
Don't bother trying to bribe the guy; it doesn't work. Bite the bullet and pack your things for a little trip out of Brazil. Brazil is actually fairly lenient about this - much nicer than the US is to Brazilians! Brazilians visiting the US who overstay their visits are prohibited from re-entry for 10 years! But Americans in Brazil who over-stay just have to leave for 1 day and pay a little fine for each day overstayed, and are allowed to come right back in again. I don't know exactly what the fine is but it is something like 2 or 3 reais per day over-stayed, so, even if you've overstayed for months it's only a few hundred reais.

The cheapest option is the bus to Foz da Iguacu, which is the enormous waterfall on Brazil's southern border. It is spectacularly gorgeous, definitely worth a visit in any case, so just enjoy it! It's a long, long bus ride - all day. If you have the money, take an airplane instead. There are zillion hostels on both sides of the border. And by the way - it's worth staying there 2 days to see both sides of the falls. And take the little boat ride too; it's great. Two other excellent options, a bit more expensive, are a visit to the beaches of Uruguay, or a trip to the great city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where you will have the best and cheapest steaks you have ever eaten.

When leaving Brazil, if you are planning to re-enter, always bring proof of your final flight back to your home country, because without proof that you are not going to stay in Brazil forever, the Brazilian border guys may not let you back in. I nearly got stranded in Buenos Aires because of this. They only relented because I looked so pathetic and because it was Christmas Eve.

In theory, you only have to dash across the border for a second and then you can come right back in. But it's safest to spend a day on the other side so that your exit and entry stamps are clearly on two different dates. Also, if you are taking a bus across the border, make sure the guy actually stops so that you get the exit stamp - the Foz da Iguacu border is very lax because people are constantly criss-crossing just for an hour or two just to visit the other side of the waterfall. (so, it's also the best place to sneak into Brazil without a visa at all!) So sometimes the buses don't even bother to stop. Make sure you get an exit stamp, but if you're lucky, they won't bother to look at your tourist entry card and won't charge you the fine! Likewise, be sure you get an entry stamp & new entry card when you re-enter Brazil.

Once you're finally back on the Brazilian side, clean and legal with a new entry card and a new 90 days, don't do what a friend of mine did and accidentally get on the bus to Paraguay instead of to Rio!

You're in the army now

I'm finally getting a few hours to go through some of my backlogged movies from Beija-Flor, Portela & Mocidade. Just posted:

- Mocidade's lead repiques take the bateria through some paradinhas and then into a very unusual samba entrance. I was primarily filming Bruno, the 16-year-old who was the first person to invite me on to surdo at Mocidade. He is always amused (and pleased, I think) when I film the bateria, and you can see him give me a big grin at the end.

- A little clip of one of Beija-Flor's two frigideira (frying pan) players. These little frying pans are astonishingly loud, with such a bright bell tone that you can hear them above the whole bateria. And they really keep the swing motoring along.

More to come.


The Caixa Army
This is an all-bloco week for me. No escolas. I decided the blocos needed all my attention this week if I want to really deserve the spot they are offering to me, because the leaders are working SO hard giving us extra classes and rehearsals, and trying to iron out all the problems. So I spent most of the weekend listening to Banga and Monobloco recordings, and wrote down all Banga's third-surdo patterns on a little yellow card, and all Monobloco's caixa patterns on a little pink card.

Surdo I am very secure on. But caixa is still a new drum for me, and Monobloco is really my first time BEING a caixa player, really committed to it, slated to perform on it in some high-profile shows. And it's been kicking my ass! They've suddenly gotten very picky and dead serious. They're running two rehearsals a week now, plus sectionals before each one. Their scariest, scowling-est leader has taking to stalking along the caixa line, glowering at every player's drum and trying to find something to criticize. Even if you play well, he still scowls! (but at least he doesn't yell at you then)

It's intense; I feel like I'm in the army. (Banga, meanwhile, is just as intense, and plays just as well, but somehow manages to do it all with a more gentle, friendly touch. More about the Banga approach in another post.)

Freddy, the caixa leader, has been giving a free extra hour of caixa class before every rehearsal, which has been unbelievably helpful - he's a very good teacher. He makes regular use of the Circle Of Terror: going around a circle of players and having every one of them play solo for a few measures, one at a time. I love teachers who use the Circle of Terror, because it really puts the fear of god into you and makes you shape up fast. But I hate it too! All Freddy has to do is start the Circle Of Terror, and as soon as I realize what's happening and that my turn's coming up soon, with the Terror Solo Spot moving relentlessly around the circle in my direction, like a guillotine rolling closer and closer.... my pulse jumps about 50%. Huge adrenalin rush, worse than any stage fright before an actual show. I start thinking of excuses - I just injured my wrist! I need to change the batteries in my recorder! Oops, my strap broke, I need to go find another strap! My drum needs tuning!

Once the Terror Solo Spot arrives, I'm mostly just trying to get through it alive without having a heart attack right on the spot and passing out on the floor.

Well, I've survived two Circles Of Terror so far (I did not play well for either, but I didn't die either). I am doing pretty well, got the repertoire solid at last, and am holding in there, kind of in the mid-range of the caixas. Far from the best, but not the worst either. I put myself in the front row today where I was not near any other caixas, banked on all sides by tamborims, bells, and repiques, to test myself and see if I really, truly knew the whole repertoire without having anyone else to look at, and whether I was playing cleanly enough to be a support to the other sections around me, rather than a distraction. And I did! Found some spots I need to work on, but on the whole, it's pretty solid.

In the grand scheme of things, I've been really pleased with how far my caixa playing has come in the last three months. And to come this far in two years is something I'm proud of. But when I see the real masters play, I ache to be better still. I want to be cleaner, crisper, stronger! ("Gentlemen, we can rebuild her! We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic caixa player. Better than she was before. Better, stronger, faster!") Yes, I want to be bionic - the buzzes buzzier, the accents sharper, the soft sections softer, the fast parts clean at any speed. The funks as crisp and steady as an atomic clock; the samba-charme with a perfect lilt; the samba with the real swing, not too shuffle-y, not too square, just right.

So today I had a great 1.5-hour snare drum technique lesson with Andre Moreno (of Bangalafumenga), to give me a better grounding in the basics. He zeroed in on some technique fixes (jeez, I had no idea that I'd completely stopped using the fingers on my right hand.... or that my double-lefts are so erratic at slow tempos) and gave me piles of good exercises for power, speed and control. Then the 1-hr class with Freddy - mostly repertoire & transitions among rhythms, today; then the 2+ hour rehearsal with Monobloco, during which we learned, um, I think it was 6 new breaks and 4 songs. Five hours on caixa today! I'm exhausted now....

