Monobloco's 2007 caixa patterns

ok folks - as promised - here are all of Monobloco's caixa (snare drum) patterns that we played for the 2007 Carnaval season in Rio. Plus hand signs. Here's hoping it'll be helpful to whatever gringo joins up for next year.

MONOBLOCO CAIXA 2007

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1. SAMBA (hand sign: both index fingers pointing up)

Timbal samba (index finger & pinky up)
RlrL endlessly. This is also called the iniciante (beginner) pattern.
This has an optional buzz after the 4, but Freddy took it out this year.

Mocidade samba (interlaced fingers)
RlrL rlRl rlRl rLrl

Mangueira samba (thumb & two fingers down making an claw-like "M")
RRlR lRRl RlRR LZzL
Lefts are almost as strong as rights; hard to notate the accents; swing is very prominent
This was fascinating to me because the Mangueira guys actually don't play this any more, but it has survived in the US in a couple of cities. Fred said it is an older pattern that is meant to be played at about 135bpm or so but doesn't sound as good at Mangueira's modern tempo. Fred clocked them with a metronome at OVER ONE SEVENTY last year when they started, holy smokes! But they slowed down during the parade to about 160.

Salgueiro (trace a big "S" in the air)
RllS RlSl RlSl RllS
... where S means rimshot, ok?
Lefts are quite soft
This was Monobloco's default samba. It's also the one used by most of the US West Coast blocos.

Ilha (little finger up)
RlrR lrRl RlrR LzzL
Some of those R's are rimshots but it is subtle, the whole thing light and close to the rim, not a lot of distinction in tone between the rimshots and the non-rimshots. Notice it's really similar to the Mangueira pattern.

Clap overhead = Repique call coming up soon (stop dead on 1, no cut)

Samba breaks 1, 2, and 3:
For caixa:
SIMPLE CUT, right back into samba.

Samba break: Two fingers up, two fingers down
"One. And Three."
X--- --X- X--- ----

Samba break: Three fingers up, three fingers down
Big triplets "one...and...uh...THREE!" (4 is silent)

Samba break: Four fingers up
This is a three-measure break as follows:

X-X- --X- X--- --2- surdo
X-X- --X- X--- ---- caixa
X-X- --X- X--- ---- tamb

1--- --2- 1--- --2- surdo
--X- X--- --X- X--- caixa
--X- X--- --X- X--- tamb

1--- ---- ---- ---- surdo
X--- ---- ---- ---- caixa
X--X --X- -X-X X-X- tamb

Then straight into samba.


Samb break: Two fingers sideways
CAIXA KEEPS PLAYING SAMBA, DOES NOT STOP!

Samba break: Wave sign
This signals AFOXE within samba.
Starts with cut
Tamb ends on 4, does cut, then:
X--X --X- X-X- ----
Monobloco has the caixa just do a 1-measure cut, then come right back in with samba.


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2. FUNK (circle sign with both hands)

Funk 1:
rLrl Rlrl rZrl Rlrl (in this case only, Z is a left buzz)

Funk 2:
rlrl RlrL rLrl Rlrl (classic American funk)

Funk 3:
Offbeat flams. (one AND two AND three AND four AND)

Funk "3 cut" (3 fingers up w/stick across them)
Rest of bateria keeps playing funk 3, caixas switch to
rLrl Rlrl rLrl Rlrl

Starting a funk: caixas always hit "FOUR!" before the downbeat with big rimshot

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3. CIRANDA (big C with a "1" or "2" with other hand)

Ciranda 1:
ZzlR RlRl RRlR RlRl
Lefts are very soft. Rights should be very prominent

Ciranda 2:
RlrL rlRl rLrl rLrl
Rather maracatu-ish, isn't it.

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4. COCO (both hands make pointed roof)

Coco 1:
RlrR lZzl

Coco 2:
RlrL rlRl three times
RlrL rLrL fourth time

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5. CONGO (C sign, no number)

rlZl RlRl

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6. QUADRILHA (thumb screwing into other hand)

Only one pattern. They usually go into this from a xote.
Zzzl r-l- S--l r-l-


optional dobrado version:
Zzzl r-rl S-rl r-rl

Pretty damn quick.
Remember S means rimshot.

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7. MACULELE
(cupped fingers held together, making lowercase m)

Maculele 1
rlrl Slrl rlSl Slrl

Maculele 2
RlrL Rlrl rLrl Rlrl

Ending: cold on 1.

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8. SAMBA-CHARME (X with fingers)
(Que Beleza)

Samba-Charme 1:
R-R l-R l-R R-L
R-L R-L R-Z zzl

Samba-Charme 2:
R-Z zzl S-l r-Z (first Z is right, second is left)
r-L r-l S-l r-l

The absolutely essential thing about the samba-charme is that it's in
12 and needs to swing like hell. It's basically a shuffle.

