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.