I carry my sticks & metronome everywhere and constantly drum on my knees. I started doing some little mental games to keep me focused on always playing clean, not like it's "just practice", but like it really matters. Sometimes I pretend there is a microphone pointed right at me, playing live to a radio show to thousands of listeners. When I'm playing in a large group, like Banga or Monobloco, I pretend that I am the only player in my section who is mic'd, the only one the crowd can hear; or that I'm being recorded in the very last take of a long, long day of studio work, when everybody is exhausted and has run out of money for studio time, and this take HAS to be perfect!

And sometimes I pretend I'm playing a soundtrack for a movie. Even the simplest slow little paradiddle or buzz exercise can take on drama if you imagine it as the soundtrack for, say, George Clooney tiptoeing into the casino vault in "Ocean's 11" (crime capers are great for those slow 40bpm metronome drills - just imagine your hero inching along a ledge of a high building toward the maximum-security vault, the only sound your caixa going "tick.....tock.....tick....tock...."). Or Uma Thurman, gracefully sword-fighting in the snow, in "Kill Bill" - great for rolls and double-stroke practice. The entire 8-episode ocean-life documentary "Blue Planet" goes wonderfully with samba drills.

I can tell that every caixa player is putting in lots of extra hours of practice at home. Whether it's out of panic or or just a sense of duty, or just the effect of Freddy's teaching, I don't know, but with every passing rehearsal we are cleaner and tighter. Tonight I rarely heard a single flam from the 20 caixas. We have several entrances where it is silent for 1, 2, 3, and then on 4 the caixas go KAK! That KAK was as clean and sharp as a knife, every time. A single voice.

Last year, a friend of mine told me "The thing that I don't understand about Monobloco is that, when I really watch the bateria, I don't hear any flams at all [people hitting at ever-so-slightly different times]. Usually not even one. You can lean on the rail and watch the tamborim section for ten minutes and not hear a single flam. How do they do that?" Now I know.

Night owl & esquentas

Well, the tiny tattered remnants of my circadian clock have finally bit the dust, along with the tiny tattered remnants of what used to be not too unhealthy a diet. Got in last night at 6am from Mocidade; had a dinner of an enormous bowl of popcorn and some cheese toast (splurging with some fancy imported Wisconsin sharp cheddar, $1 an ounce!); still WIDE awake at 7am... watched half of "Shrek" dubbed in Portuguese... finally started to feel sleepy at about 9am.... fell asleep at 9:30 and then woke up at 4:30pm.

I'm still a little hazy-headed; it's hard to get a really solid sleep when the tropical sun is streaming in your window and your neighbors are playing baile-funk at 120 decibels from across the courtyard.

I just managed to get to the Banga show on time, where I played another wonderful show (this was the first time that I felt really secure on the entire repertoire and all the breaks. They've almost doubled the size of their repertoire this year!) And I wrapped up another nutritionally-challenged day with, let's see, some more popcorn, a beer and a cheese-and-jelly pizza. yum. healthy, I know.

Just posted at homepage.mac.com/sambakat:
- Almost the entire passista show from Mocidade last night, in four parts. Mocidade's got by far the most organized passista show. All escolas have a couple really killer girls, but Mocidade's got a whole set of them, plus the best set of male passistas of any escola, and the winner for Cutest Little Samba-Dancing Kid, too.

- mp3 of Bangalafumenga's samba esquenta (the bateria warm-up). As usual the mix is mostly third surdo since I was playing third surdo with my recorder hanging around my neck; but you can still hear the rest of the group, and, sometimes, the distant tamborims, and sometimes, a leader yelling "CALMA!" (calm down!) when we're starting to rush too much.

I wish I could post their other songs too - Banga has such a cool repertoire! But I don't want to "steal" their stuff and spread it all over the web, which is always a concern when I post mp3's. On the other hand, it's not like it's cheating them out of any income, since they don't have any recordings available for sale! Even so, I won't post any of their songs, just the percussion-only samba breaks, since samba breaks seem to be more-or-less public domain. If you like what you hear, come check out the full show; every Sunday at the Fundicao Progresso, from now till Carnaval. There's an peppy marchinha brass band from 7-9:30 or so, and then Banga starts around 9:45. Every Sunday.

People ask me now and then "Baterias in Rio never play without a song, do they?" Almost true. Almost everything is built around a song. But it is traditional, when a bateria begins playing samba, to play without song or cavaquinho for the first ten minutes. It's called the "esquenta" (esh-KEN-tah), the warm-up, but it's really the bateria showing their stuff. A 10- or 20-minute blast of samba at top volume and top velocity, with all the bateria's favorite breaks, paradinhas, fancy grooves; all their flashy stuff, pulling all the rabbits out of the hat all at once.

A samba bateria always starts with the esquenta, before playing any samba songs. This is so traditional that at the Banga show tonight, when the guest singer (the fabulous Sergiao) wanted to sing a samba, there was a hurried consultation on stage - "But we haven't done the esquenta yet. We can't start playing a samba without doing the esquenta first." We'd been playing plenty of other rhythms - coco, ciranda, xote - for over an hour, but we hadn't played any samba yet, and therefore, of course, we still need to warm up FOR SAMBA, right? Of course. So the band put down their instruments & the Sergiao set down the mic, just so we could do our esquenta!

The baterias at the Sambodromo always do an esquenta too, for the first 15 minutes or so, at the very beginning of the parade route. Don't be late to the Sambodromo, or you'll miss the esquenta! When I was running to catch my Mocidade van last night, I ran past the Portela bateria that had JUST STARTED the esquenta.... ohhhhh.... how could I possibly walk away? I knew I was getting late for the van, but, walk away from Portela right then??? So I stayed to watch the whole esquenta, then sprinted for the van. Nana met me halfway there, in the street, and said calmly "Everyone was saying, where's Kathleen? But I could hear the Portela bateria, and I told them, the bateria is playing; when the esquenta is over, Kathleen will come. And you did."

And the first crime is....