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9. AFOXE (wave sign)

Afoxe 1:
RlrL RlZZ
The "ZZ" is a continuous buzz, right hand and then left hand.

Afoxe 2:
same as afoxe 1 for caixa. (other instruments change)

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10. XOTE (T sign)
(Morena Tropicana, Festa do Interior)

Xote 1
RlSl RZlR
...but start it on the AND (the rimshot, S)

Xote 2
Zzzl r-l- S--l r-l- (tempo goes very fast)

Freddy also showed me a version that was square on one side:
Zzzl r-l- S-l- r-l-

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11. MARCHA
(Taj Mahal / Filho Maravilha / Pais Tropical)

Marcha 1

RrBr (B = both hands do simultaneous rimshot) forever, about 70 bpm


& halfway through chorus, do with surdos:
XXX- -XXX X

Transition into "Filho Maravilha", surdo & caixa do:
-XXX XXXX X

Marcha 2:
"there is no marcha 2 any more" - except I think the surdos can do something different. Caixas keep going on marcha 1? but on my video I think Fred says dois is igual to tres.

Marcha 3
levada 2 - goes doubletime, about 140bpm
RlrL rlRl rLrl RlrL
This one was changed at one of the last rehearsals; can't remember the new version now!


PLUS... a hell of a lot of breaks and convencoes that I have not written out yet. But the above 24 patterns are the guts of it and will set you in good stead if you want to try to play with Monobloco someday.

Samba gypsy

OK, here I am in Seattle. The first thing I said to a friend here was "Oh my god, there is one solid enormous cloud that is covering the entire sky from one side clear to the other! There's no blue at all! Where's the sun?" He just said "Oh dear." He knows I'm planning to stay in the Pacific Northwest all winter, and yes, it is going to kill me!

So quiet here... I couldn't hear anything when I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep last night... So dark and silent. I realized there was no sound of a ceiling fan; I couldn't fall asleep without it. Outside, the air so clean and cold. I hear crows and robins... no kiskadees! I can't get warm; I've been shivering constantly.

It is not easy starting up again after such a long gap. I had to go out on a mega-errand yesterday:

Call bank about the fraudulent charges on my ATM card when it was stolen at the Sambodromo.
Apartment hunting like crazy, nothing yet
Work like hell on that NOAA job...
Work like hell on my job talk for the University of Portland on Monday... (the job would start in August)
Work like hell on my syllabus for my Univeristy of Washington job that starts the next Monday....
Go get my hair cut so I don't look like a total beach bum at my UP job interview...
Call insurance company to re-insure my car before I could drive to the mall to...
Shop like hell to buy a set of job interview clothes (I didn't have anything but miniskirts & a pair of filthy jeans!)
jeez! I had to buy a bazillion things! classy black pants and shoes, dressy tops... practically like a real grown-up.
Buy a cell phone & sign up for a plan

I spent almost $500! Clothes, shoes, haircut, cell phone. Damn. Takes so much just to get your feet under you. So strange to be diving back into the American commercial world... shopping... planning for job interviews... working, working, working. So strange to be immersed in this calm, clean, smooth world, where everybody speaks English, where everybody stops at red lights, where I can carry an ipod or even a laptop on the street and nobody will steal it. Nobody is wearing bikinis! Nobody at all!!! People are tall (whew! suddenly I'm not a freak!) Everybody's wearing fleece jackets. Guys have beards!! I haven't seen those in so long that they look like a deformity. The world is grey.... except... bright patches of daffodils and crocuses in the parks, and nobody has stolen them, and the parks are so impossibly clean; not a single Skol beer can on the ground.

Everyone seems very quiet. Nobody asks me where I'm from.

Meanwhile the Brazilian music world is receding from me, speeding away in an eerie and terrifying way. I can feel it just slipping away. I miss Monobloco, I miss Mocidade, I miss Banga. I miss my friends - Chris, Olivia, Jason, Eric, Nana, Avron, Vincent.... I don't have any active bands here in Seattle; and I'll be here such a brief time that it's not really practical to get a new band started. The local band I started with, VamoLa, has changed so much in my 2 years of travelling that it no longer feels like something I have any connection to. It seems like something from my long-ago past.

