Recife update

I saw a lot of incredible frevo and maracatu during my brief stay in Olinda/Recife. It was a great weekend to be there because there were a ton of parades and performances - parades start the weekend before Carnaval. The best was Olinda's Night of the Silent Drums on the Monday before Carnaval - more about that later. But, since it wasn't quite Carnaval yet, I also got to play in some rehearsals with two really fun groups led by two great teachers: Jorge Martins in Recife, and Nininho in Olinda. I picked up a lot of great repertoire from both these guys, and was pleased to discover that most of it was familiar, related to maracatu motifs I'd already learned over the last two years of study. It's nice to reach that point where you have a mental framework that everything starts to fit into.

I spent a lot of time on abe (shekere). It is a simple gourd shaker that tends to be overlooked by the hotshot drummers. But is one of my very favorite instruments because, first, even though it plays a simple pattern, it really grooves and adds a LOT to the music! I really adore the sound of a shekere! And second, it's very physical and lends itself to some beautiful dancing. I had kind of an abe breakthrough in Jorge's group when I realized I'd been holding my upper arms still. I started letting my arms move more from the shoulder, instead of just from the elbow, and though it cost a little more effort, suddenly the abe was covering way more ground, moving through a much bigger arc in space. It sounded better, and it started to build up momentum and almost pull me around with it, and presto, suddenly the dancing started really happening!

On abe there is not much repertoire to learn, but my technique seems to constantly keep changing. Alfaia, though, the great bass drum of maracatu, is another thing. My technique never feels like it's changing much (maybe that's a bad sign!) but the repertoire is much more complex. All kinds of entradas and variations, three or four separate alfaia parts, lots of breaks. Every nacao (maracatu group) has a different alfaia repertoire. It seems to be endless.

Anyway it was awesome to be able to play maracatu in Recife and Olinda, at last. Even just for a few days. I didn't want to leave. I would love to return for a few months. Some year.

I also caught a lot of great shows. The 100th anniversary of frevo was that weekend and we kept running into frevo groups all over the city (it's a kind of frenetic brass band music, usually with a set of astonishingly acrobatic dancers leaping around with tiny colored umbrellas). And on Saturday we saw Nana Vasconcelos rehearsing 3 huge maracatu groups, including Estrela Brilhante and Elefante, two of the major groups I'd been hoping to see. It was actually an interesting demonstration in the maximum size of a maracatu group. Maracatu groups, like samba-reggae, are usually only about 70 people and do not face the particular problems that start happening in groups larger than 100. The Rio groups have lots of experience with this and have developed an elaborate infrastructure: multiple directors strung in chains through the bateria, elaborate visual hand cuing, columns of bass drums running down the outer flanks of the bateria, sub-directors for critical instruments, the instrument that does the call placed dead center, etc. Maracatu groups don't have any of this. So when you get 3 maracatu groups and have them all play together, they cross that maximum size limit and all hell breaks loose. Anyway - in the rehearsal with Nana, it kept crashing-and-burning! All kinds of tempo problems, time fractures, phase delays... left side getting ahead of the right side... bells drifting relative to the alfaias.... rushing like hell... and massive confusion whenever Nana's horn section started playing anything a little too jazzy. Who knew that such great, experienced maracatu players could actually lose track of the downbeat? But they did!

However, pull them down to three separate groups of 70 people again, have each of the 3 groups play separately, which they did at the end of the rehearsal, and they kicked ass. Estrela Brilhante in particular just blew me away. They are one of the very most famous maracatu groups. They make their alfaias out of sections of real palm trees, so, every alfaia is a different size. The ones made from the base of the palm tree are absolutely ENORMOUS. I could not believe the size - or the weight (I tried to pick one up) - and especially could not believe the way the guys were dancing with them! (I am posting a movie)

The next day, we caught Estrela Brilhante's last street rehearsal on Sunday night. It was damn intense. "It's like the running of the bulls!" said one of my friends as we went charging through the dark winding streets, dodging invisible potholes, crashing into bricks (I banged my feet bloody, 3 separate times), and leaping filthy canals in the dark, trying to keep up with the 50 full-speed-ahead alfaia players. It was so exciting. They only stopped playing whenever they passed a church.