I have been perpetually wondering what my first experience of Rio crime would be. The months kept ticking by with no crime yet. I knew it would happen soon or later, and kept wondering what it would be, because there's much more variety here than in the US. Choices include:

- Bus assault/burning - band of thieves surrounds & boards a bus, robs all passengers
- Blitz - police pull you over, in theory to check id's, but have to bribed to let you go
- False blitz - "police" pull you over but then they turn out to be thieves & they take everything
- Arrastao - thieves' highway roadblock; they force you out of the car, take all your stuff & take your car
- Assalto - armed robbery, often when you are in a car (sometimes they kill you afterwards. Two women were killed yesterday this way.)
- Sequestro - simple kidnapping
- Sequestro-relampago - "lightning kidnapping" - kidnap you, make you go to the ATM & withdraw all your money. (In one terrible recent case, a couple, their five-year-old boy, and an adult friend were all taken prisoner in a sequestro-relampago, after which they were tied up in their car, doused with gasoline and set on fire. The friend managed to wrench herself free and pull the little boy out too. The couple died. The boy died the next day. The friend survived long enough to identify the thieves, and then died a week later.)

moving on,
- Furto - Simple theft. Usually purse-snatching / pickpocketing.
- Tiroteio - gunfight between traficante gangs, or between traficantes and militias or police
- Bala perdida - shot by a stray bullet

I thought the most likely for me were arrastao, assalto, tiroteio, or a simple furto. I already had a close call with an arrastao, and I'm almost certain that one of my taxi drivers zoomed me past a false blitz one night. Arrastoes, the highway roadblocks, have become so common that if an unexpected traffic jam occurs, the drivers in the traffic jam just assume it's an arrastao - a roadblock up ahead, with gangs of 10 or 20 armed hoods surrounding the cars, demanding all the passengers' belongings, and then taking the cars too. So, whenever a suspicious-looking traffic jam starts happening, drivers slam on the brakes, leap out of their cars and run away, trying to at least salvage their lives & their wallets. It's contagious - once one person runs away from their car, everybody assumes the worst and dozens of people abandon their cars all at once. Then, of course, there are all the abandoned cars sitting on the highway, so the highway has to be closed for a few hours to clear the cars off.

The Linha Vermelha, one of the biggest highways here, is closed by arrastoes (real ones) about three times a week. Today, the police were testing some new security forces on the Linha Vermelha, but while all the police were on the Linha Vermelha, the thieves simply set up the usual arrastao on a different highway instead.

Assaltos of single cars are extremely common too, especially, again, in traffic jams, during road floodings, or when the cars are stopped at red lights. Drivers here get the jitters if they have to stop for any reason - they feel like a sitting duck, vulnerable to any passing thief. For this reason, cars in Brazil's major cities are allowed to run red lights after dark.

I'm especially worried every time I catch a ride in my friend's VW Golf. The Rio bandidos love to steal Golfs because Golfs have four doors, and are reliable & fast. I thought maybe VW could use it as an advertising campaign: "Want to start a gang of thieves? Why settle for a gang with just 2 thieves when you can have 4? Try a VW Golf! Four doors, and you'll leave the policia in the dust!" Every single time I've ridden in that car, somebody pipes up, "Well, here we are in the Golf! Did you know that thieves love Golfs? Because they have four doors, and are fast, you know. Hey, did you lock your door?"

But it was just simple robbery in the end, a furto. Tonight while I was watching the Imperio Serrano bateria at the Sambodromo. A guy ripped my bag open and grabbed my wallet, boom, gone. Not a big deal, and it's something that happens in every city in the US too, not even a Rio specialty. It mostly seemed a pity just because it happened at Imperio Serrano, which is such a cool escola - and it had been such a happy, friendly crowd, too. The Sambodromo is tourist central and I'm always careful there; but I was a little surprised because I was inside the security fence, parading with Imperio, and it's usually safe inside the fence. For those who know the area: it happened just at the very end of the parade route, where people are milling around returning the official t-shirts, just when the bateria came off the parade route and the crowd got really jammed. The huge back gate of the Sambodromo was open, and security had gotten lax. It was raining, crowded, everybody was delirious with the samba. Perfect for thieves.

Luckily my usual Rio precautions saved me some trouble. I didn't have my real passport (just a copy), only one bank card, had no jewelry or watches, nothing I really cared about. I was holding tight on to my camera and my sound recorder, and so they didn't get either of those. I only lost some money, and my ATM card, and my keys. But all told, with the lost cash, and the 3 fraudulent charges they racked up on the ATM card in the hour it took me to get home and call my bank, and the cost of changing my locks... well, I've lost enough money that now I can't afford to go to the choro camp that I'd just signed up for.

Oh well....I'll survive. I was feeling a little overloaded anyway since I'm also trying to go to a samba-reggae camp! Two week-long music camps in the five weeks before Carnaval, along with two blocos and two escolas here in Rio running me ragged, was probably a silly plan. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me "Stay in Rio and play with Bangalafumenga." It seems a pity to miss the choro camp, though - because Celso Silva is teaching there! (the grand old lion of choro pandeiro.) well, maybe in 2009.

Next item on my agenda: How to get through the weekend with just my pile of 10-centavo coins.

Sao Clemente mp3s are up

I've gotten about a month behind on posting my video and audio files, which are accumulating about a hundred times faster than I can go through them. I just downloaded 56 sound files off my Edirol, and lots of them are over two hours long! this is getting hopeless! And they're all really great stuff, too. Somewhere in there are all of Imperio Serrano's bell breaks....if I can only find them.... and yes, dancer friends, I WANT to post those dancer files if I can just FIND them....

Anyway, tonight I'm posting some mp3s from the very end of the Sao Clemente rehearsal tonight (at www.homepage.mac.com/sambakat).

The first has a solo & paradinhas from Sao Clemente's killer repinique player Nico. Check out the beautiful long paradinha.

The second file has Sao Clemente's funk. Sao Clemente's the only escola that I've seen do such a funky groove for such a long time, the only one that will go completely out of samba and really groove on another rhythm. cool eh? (especially those tamborims! really simple idea but so effective)

The third is their afoxe. Again, a lot of escolas have a simple afoxe that they'll go into very briefly, for 8 bars or so (usually as part of "The Wave"), but Sao Clemente sits with it an unusually long time.

Last is the full recording with all of the above plus some more samba.

My recorder was hanging down my back and was mostly picking up the third-surdo & caixa that were behind me. Actually you can't even hear any of the other surdos at all, that third was swamping the mic so much! But it's nice to get such a clear recording of just a third surdo, because he's doing lots of good classic third-surdo improv in there (especially, the "offbeats-short-short-long" motif - really classic.)

That particular caixa guy was playing mostly chatter, not the normal Sao Clemente ride, so ignore that caixa if you're trying to learn the Sao Clemente pattern. The real Sao Clemente pattern seems to be more or less:

RllX rlXl Xlrl Xllr

(X = rimshot, R = right center accent, r = soft right, l = soft left)

... though there are lots of variations, that's basically what I hear. This is what I think of as the "Super Strong 4" class of samba caixa pattern because there's a massive strong rimshot on 4, stronger than anything else. As opposed to the "Soft 4" class of caixa pattern, like Viradouro & Mangueira. Then there's Mocidade, the softest four of all, with pure bossa clave. (this is just my own way of thinking about it)

whew, I actually got 1 of the 56 sound files edited and posted; I can hardly believe it...