I have eerie, disorienting flickers of thinking "well, that's it, I had my adventure, it's over, and now I'm not a musician any more." But I don't want it to be over. I went through so much to change my life and I am determined that it will never be over, that I will never sink back into the solitary, silent, working-dog life. I'll live in the US this year, yes, I'll get a job, I'll work hard at it, I'll even love it. (I'm actually really excited about the UP thing. And my job talk is going to be great! All about whales!) But it won't be permanent. My plan is to work hard one year, earn money, feel like a productive member of society for a change (I've actually been missing that); then switch back to writing and music and travelling next year. I am both a scientist and an artist now; and I love both sides, and I will find a way to balance them.

There'll be an adjustment, sure. Last year I found I needed to take a couple months clear off playing when I got back to the US. The musical shock coming back here can be so great that maybe it is best to just take some time off and re-equilibrate. But soon enough Seattle's Solstice Parade rolls around, the summer solstice, and I know I'll suddenly be thinking "If I had a bunch of peacock and pheasant feathers, I could make a huge headdress... and I could join the nude biker brigade and paint myself like a leopard!" and somehow, someway, there is going to be a repinique involved.

There are great opportunities, and great people, everywhere; the trick is just to find them.

Jason da Festa told me recently, "When you find yourself thinking, 'but there's no scene here for x-y-z' - nobody in town doing the stuff you love - that just means, you've got to make the scene. Create the scene yourself." I went through this whole adventure, two years travelling, just so I could gain the skills to do just that. Two and a half years ago, VamoLa's music director (my old drum teacher who I described a couple posts ago) had just announced he was leaving Seattle; I could see what was going to happen, could see that the "scene" was too dependent on him and was going to fall apart without him. Which it promptly did. So I decided to go to Brazil and develop the skills I needed to make it happen myself.

Now I just have to decide what I want to do. And where I want to do it. It's up to me.

I'm signing off here from the Rio Stories blog. I'll keep it updated now and then with news reports that I hear from Rio, like the enredo announcements that I just posted; and I'm going to post some more info about what I learned - some more movies, and a series of transcriptions, including Monobloco's entire caixa repertoire. But obviously, there'll be no more personal stories from Rio for a while.

Instead I'm moving to a new blog that will continue the stories about my samba travels, but in the US and in other countries. I'll be playing samba in several West Coast cities this year, and also with trips to visit samba groups in New Orleans, New York, London (I hope!), possibly Tokyo, and California Brazil Camp. I'll keep updates going on all of that. I spent 7 months last year driving around the US playing samba; and it was one of the most vibrant experiences I've ever had. There is a hell of a lot happening outside Brazil and I will be part of it, & I'll keep writing about it. Starting off: Lions of Batucada, tomorrow in Portland.

The new blog will be:
sambagypsy.blogspot.com

One more thing: one of the great pleasures of writing this blog has been the people I've met through it. Some people I just get emails from, from all kinds of cities I've never been to, all over the world. And some of you I've even been able to meet in person when we crossed paths in Brazil. (hi, Gisele, Mick, Simeon, Rob, JP, Emily, Avron, Bay Area Boys, & everybody else!) It has been a huge pleasure to meet so many new friends in the course of this musical adventure. You Brits, I'll be coming to London this summer to visit you all. And you've all got a crash pad whenever you want it, in Seattle, Portland and at California Brazil Camp too, if you ever want to make the grand trek out to the West Coast. C'mon on over, it's a big beautiful world!

beijos & abracos
Kathleen

The enredos are coming! The enredos are coming!

I only just touched down in Seattle, my long 36-hour journey over at last, and already Carnaval news is chasing me from Brazil. The enredos are coming! Most of the Grupo Especial escolas have been announcing their themes (enredos) for next year's Carnaval, one after the other. They seem to be spacing out their announcement at 1 escola per day so that each escola can get its own flashy press story. Beija-Flor was first, of course!

Terminology alert: Many gringos use the word "enredo" to refer to the song. This is not how the term is used in Brazil. The enredo is the theme. The samba is the song. The song can also be called "samba-enredo", theme song, but it can't be called just "enredo". Example from a Brazilian friend: "I thought Beija-Flor's enredo was unimaginative because so many escolas have done Africa already, but then I heard their samba and I thought it was so beautiful."

It's amazing how quickly it all gets underway again. The enredo announcement is the first step, because the songwriters can't get to work till they know what the theme is. (I expect that many of the melodies are written already; it's really the lyricists who have to wait for the enredo announcement.) In a few weeks each escola will produce a fleshed-out description of the theme, and the songwriters have till about July to come up with a good song. Then the song competition starts.

