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].