First show with Banga

The first Bangalafumenga show was Sunday night! Banga has a small pro band that plays year-round, but this is the first time they've added the full Carnaval bateria - all 70 drum students, including me. It was at the Fundicao Progresso, in a new venue they've put on the second floor, right in the big open atrium. They'll be playing every Sunday there till Carnaval. Plus some Friday shows in Niteroi... plus some other parades.... Busy times ahead!

They'd actually gotten pretty organized for this show and had laid all the drums out neatly in advance, every drum labelled with a drummer's name. No doubt about who had been assigned to which part. I was so pleased to find a third-surdo sitting there with a big "Kathleen" label on it. They even spelled my name right! (first time ever, here in Brazil. Turns out they asked one of my friends how to spell it.)

I had a little panic attack at the beginning of the show when I suddenly started second-guessing all my hard-won hand-sign reflexes: "Let's see, a big C and a 1, that's coco pattern 1, which is the same as ciranda 3. OR WAIT - is it the other way around?? OR WAIT - am I thinking of Monobloco??" I was not the only one a little edgy; we started with our usually gentle, grooving afoxe and it took off like a bat out of hell! It's supposed to be a serene, trance-inducing rhythm, but 8 bars into it and it sounded like a Looney Tunes soundtrack. Dudu, who was leading, got a kind of astonished look on his face, but he let it stay that tempo. He explained to some of us afterwards "Once something's rushed that badly, you have to let it stay fast. If you slow a band down drastically, it sounds completely bizarre, like something's really gone wrong, and then the audience knows it was a mistake. But if you just let it stay fast, the audience assumes you meant to play it that fast."

We survived our afoxe jitters and the rest of the show went beautifully. Ciranda, coco, a rockin' new frevo, two maracatu-funks, two xotes, a fun quadrilha, a couple straight funks. But my favorite part is always the end. Banga always closes its shows with a half-hour of full-on, straight-ahead samba. We had 4 pro players mixed in the bateria - some of the guys who play with the small pro Banga band. For most of the show they had restrained themselves to sticking to the pre-planned patterns, but during the samba they started going wild! I suddenly heard a thunderous third-surdo doing absolutely stunning things from the other side of the bateria, somebody who I couldn't see, who was just ripping away at long, powerful runs of swinglets ( -X-X's ). One of the surdo pros. It was really inspiring and I got going too, on my own third. Really, really fun.

Well, it turns out it was none other than my all-time favorite third-surdo in all of Rio, the laughing guy from Imperio Serrano! Turns out all four of our pro guys are from Imperio Serrano! so cool! Three of Imperio's best surdos, & Imperio's cavaquinho player too. I was thrilled to realize I'd been playing with Imperio Serrano surdos.

The next day O Dia newspaper had this little one-paragraph review:

"Led by Rodrigo Maranhao, Bangalafumenga shook the Fundicao Progresso with a show with their full bateria, as in their [Carnaval] street parades. Classics from Jorge Ben, Tim Maia, Alceu Valenca, Ze Ramalho, and others, blended with the solid rhythm of the bateria, made the crowd get dancing and sweaty. And samba wasn't left out either. Led by mestre Dudu Fuentes, the bateria thrilled everyone with synchronized rhythms and choreographies that closed the Rio evening "with a golden key." [finished with a bang].

Mocidade takes it to the street

Rio is FULL steam ahead now that New Year's is over, and I've been immediately going full blast too. Banga rehearsal on Wednesday, Imperio Serrano's technical rehearsal on Thursday. Friday, a private tamborim lesson and then to the Sambodromo (Salgueiro) with my Lions dancer friend Julienne, then squished into a cab with a pile of friends to head to Portela all night.

After all that - I was dead tired Saturday. Had to drag myself through Banga rehearsal - the important Last Rehearsal Before The First Show, but all I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep! I just barely crawled through that rehearsal - couldn't concentrate at all, could barely play, and afterwards Vincent got laughing at me because I'd looked so tired (I said "There are a lot of things I could say to you, but I can't make my mouth move.") I had a headache and sore throat. But I'd already arranged to go on the Mocidade van with Nana, and had even emailed some friends to come along. Vince said "Sounds like you need to go home and sleep, not go to Mocidade." I knew he was right; damn!

So I staggered to the meeting place for the Mocidade van, planning to tell them all "I'm so sorry, but I'm really not feeling well and can't go tonight. I'll pay for my spot in the van, and you guys all go ahead and have a great time without me." I had the little speech all prepared, and yet somehow, when I got there, I forgot to say it, and then somehow, I was climbing into the van with a pile of happy people all heading to Mocidade. Avron & 2 fun sambista friends of his from the UK, Nana and Sigga representing Germany, and Julienne & and a friend of hers.

Well, Mocidade was - well, I think it was the finest night I've had yet. It was spectacular. I am SO glad I went.

Last month the Mocidade bateria seemed wobbly. They were missing breaks, wobbly on tempo; and, back then, few bateria members stayed late into the evening. WOW what a change now. The bateria is HOT. Huge, solid, everybody there, every break beautiful, the tempo clean, and the ENERGY, my god. It was hotter than an oven and we were all dripping sweat. And nobody left, all evening, even after the 2am break - every player stayed. They were tight, strong, wild, and everybody was having fun. Everybody was crazy with the energy of it.

I video'd passistas for the first half of the evening. After the 2am break I got onto caixa and I forgot that I'd been tired, forgot the headache, forgot everything for the next three hours. The caixa was RIPPING. I thought, my god, are these my hands? These can't be my hands; they must be somebody else's hands, because I know perfectly well that my hands can't play the Mocidade caixa pattern that fast, that loud, that long.

Every time I go to Mocidade it changes my playing; First I couldn't play at all at that tempo; then I could play for 15 minutes; then I could play for two hours but still not very loudly and not while walking. Tonight, suddenly, it was loud and I could walk. Suddenly, boom! Presto! New hands! It's ridiculous how fast these little breakthroughs have been coming. There is something overwhelming about just clocking the hours playing with a bateria like this. When you are surrounded by players better than you, you just can't help but improve. And when the sound is that clean, you improve FAST.

Of course I was hoping to play a bit of third surdo or repique too. Couldn't get a repique - the repique players tend to hold on to them and not rotate off of them. But I had hopes about third surdo, because the third-surdo guys tend to rotate to caixas, so, surdos come available every now and then.