Enredos for 2008:

Beija-Flor: The Brazilian city of Macapa, which sits directly on the equatorial line; and, by extension, the enredo will feature a journey around the equator of the world. Macapa which will celebrate its 250th anniversary on Feb. 4 next year (which falls during Carnaval). The city of Macapa has the only soccer stadium in the world that has one half in the northern hemisphere and the other half in the southern hemisphere. (They also have a sambodromo that straddles the line!) The city of Macapa is donating an undisclosed amount to Beija-Flor for this theme - estimates put it at an astonishing 7 million reais.

Grande Rio: The natural gas of the Amazon. And fuels in general, and global warming.
(Brazil is probably the world's leader in alternative fuels. Most cars are flex-fuel and can run on gasoline, natural gas, or alcohol; local Brazilians are incredibly knowledgable about alternative fuels and global warming.)

Salgueiro 2008 enredo: Rio de Janeiro, in all its glory. Salgueiro wants to celebrate the positive side of Rio - including Carnaval itself (will they have a mini-Carnaval float on a Carnaval float?)

Vila Isabel 2008 enredo: Trabalhadores - the working class of Brazil.


Bateria changes:
Mestre Jorgao is leaving Imperatriz (I don't know why)

Mestre Celinho is leaving Unidos da Tijuca (reportedly for health reasons)

Mestre Russo and all Mangueira bateria directors (the directors function as assistants to the mestre, section leaders & back-up mestres) have all been ordered to leave the Mangueira bateria temporarily to attend a twice-weekly course administered by the Mangueira president. The bateria will remain without leadership while this occurs. The president explains, rather cryptically: "Mangueira can't have directors without expression. No director should be less famous than the queen of the bateria. The course will enable all directors to have the posture [presence] necessary for the job."

Speculation swirls about whether the great Mestre Atila could be lured to leave Imperio Serrano, now that Imperio is in Grupo A. I have also heard speculation about several other possible mestre swaps, but they're all just rumors.

There are also troca-trocas (exchanges) of mestre-salas, porta-bandeiras, and carnavalescos (overall artistic designer) going on, each story with its own little soap opera, but I haven't been able to keep them all straight!

Life in full color

oh, i can't believe it.... this is so eerie... I am back in the United States.

Usual chaotic airport confusion getting out of Brazil - a 2.5hr, half-mile-long line at the American Airlines ticket counter because they'd had a plane turn back with wing trouble (!) the night before, so they had 350 extra people waiting to get on the 3 planes out of Rio that night. I got there 2.5hrs ahead of time and watched the clock slowly tick, tick, tick, standing in the stock-still, half-mile line, till the time for my flight had come and gone. But everyone around me was on the same flight, so at least we'd all missed it together.

Ran into one of my fellow Banga players at the airport! He recognized me as I was standing in line, and came right over - "Oi! Tudo bom???" He asked, "Are you leaving? Are you leaving Brazil? But you played with us last year too, right? Have you been here the whole time? Will you be back? Where are you going?" - Suddenly he wanted to know everything. It was fun to finally get a chance to talk with him, instead of the usual waving hi across the noisy rehearsal room - and really sweet to discover that someone had remembered me from last year and wanted to know if I'd be back. The same way I felt when I saw Rio Maracatu last week and they said "Where have you been? Are you coming back?" My Rio families.

Each time, with some pain, I answer "Vou voltar o ano que vem." I'll come back next year.

He turned out to be on his way to Australia to film a surf documentary! Banga and Monobloco are full of people like that: pro musicians, artists, film-makers - the arty bohemian side of Rio's white middle class. Maybe it's not the favela thing exactly, but it's definitely very cool in its own way. They are good people.

We wished each other well - he asked if anyone in Banga had my contact info, and I told him Olivia did. A hug goodbye, the Brazilian double kiss, off he went, that was my last little contact with my Rio music life.

Finally on the plane..... arrived a long time later in Manhattan and got on a subway car where nobody was wearing any colors at all! The entire subway car was dressed in black and grey! Once I would have thought this looked cool - black, yeah! - I've been through that black-clothes thing. But after six months of Brazil, with the laughing guys in colorful board shorts, and bright-eyed brunettes in sparkly, colorful haltertops and bright little skirts - and everything the girls wear always spiced up in that Brazilian way with an extra row of sequins, an extra little flower in the hair, always some colorful extra splash.... well, the Manhattan black style just looked old and creaky and dull. Everybody in that subway car looked tired, sad, still, dead. No color at all. All black and grey, everywhere I looked. Like people were afraid of standing out, afraid of color.

My friend Aileen, once she had lived in Brazil for a while, could not live without color any more. She painted all her rooms bright colors and almost always wears orange or pink.

There is an equivalent in the vivid, colorful way that Brazilians come across in their personalities - in the way they sing and dance. They just leap up and start dancing. Never that oh-I'm-so-cool thing of standing back with arms crossed, at the back of the room watching the band. In Brazil that is NOT cool.

