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."