The way it works is, you gotta get the mallet. After every song, the surdo guys put their surdos down for a little rest before the next song. If a player is still holding on to the mallet, he still "owns" that surdo, and plans to play it for the next song. But if he puts the mallet on the surdo, he's done - and that surdo's available! First come first served, but you gotta get the mallet! There is a subtle jockeying for grabbing the mallet. There are never any outright rushes for it, just a slightly hurried walk toward the available third surdo and that golden mallet sitting on top.

I wasn't quite sure if it would be cool for me to just jump in and grab the mallet. (The other times I've played surdo at Mocidade, I was invited on by leaders.) But then I spotted another girl who grabbed a third-surdo mallet. A girl! Mocidade has another girl surdo player! - a Brazilian girl, shy and hunched over her surdo and scowling, and not meeting anybody's eyes. But she played like hell, really strong and solid. That gave me a little confidence, and I pounced on the next third that came available.

People definitely were checking me out when I grabbed that mallet and hooked that drum on my belt. A lot of these guys had not seen me on surdo before. But I just waited for that repique call, then powered into it - oh yeah, third again! Third makes me very happy. So, I just took off and did what I know best.

I was playing around with some short and long runs of swinglets, when about a minute into the song I felt something brushing my shoulder. I looked back and found a bunch of caixa players behind me who were trying to get my attention to give me some big smiles and huge thumbs-ups! Then I turned back to the front to find lots of other thumbs-ups from the guys in front, and even from the nearest director. yay! I'd done well the other time I'd been on third at Mocidade, but that was back when the bateria was a little wobbly, and most players had gone home, and it wasn't too serious. I was reassured tonight to find it wasn't a fluke.

Plus, another director, the scary one who'd given me hell last time when he thought I'd missed a bunch of entrances (I hadn't - it was the guy next to me, honest) - well, he happened to be playing first surdo very close to me, and then HE screwed up an entrance! HA! And everybody was giving him hell about it! He tried to explain himself with some complicated gesticulations, then gave up and just rolled his eyes and grinned.

I played three songs, rotated off for a tiny little boy who wanted to play (he did really well), went back to caixa for a while, rotated back to third later... traded a third back and forth with another guy for a couple of songs... went back to caixa...

The other times I've played there I've felt like a guest, a welcomed guest but still, just a guest, sort of a circus sideshow - "check out the gringa who plays surdo!". But this time, I felt like I was really part of it. Part of the regular rotation of third-surdo players; and solid on caixa, really contributing. So it was a truly wonderful night for me.

I ripped open another huge blister on my hand - this time on the left hand, from caixa - but didn't care at all. Just kept playing. You can't stop playing.

Past 4am.... Jonas took the bateria down to the main floor and charged us into a huge forward-and-back game, having us walk forward, walk back, walk forward, walk backward. He started moving us faster and faster. Sprint forward! Hustle back! (I recognized the purpose behind it. Jonas is trying to get the bateria very comfortable with marching, for the Carnaval parade.) It's harder than it sounds, walking backwards while you're tripping over a layer of 10,000 crumpled beer cans on the floor, your caixa bouncing around against your leg, trying to keep that solid caixa ride going - and hoping the guy behind you is backing up just as fast as you are, and hoping the guy in front of you isn't going to plow right over you!

Some people in the audience started getting into the game. They'd charge at us when we were walking backward, and then we'd charge at them and they'd all have to scurry backward. Then they ALL got into it, the whole crowd, even some tourists with cameras high in the air, charging at us, then scurrying back, then charging, then scurrying back, whooping and laughing... and the whole time we were still playing, still pounding out that deafening samba ....people starting getting giddy with it, dancing crazily, leaping around.

Then Jonas took us out into the street outside the quadra. The bateria POURED out into the street, flooded it with noise, the crowd surging out with us. People were just crazy with samba by now, dozens of them mixed into the bateria leaping around waving their hands in the air. It was nearly impossible to see the director's hand signs any more - I could just barely see a "7" hand sign, among all the dozens of hands, and sure enough, I caught break 7 just in time! That's my favorite break... the one where we freeze solid for eight measures and then BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM, we start playing again, the crowd yelling like they had gone insane.

Finally we trooped back into the quadra.

And finally the waving-arms signal: "Stop". And we ended. It was 4:30am.

This is what samba is all about. You know... Carnaval itself is not the most important thing. But this crazy, beautiful party at 4am, the bateria playing so wonderfully, the music so perfect, and everybody wild with the joy of it; the whole community, out in the street, together, alive, happy; that's what it's about.

Flowers, gumdrops, and kisses

Three images of the past week:

New Year's Eve, Copacabana, midnight. Raining, a steady drizzle. Cool. Buying a huge bunch of flowers and candy for Yemanja (the ocean goddess) from a street vendors just before midnight - flowers on sale now, just 50 centavos. Pushing through the intensely thick crush from Ipanema to the Copacabana beach. A girl by my side spotting my flowers and asking happily "Da uma flor! Da uma flor, por favor!" - give me a flower! I gave uma branca, a white one. Struggled to the beach through the other 1.5 million people, in the rain, and then suddenly popped out of the crowd to find a magically calm zone in the surf. Thousands of people behind me, happy, peaceful, chattering; hundreds of them wading out in the surf with flowers - then suddenly - the fireworks starting overhead, and there I was in the surf tossing my flowers to Yemanja, kissing each flower with a wish, and throwing it in; and then the candy - chocolates, gumdrops; and I just started running through the surf, running all the way along Copacabana beach, tossing fistfuls of gumdrops in the ocean, hearing the whole huge crowd roaring behind me, the immense fireworks going off overhead. Seemed like I could see for miles, the vast stage of the world out in front, all the immense cruise ships, the six fireworks barges, the enormous three-mile-long curve of the beach, the endless arc of it in front of me, and all the million and a half happy people. I ran up to a clump of random guys who were leaping around the surf yelling, grabbed one at random and gave him a huge New Year's kiss - which he returned in a huge way, Brazilians being as they are. Random kisses from strangers are just part of the game here. (Maybe I am adjusting a little better to the Brazilian culture this time around!) I left him behind, kept running, didn't notice that my pants were getting soaked, forgot that I was freezing, didn't notice how badly I was bruising my toes from tripping over all the champagne bottles. I threw all the gumdrops and flowers in the ocean, and just asked Yemanja to take care of me.

I am a scientist to the core and don't really believe in any of that fluffy stuff; but I like the poetry and the ritual of it, and I like the sense of humility. And if there is anything that can give me a little luck, or even just a little hope, the next time I am stuck in a break zone, I'll take it!