It's like... they WANT to be center stage, want to be colorful in all possible ways, want to have a life bursting with color and sun and music and song, in all ways.

It changes your eyes after a while. It changes the way you dance and sing, and the way you live your life. After a while in Brazil, you think: enough of the cool life, enough of the shades and black leather jackets, being too cool to smile, too cool to talk to people. Being cool is not as important as being happy. Time for a life in full color.

"And so it begins" part 2

Nothing is ever really over. To everything there is a season, turn turn turn, etc., the cycle of life etc. etc. I just saw in the newspaper that next Monday, Beija-Flor will announce their theme (enredo) for next year! The 2008 Carnaval! HERE WE GO!

"And so it begins"

One day left. I haven't been able to sleep and have been exhausted and cranky all day. I also found out today that one of the people I was planning to meet in New York is not available.... I was kind of sorry about that. He was my first drum teacher, the guy who got me started on Brazilian stuff, and was a huge musical inspiration for me; and someday I would like to tell him about all the stuff I've learned and seen and done here in the past two years. We've been out of touch for all that time; he is not a friend and is probably not in the least interested in what I've been doing, but even so, I would like to just knock on his door and say, See what I did! Look what I did! Isn't it cool! Tell him about Mocidade and Monobloco. Sing the Banga jongo to him, and the Monobloco congo and maculele... he would LOVE those.

Well, it'll have to wait for another year.

It was kind of a stressful day in many ways today. I tried to do too much today .... took some friends up to Santa Teresa, which took longer than I thought, and then in some kind of fit of stupidity I had scheduled two lessons today, on my very last day, both of which started late and went over two hours long. Really cool lessons, both of them, and plus both teachers were extraordinarily generous with their time & I had excellent lesson buddies with me (Vincent and Jason, both leaving me in the dust). But I was getting intensely stressed through all of it about how late the evening was going. By the end I'd gotten SIX hours later than my very tight schedule for my very last day, and horrifically far behind on my writing job - which I SHOULD BE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THE DEADLINE IS TOMORROW. And how much packing I still have to do! oh my god! By the end I tottered home exhausted and worn out... and still really, really wanted to go out and see some music and say goodbye to all my friends, but really, really needed to work instead.

When I got home I was feeling especially low about pandeiro, because I played like total crap during my lesson today. Not surprising, since I haven't been practicing at all for months... I'm on such a downward spiral with pandeiro this year. It has gotten so that playing it almost always makes me feel bad, because I get so discouraged at how shitty it sounds, and how I still can't seem to clean up the most elementary mistakes and bad habits. I had really wanted to improve on pandeiro this year, but instead I'm getting worse. Today I was badly rushing things that I didn't used to rush. Me, little miss perfect primeiro-surdo, the one who always bitches at other people when they rush, me who used to play pandeiro an hour with a metronome every single day!

Pandeiro always used to be so fun! It used to always cheer me up, and now it just depresses me. I am not sure why it has turned around like this. It's been so frustrating being stalled at this plateau; sinking backwards; been SO frustrating not being able to practice at all. (I can't make any noise where I've been living - can't even play cd's, or watch tv, and certainly can't play any instruments). I wonder sometimes why I keep pursuing it. Is it worth it?

Well, what makes it worth it for me? It's worth it only if I can play well. Create something beautiful. It's just not worth it otherwise. That is the way that I am.

well, let's see......caixa improved so much this year because I played it every day for months, concentrating ONLY on caixa, in tough groups that pushed me. Where can I find that with pandeiro? where can I find it with tamborim, and with timbal? I should pick one instrument, ONE, and really work on it the next three months, in Seattle. Take advantage of those dark rainy nights before the sunny summer comes. See how far I can push it. OK. I will do it. OK. I will work on pandeiro this spring. This'll be Pandeiro Spring. I'll get over this plateau. I'll find people to play with. I'll play every day. I'll find a place to practice. I'll crack out of this stupid oh-poor-me-and-my-poor-shitty-playing ridiculousness, and just punch right through and make it better. Make it SWING and CLEAN and MUSICAL and FREE, and I'll iron out that annoying rush... I will try my hardest...

Rio Maracatu & Bip Bip

Just a little update today about Sunday:
Two days left. I was hanging on the beach with some friends when we heard a very distant

"BOOM........ BOOM, BOOM, BOOM......"

Maracatu. It had to be Rio Maracatu, and we tracked them down, and there they were, doing an unannounced parade along Ipanema beach. Smaller than usual, and with a tiny crowd - since a tiny crowd is all there is, these days, along Ipanema beach.... such a change from the Carnaval blocos! But it was MUSIC again, a PARADE again, DRUMS again. Such a balm to my soul!

They sounded great, as usual. (They had a cool thing going with the shekeres where the shekeres started with a very empty pattern and then progressively filled it in; and were using a lot of double-lefts; I forget what nacao this is... I know one of them is known for double-lefts...) And for some reason all the Rio Maracatu guys were wearing long flowered skirts today. They don't usually! Something to do with the international women's day, maybe? Well, anyway, what with all their beers and cigarettes and sunglasses and tattoos, the fluffy frilly skirts actually looked kind of cool.





Later that night I was walking home down Copacabana beach and stopped, for the first time this season, at the famous hole-in-the-Wall Bip Bip just in time to catch the last half hour of their weekly Sunday pagode singalong. It's such a tiny bar that there's only room in the bar for the musicians, and the entire crowd stands out in the street. It was SO sweet, so beautiful. Suddenly I loved pagode! They weren't medleying everything together into a musical blob; instead they paused between songs, gave each song its little moment in the spotlight as something special and unique. And, they were singing on key! How unusual.



Two great musical moments today. Drums! Parade! Music! Like I said, balm for the soul... 'cause I've been working so hard, not having any time to go out at all.... feeling very musically adrift since Carnaval ended. It was WONDERFUL to see Rio Maracatu again. And they all recognized me (I played with them last year), and waved and smiled.

work work work pack pack pack

Today was slave day for me. Worked like a demon all day long on my writing job, which, as usual, they didn't get to me till less than 1 week before the drop-dead deadline. Took breaks now and then to pack.

Drum packing, jeez.... I keep jerking awake at night with new bright ideas:
"I could put the repinique in the big alfaia! Instead of shipping it separately!"
twenty minutes fuzzy dozing later, I snap awake thinking:
"I bet the smaller alfaia's rings (heavy, thick wooden rings, 2.5 feet diameter) would fit in the suitcase!"
Jump out of bed to experiment. Small alfaia's rings fit. Large one's don't.
"Hmm, large alfaia is overweight, with the large rings AND the yellow hammock..."
20 minutes later:
"But if the alfaia rings are in the suitcase with the cavaquinho, what do I do with the rolled-up spare alfaia head?"
20 minutes later:
"The spare alfaia head can go in the TIMBAL! Which can go in that extra duffel that I brought all the way from New York!"
20 minutes later:
"I can wrap the hammock around the timbal for padding! Tape it all together and put it in the extra duffel!

today I put it all into action. I packed everything, everything. The timbal is wrapped in the yellow hammock and nested inside the New York duffel. The 18" rings are in the suitcase with the cavaquinho and pandeiro. It all fits. I even packed my jewelry and socks, even the last little stray things. Took all the decorations off the walls ... threw away the filthy earplugs that I've been using for months. Found, wedged in my suitcase, a little set of Irish sweatshirt + Irish shawl that I'd apparently brought with me 5 months ago just to wear on the airplane. I'd forgotten all about them, but there they were in my suitase. I'm ready to go..... I don't believe it...... I don't believe I am really leaving.

I still have 3 days. Till terca-feira.

last lesson from Jonas

I've been asking Jonas for months for a lesson, but it was always "Depois de Carnaval! Depois de Carnaval!" (actually it's been like that with everybody). Finally I got him! Set up a one-hour lesson on Friday, arranged a little room at Casulo Artes Musicais in Botafogo, rounded up two other friends to take the lesson with me - Vincent and Party Jason.

It was a cool, cool lesson. Vincent, Jason & I turned out to be a well-matched trio. Jason's a pro drumset player with pretty advanced formal music training, also a pro conga player, so though he hasn't had a huge amount of Brazilian experience, he's unbelievably quick at picking stuff up (he's kind of scary quick, actually - if he weren't such a nice guy I'd be intimidated!), and his hands are ready to reel off any kind of fast anything. (Jonas watched him pick up several long complex repique calls almost effortlessly, and then just said "Baterista?" - drumset player?) Vincent's also got a set background, plus a pretty wide fix now on both Brazilian and Cuban, plus conga. I'm the lone non-set player, non-conga player; not-been-playing-since-I-was-a-teenager player, so my hands are pretty clumsy still; but I was pleased to find out I could easily hang with them. I've got a deeper grasp of the Brazilian, which turned out to keep me in the game more than I'd expected. And I was surprised how comfy the repinique felt, since I haven't touched it in a couple months. I even managed to do some fairly fast sestuplet rolls that were not completely incompetent! Kind of surprising.