As I said in a blog comment recently, if Seattle had had the attacks that Rio had last week, Seattle would have cancelled every New Year's celebration and gone into military curfew for a month. Instead, Rio just went ahead with their giant beach party, in the rain. And a million and a half people came. And nowhere else in the world would a crowd of a million and a half have been so peaceful! I didn't see one fight. Not even when 500,000 people had to walk down the same tiny little street to Ipanema right afterwards, and not even when all 500,000 tried to take the same bus back to Zona Norte. I walked an entire mile the wrong way, away from home, just to catch a bus BEFORE it met that huge crowd so I could actually get a seat. (Then I sat for two and a half hours, while the bus crawled four whole miles, through the Traffic Jam of the Gods. But I had a SEAT! I felt so brilliant for having gotten a seat! I would have walked all the way home, except that I'd cut up my feet with some nasty blisters. But no harm done, I sterilized the cuts by pouring beer all over them.)

Two days later I woke up out of the eeriest dream. A good dream, about leaving the past behind and having hope for the future, and with an odd clarity to it, and an odd premonition about something for the future, which I won't bother to describe here, but which I feel certain it will happen, and it lifted a burden off of me. There had been a tune in the background of my dream, a sort of a soundtrack, and I woke up humming it. It was some time before I recognized it as one of the songs of Yemanja.


Wednesday, still raining. I found out at the last second that Banga was having rehearsal. Zipped over to Botafogo and got to play terceiro again with Banga. Oh, what a pleasure.... All my old friends were there. It felt like home again. Rodrigo was back - I haven't seen him in Banga in quite a while (he's been busy recording an album and playing with another band and etc. and etc) - and Rato was back - and Dudu, Andre, Thiago, all the old crowd. They have put up some beautiful photographs of Banga's shows last year and I realized, I'm in the photos! Hey, there I am, playing third surdo! I was really here; it really happened. And here I am again, really back.
They're excited in Banga - they're just about to start their weekly shows at the Fundicao in Lapa! Last rehearsal is this Saturday. The first show is this Sunday. And they're going to bus a whole pile of us over the bridge to Niteroi to play for a weekly party that Banga's pro band has been developing there. The Friday Niteroi thing has apparently grown from an audience of 18, when they started two months ago, to 4,000 people at the last show, and now they want to bring the whole bateria over.


Thursday, still raining. Today I realize that it has been raining in Rio nonstop since the bus burnings. Freakishly cold; I even had to put on long pants! and shoes and socks! I had to find my SWEATER! It is really weird weather. It is like something is trying to calm the city down, trying to cool it down.
Tonight, Olivia called me up out of the blue to say "We're going to Imperio Serrano's technical rehearsal! Right now! Can you come? Right now?" But of course I can drop everything and change all my plans, and miss the play that I was going to see, just to go to Imperio Serrano. OF COURSE. So I went to Imperio Serrano. Of course. And watched that fabulous bateria play, the famous quad bells (I recorded all the quad bell bossas), the inventive choreographies, the great mestre Atila at work. Watched the caixa players. Ha, even in a great bateria there's always some guys who can barely play caixa at all!.... and talk about your weird techniques - there was even one guy playing with one finger hooked under a rod, and people playing all twisted and crooked and using the strangest stick holds, like clubs, like canoe paddles, like puppet strings... everything under the sun. Somehow they kept playing...
I recognized my favorite passista from last year - she's still the best dancer! And still singing her heart out. I recognized my favorite third-surdo player too - he's still the best too - and he was still laughing and joking and poking other guys in the ribs! It's really cool to see the same people there again, see their personalities as bright and vivid as ever. Somehow it makes me realize that they are really REAL. I had the same illogical sense of surprise when I realized that the third-surdo players in Grande Rio's Sambodromo rehearsal were the same four guys that I'd seen at the quadra a month earlier. They are not just characters who appeared just for my escola visit. They are people who really live there and have been there for years, and all last year, and all year since then. Tourists come and go, but Imperio just keeps playing. I went all the way back to North America last year, and went from San Francisco to New York City, and came all the way back to Rio again, last year - and meanwhile those same people have been dancing and playing at Imperio Serrano, and at Grande Rio, every week. God, I hope they always keep playing; I hope that Rio never falls apart so completely that the escolas actually have to shut down. I hope they always keep playing.


It was good this week, to look around the Copacabana beach at midnight, and the Banga rehearsal room, and the Imperio Serrano quadra, and see everybody still playing music, still dancing, still kissing random strangers. In spite of - or because of? - the violence and the uncertainty of life here. There is still that unstoppable spirit.

"Something is changing in Rio"

New Year's is over, and BOOM, suddenly everyone's focused on Carnaval. But there's something subtly different, something heavy in the air. I get little glimmers of it when I ask friends who have lived here for years what is going on in the escolas. I get evasive replies like "It's unstable right now" or "It's difficult." Or sometimes a flat "You have no idea. "I can't explain."

If you didn't know Rio at all, you wouldn't notice anything is wrong.

If you know Rio a little, you'd think "Gee, people seem to have brushed off that violence last week. It's all pretty much back to normal." - which is what I'd been thinking till today.

But if you know Rio very well, like the carioca friend that I talked with for three hours today, you think "Something is changing in Rio. Something bad is coming."

The question is: who controls the favelas? (the vast hillside ghettos and shantytowns of Rio.) Bicheiros, traficantes, militias? This is my picture of it now. I probably still don't understand it at all.

In the old days, it was the "bicheiros" - the guys who got rich off the "jogo de bicho" (animal game), a illegal street-corner lottery. (It got its name because was originally started by the owner of a small zoo and, ever after, used animal emblems instead of numbers.) The bicheiros, though illegal, were basically career businessmen, and they took care of their communities. They are the "local criminals" that you hear about who supported their local escolas financially. For example, Mocidade was funded for years and years by a loyal bicheiro; and Mocidade has struggled ever since that bicheiro died.

Next it was the traficantes - the drug traffickers. They were not always here; the traficante networks are only about 20 years old. The rise of the traficantes is the theme of the brilliant movie "Cidade de Deus". Watch it again and see how it traces the change in crime from petty street robberies in the 60's and 70's to massive, organized drug-running crime gangs in the 80's and 90's. The bicheiros slowly lost their power as the traficantes took over. (The "jogo de bicho" still exists, but is very small now.)