So Jonas could whip forward really fast and show us a huge variety of stuff. This is what he covered in 1 lesson:
Scrutinized each of us separately on repinique technique
Some classic callins and callouts
Some lovely variations for solo'ing. Jonas had a nice method of keeping 2 of us on the basic while he & the 3rd student traded off a certain solo motif. When that student had it, he'd rotate to the next student.
Eventually he turned all 3 of us loose for freestyle solo'ing, but warning us to not step on each other's solos. "Wait till the other guy finishes and returns to the basic before you start your own thing."
Some of Mocidade's paradinhas
Third surdo, solo style, for when the bateria is not playing yet and it's just you and the cavaquinho player starting off the samba-enredo. He made a clear distinction between having a very audible left hand slap ("escola style") or a completely silent left hand touch ("Studio style. For when you are recording the samba-enredo in the studio.")
Third surdo, Mangueira style. They call the third surdo the mo ("maw") surdo. (I read on Roda de Samba that this is a contraction of "maior", greater, referring not to its size but to its higher-pitched sound)
Third surdo, Salgueiro style. He emphasized how it fits with the song (using Explode Coracao as an example)
Third surdo, Mocidade style. From here we went into a ton of third-surdo solos... very fun....
Caixa, "generic escola style" (Viradouro/Salgueiro)
Caixa, Mangueira style. He played it single-stroke! I've never seen anybody do that! He also left out the 4.
Caixa, Mocidade style, to finish it off.

whew, what a lesson!! We'd arranged 1 hr and it ended up going 2.5 hrs.

I learned he uses different terms for some particular kinds of third-surdo motifs:

To play a string of just "and's" is to cut, "cortar":
--X- --X- --X- --X-
..."cutting" right between the main beats. One AND two AND three AND four AND.
Third surdos almost always do a couple measures of this when the samba-enredo song moves from the first part to the second part. The cutting helps stabilize the band during those song transitions. (Hence "cutter", by the way, another name for third surdo.)

To play a string of just ee's and uh's is to turn, "virar":
-X-X -X-X -X-X -X-X
This is the classic third-surdo motif that appears in all third-surdo solos. You're not really a third-surdo player till you can do an endless string of these and never, ever, lose your place, never lose your swing, and never return crossed.
And he signals it deliberately, Jonas said, whenever he wants the bateria to speed up. He said the thirds can speed up the whole bateria just by themselves.

Then there's another third-surdo motif
-XX- -XX- -XX- -XX-
... which Jonas seemed to regard as a variant of the -X-X. He recommends this one to stabilize the bateria after you've just sped it up. "First you play -X-X to speed them up, then when they arrive at the tempo you want, you switch to -XX- to stabilize them," he said.

And for freestyle solos, of course, anything goes! Except, well, there actually IS a subtle vocabulary to it. You always close out your variations with a left hand slap on a 1. You drop back to the basic now and then. You trade off with other third-surdos and don't step on their solos. And you always fit your solo in with the song. And there's some things you would never do on third surdo....you'd never do half-note triplets.... you'd never do 3-across-4. Throughout your playing, even the solos, you're supposed to be HELPING the bateria, providing a clear reference for everybody, not just doing whatever the hell you want! Jonas described how caixa players around a certain third-surdo player will tend to cue in on him, time their playing off his, even cluster around him physically. I've seen them do this, and they did it to me sometimes. It's partly a challenge ("Show me what you got!"), partly a compliment ("hey, that's cool! Do some more!"), and partly they're using you as a reference for their own playing. Sometimes you'll get little subsets of the bateria clumping up in separate bunches around the different third-surdo guys.

It's the repinique guys who can play the crazier stuff. Jonas said "The repiniques go off and do their own thing - " - gesturing with his hand veering way off to the side - "for a while, for a minute or two; but not very long. then they come back and settle down again for a long while." - his hand swooping back to the center. "The caixas just go straight." Hand arrowing straight forward. "They go straight the whole time, like a motor. But the thirds and tamborims are the two with the longest solos, the longest desenhos, the most interesting stuff."

A couple other vocab things while I'm on it: A "gargalhada" (gargle) is the repinique call that starts with the sestuplet roll. There is a "long gargalhada" and a "short gargalhada" . He also uses "sapatinho" instead of "carreteiro" for the fast tamborim turn. Gotta ask Nana about that terminology....

I am so glad I managed to get him for one more lesson!

And it felt so good to be playing again.

Casa Oliveira and a dead aga-deh

Went down to Casa Oliveira today and, as I knew he would, Jorge remembered me. Jorge is Casa Oliveira's long-time salesman. I had last been there one year ago, to buy a tantan; and had been there 6 months before that once, to buy a surdo. So I walked in today, started fooling around with the timbals, and within two minutes Jorge was squinting at me in concentration, saying "Weren't you.... You've been here before. Right? And you bought... You bought a surdo!"