The traficantes did not usually explicitly support escolas the way the bicheiros had, and yet, somehow, a tradition arose in which the traficantes usually took care of their communities. They were in it for the long term, and the traficantes at the top became almost like career statesmen - governors of their favelas. They nurtured networks of middle-class customers from the richer communities outside the favelas. They were very protective of the favela itself, and kept it safe inside their territory boundaries. And, in turn, the community protected their local traficante. (I still remember the enormous crowds from Rocinha who attended the funeral of the top Rocinha traficante in 2005.)

The traficantes usually left the escolas alone, more or less. They didn't usually fund them very much, but neither did they threaten the escolas. And it was safe at the escolas. The career traficantes kept things stable.

My friend said "I'm not trying to say the traficantes are good. They are drug-runners and killers. But, they did keep things stable. I know a lot of them, and you have to understand, nobody wants to be a traficante; but they have NO choice. You cannot conceive of the life they are born into. They are born into this terrible world of favelas and traficantes and they don't even know there's anything else outside, and it's the only way they can get by. You cannot understand."

My friend spoke of having worked with a major traficante for several months recently. "He had a Nokia cell phone on one side of his belt and a hand grenade on the other side. He had this habit of waving the grenade around with one hand while he was talking, and at first I couldn't concentrate at all, with that grenade waving around! But after a while I just got used to it."

As more and more of the "elder statesmen" traficantes die or are taken in to prison, the traficantes have been getting younger and younger: "There are gangs of 17, 16, 15-year-olds now, running the drug trade: "They're kids. They don't understand anything. They don't take the long view. And they don't value anyone's life - because they don't value their own. They are just getting money for today. They don't care about the future; they know they have no future." As the favelas get more and more violent, the rich drug-users have become scared to go there. So the traficantes have started selling more to their own communities. And harder drugs; the drugs themselves have changed. Some favelas are now full of addicts; they didn't used to be.

And then we come to faction #3, the militias. This is the new player in town. The militias have really started taking over in the last four years. They are now in over 80 favelas in Rio. They are mostly former policemen, I am told now (not off-duty policemen, as I'd thought before). They move into a favela, kill or expel the traficantes, and then run a protection racket; they demand money from all local favela residents, and a percentage of business profits. You have to pay it, like it or not. Also, there is no drug use allowed at all. If you are caught using drugs by the militias, they will kill you.

The militias are the wild card, the unknown new element. Though I sort of admire their tough stance against the traficantes, their acknowledged brutality and their Mafia-like protection racket is more than a little creepy. And, what has happened now is that for the first time, the traficantes have a common enemy.

My friend said, "We in Rio, we have never seen the traficantes unite like this. Even the different faccoes [rival traficante networks] - like the Red Command and the Third Command, which have always been at war - they are banding together now. This is what feels scary. The traficantes are really up against the wall and they will fight a war if they have to, and the enemy that they are fighting is linked to the police, and linked to the state. So, they will attack the police, and they'll attack the state."

My overall impression is that, first, the sense of community is fragmenting in the favelas, and, second, what has until now been petty street crime is about to cross over into something else. Torching buses full of innocent civilians, as happened last week, and not even to steal something, but just to make a point, is not ordinary street crime. It's terrorism.

It is not as safe around the escolas now. There was just a firefight outside the quadra of Grande Rio; it used to be safe there. The last time I tried to go there with my friends Olivia & Tanit, we hit a sudden traffic jam and our driver swung rapidly off the highway onto an off-ramp before we got any closer; "It's an arrastao," said Olivia calmly - a roadblock of gangsters up ahead, attacking the stopped cars. Several people have told me of having seen guns inside the escola quadras. That didn't used to happen (or so I am told).

Tanit still plays in Grande Rio, but Olivia has made her promise to be very careful, and to not walk even a step outside the quadra.

I don't want idealize the Rio of a few years ago - because it was very violent and nasty then too. But I believe my friends when they tell me it is changing into something worse.

My friend said: "It is exactly like a cancer. A cancer that is killing someone who you love very much. This beautiful city that we love so much. And you try to help, try to act hopeful and cheerful and cheer the person up, the person who is dying of the cancer, try to help them and tell them it will all be all right. But you know, in your heart, that it is hopeless."

Goofy-footer

I took the bus on Thursday down to the Rio Surf Tour hostel last week for some surfing lessons (www.riosurftour.com.br). It is, of course, ridiculous of me to think of learning to surf - a 41-year-old woman with bad knees, who can barely touch her toes, who has never surfed, skateboarded or snowboarded in her life? Come on. I wouldn't have ever thought of it if I hadn't been pulled into it last year by my skateboarder friend Justin and my Hawaiian friend Robyn, who both somehow thought it was normal to want to learn to paddle a skinny, wobbly board out into the ocean, push it onto a horrifyingly powerful wall of water, and then, for some reason, try to stand up on it.

But, once you're living in Rio, surfing starts to seem not so bizarre. You see all the kids with boards out on the beaches. You lie on the beach, look at them riding the waves, notice that it kinda looks fun. You see all the people with surfboards on their bicycles (yes, there are surfboard bike racks) and on the city buses, and even the subway. And the surfboards tucked behind sofas at friends' houses. As ordinary as having a bicycle.

Then, last year, Justin found Katrina's surf tour and told me about it - "There's this cool New Zealand chick who will come pick you up in her van; she picks up a bunch of people from all the hostels, and takes them all to the best beaches down south, for the whole day, and you can rent a board or take lessons." I said skeptically "Does she take total beginners?" and he said, yup, even total beginners. It turned out to be Katrina and Mauro of Rio Surf Tour (www.riosurftour.com.br). They've got a clever idea - go get people, and bring them to the best beaches. Because the best beaches are hard to get to, otherwise. And plus, they teach in English, and plus, you get to meet a bunch of other fun people and hang out with them all day.

Like I said, a clever idea. So I went along, and.... you know what.... it is actually possible to learn to surf!! Even me!

Here's how it works. Step 1, beach lesson. You practicing "paddling" on a surfboard that is lying on the sand, and then, practice the Great Mystery of surfing: standing up. In my first lesson, Katrina demonstrated with an impossible, graceful leap. She was lying flat, then, BOOM, she had somehow levitated into the air and landed on her two feet, crouched in a perfect balanced stance. She said "Just try it." I said, hopelessly, knowing I wouldn't be able to do it at all, "which foot should end up in back?" and she said "It'll come naturally to have either the right or the left back, but you won't know which till you try. Just try it." So I tried... I jumped.... hey, I was up!

"Goofy-foot!" she said. "You're a goofy-footer." Turns out that's the term for the peculiar people who like to have their left foot back, instead of their right. (I like the term!) She was right - it is just what comes naturally. I tried the other way and it felt all wrong.

We practiced over and over, a row of beginners, Kat or her boyfriend Mauro yelling "one, two, THREE!" and we'd all leap up on three. Much entertainment for the Brazilian beachgoers sitting nearby!

Phase 2 is, they take you out into the water. Here's where you learn about the exhausting, thrill-ride adventure of paddling through those endless waves, deciding how to get over or under each of them. Mostly, they're nice easy waves (because Mauro & Kat pick a spot that is good for beginners). But, the way waves are, every now and then a bigger one comes along, and that can be an adventure! Mauro sort of hurled me over two huge waves by himself, grabbing my board and anchoring it somehow, with his body weight, to get me over intact. Soon they start explaining some techniques for dealing with bigger waves: the turtle roll, the duck dive, and the last-ditch "just ditch your board and DIVE!"

This paddling-out part, with its imminent, panicky, exciting, endless confrontations with the oncoming waves, is definitely the exhausting part of surfing. Your arms are working nonstop. And if you get stuck in the wrong spot, just when a big bunch of waves comes through, you can get truly pounded. But I LOVED the paddling out. Actually, it's my favorite part! It was like a never-ending amusement park ride.

Phase 3, they push you onto a wave. A growl is coming behind you - a growl getting louder - your teacher says "This one, this one, ready, ready? Paddle! Paddle hard! Now! NOW!" - and he, or she, PUSHES your board and suddenly you're caught in that rumbling, roaring sound, the wave has caught you, and the wash of whitewater is all around you. It's only a little tiny baby wave, only three feet high, but it seems like the biggest, loudest thing you've ever heard in your life. And it's not remotely like it was on the sand, not at all - the board is shaking like crazy, and it's tipped, nose down, sliding endlessly down the wave, and it's like being in an earthquake, it's shaking so much, it's GOT you and it's zooming you along. You forget everything they said on the beach, and then think "oh yeah, I'm supposed to stand up" and you just randomly try to stand - and maybe you fall off instantly, or maybe you stand!

Suddenly it's over, the wave has somehow faded out. You have tipped off, somehow, you seem to be in the water. You clamber onto your board, paddle out again, find your teacher, who says "How did it go?" and you say "I fell off."

You try again, and again, and eventually - you're up! You're doing it! You're STANDING! You're flying along! Holy shit, you're SURFING! You cheer and wave your arms, and all the rest of the class, and your instructor too, cheers with you.

So, that's how it works.

Then eventually phase 4, you start catching your own waves. Phase 5, you suddenly decide you need your own board shorts and a rash shirt. Phase 6, you start shopping for a board! You are hooked.

Last year I only had three lessons and that was enough to get me to phase 6. But that was all I had time for, that year, and then I went back to Seattle (water way too cold, no thanks). I haven't been surfing at all since then - haven't even been swimming - so I thought I'd be starting from scratch this time.

So I decided to go spend a couple days at Katrina & Mauro's new hostel. A few months ago they bought a beautiful big house a couple blocks off Macumba beach (just behind the 8W surf shop). They somehow found a house that has 5 bathrooms for 10 beds - talk about your perfect house for a hostel! They've been working like crazy on it, painting it and fixing it up. It's got a huge kitchen, massive lounge, two porches, plenty of room for hammocks, beanbags, piles of surfboards, several guitars. A big yard, a friendly dog. Two blocks from Macumba beach. Spacious, clean and homey. And it feels like family. Kat is everybody's mom - she even saves breakfast for you if you sleep late.

I loved the hostel, stayed there several nights, & got 2 really good lessons, with Mauro this time (Kat is not teaching right now, because she's pregnant!) To my amazement, I DID remember how to do it, and it actually went better than ever before - I was suddenly standing up every time, and staying standing all the way in, and feeling super balanced. Rah.

I'm out of shape, though; I got exhausted super fast. Both days, I had to end the lesson a bit early when I suddenly hit a wall of exhaustion that was so absolute and sudden it was scary. Both times I was suddenly gasping for breath, and knew, if a big wave had come along just then, I would not have been able to deal with it. Once, I almost got caught in a rip current; once, I got stuck in the break zone for just a few minutes too long, got a little pounded, suddenly realized I was really, really, REALLY tired. That's the moment when you suddenly realize why people drown, and you suddenly know "I have to get back to shore NOW." Yikes! I gotta get into shape!

Last year, I asked Katrina how old is too old to learn to surf. She said, "Oh, you can always learn to surf! If you can stand up from the floor, you can learn to surf. I've taught 60-year-olds, I've taught all ages. " I asked, is there ever anyone who really can't learn at all. She said "Probably 95% of my students stand on the first lesson. Even if it's just for a moment. And pretty much all the rest, the other 5%, stand on the second lesson. I remember one girl who didn't want to stand - she was happy just lying on the board! I would push her onto the wave and she'd just coast all the way in, lying on her belly. She didn't want to do anything other than that. She had a good time, though, and that's what matters, y'know?"

Before Mauro took me out, Katrina gave him a quick rundown on what I'd done last year, and she surprised me a bit by describing me with: "She's got really good balance, she's good in the water, and she's not scared," (none of which I would have thought about myself.) I asked about the "good in the water". She explained, "Sometimes we get people who have no sense of water or how waves work, or how to balance. You got on the board, and you knew right away how to balance on it and how to paddle - you didn't have to think about it, did you? You just knew. You also knew how to know what a wave was about to do, like, you knew that the way to deal with a big wave is to dive right at it, dive under it. You grew up around water, right? You must have played at beaches when you were little. And you've bodyboarded. But some people, you wouldn't believe how clueless they can be! Maybe they grew up in the mountains or something, they've never even been in a canoe, they've never even SEEN a wave. They have no idea what a wave is or how it works. They sometimes can't even lie on the board - they just slide right off! Perfectly flat calm water, and they just tip right off of it, lying down! It doesn't occur to them to try to wiggle into the center of the board to stay balanced. So you have to slow way down with those students and explain basic stuff about balance and water and waves. But even they get it in the end."

I asked about the "not scared". She said "Oh yeah, some people get scared, definitely, especially a lot of the girls. The sight of the wave coming at them, the power it has. Those people, you'll see them at the end of a ride just sitting there, not trying to paddle back to you. You have to go fetch them, and it'll turn out they're scared about paddling back out again, and you have to talk them through it, show them what to do, help them find it fun instead of scary."

Katrina and Mauro then both added:

"The cool thing is, almost all those people, the clumsy ones, the scared ones, all of them, they all get it in the end. And they're SO excited at the end of the day. It's so rewarding to see someone learn to do it, especially if they were scared or intimidated at first, and hear them say at the end of the day, "I never ever thought I would do that in my entire life, and I did it!"