He's one of those guys who just never forgets a face. (and it's not that I'm all that memorable - lots of gringos go to Casa Oliveira). Great guy, too. He'll tell you accurately which instruments are better than others. He'll spend two hours showing you 50 different cavaquinhos so you can try each one. Casa Oliveira's prices are always a little high, but they don't try to rip you off; their stuff is good.

I'd gone there to go cavaquinho shopping with Avron, but I was early, so..... I accidentally drifted over to the timbals and tuned a couple up and played them and the Gope was nice but the Contemporanea was nice too and the Gope was better but then it turned out the Gope had such a fragile shell I could bend it like rubber! Tucked it between my legs like usual and I almost collapsed the shell! yikes! So, I got the Contemporanea, good drum, much stronger than the Gope, and a case, and then right near all the cases was this box of surdo heads, so I went through all of those, and found the most beautiful 20" skin head but that is the ONE size of surdo I do NOT own; I own a 16", 18", 22", and 24" but I couldn't find that beautiful skin head in any other size than 20", so, never mind on that, and then I remembered Randy asked me for a choro wooden shaker and me & Jorge had a long discussion about that, and in the end, they don't carry them, but, he got around to showing me these incredibly cute little other shakers, so I got four, and I looked for quad bells for Pat but no dice on that, and then I was tuning down the timbal and suddenly thought "Hey! I wonder if they carry those long tuners for surdos," and they did! So I got five! And then I needed a plastic-head pandeiro, and, hmm, there was one with a flag and one without, and am I really going to pay 60 reais more just for a silly Brazilian flag on the front? Apparently I am. Pandeiro with silly Brazilian flag, check. Oh! I also need 8 caixa strings! Jorge got out the caixa strings.

It is VERY dangerous to go to Casa Oliveira in your last week in Brazil, when you have just landed an unexpected $1600 job and have spaced the fact that you are going to need that $1600 entirely for rent, and when a friend has just said "Oh, if you need a bit more money for your last week, I can loan you some."

Avron and Vincent showed up partway through this. Avron had come at my request to help me with cavaquinho selection, and Vincent just because he always likes to go to Casa Oliveira. Avron was immensely helpful with the cavaquinhos. I went in the end with a good basic beginner model - not the worst, not the best. Like Avron, my tendency when starting a new instrument - one I'm not sure yet if I'll commit to - is to get just a basic model that's about two price notches above the cheapest. One that is good enough that you won't have to fight it while you're learning, and a decent sound. I was terribly tempted by a blond cavaquinho that was the next rank up - such a nice color! - I'm such a sucker for pretty instruments! - but the blond one had a much tinnier sound.

I think that's it for me; last round of big purchases.
so I am carrying back with me:
1 big black bag with two alfaia shells nested in each other, and 2 hammocks and a lovely blanket
1 big black bag with a zabumba and the big wooden rings of the smaller alfaia (the rings won't nest!) and 3 hammocks
1 big black bag with a timbal and all my shoes and clothes inside it.
1 big black hardshell suitcase with 2 pandeiros and the cavaquinho and all my little shakers and my tamborim-mute
1 big box with a repinique
1 backpack with my laptop

Five things to check.
wow, am I glad I don't have that airport change any more....

It's strange for me here now. I'm working full time on a last-minute writing project that just fell in my lap, and it is weird to be working full-time here. I haven't gone out much at all... haven't even been staying up late. I miss the escolas and blocos terribly! There's still pagode and choro around but without those driving baterias, it's a little hard to get excited. I feel in an odd limbo of being half in Rio, half in the US, and not sure what will happen next musically. I haven't played much of anything in ten days, which seems like a terribly long time...

.... and, nastiest of all, my hard drive ("aga-deh" in portuguese; that's how they say "HD") completely died. I have been archiving all my recordings on an external hard drive. Today I sat down to arrange the files and starting backing up, since of course I haven't time to back anything up in ages.... and whoa.... the entire hard drive was suddenly empty... nearly 100gb of videos and recordings completely gone. Luckily I'd put my very favorite stuff back on my laptop too, so I still have my Monobloco and Banga recordings & some other key stuff. But I lost all my escola recordings, except the few I'd posted to my website; every recording from Carnival; most photos... a huge amount of mp3s.....

I might be able to recover it all. I'll take the aga-deh to somebody tomorrow. But the nice thing was.... it doesn't really bother me at all to have lost all that. I realized I don't need it. I posted most of my favorite stuff already; I've still got the things I most want; and the way those escolas sounded, I feel like I have it my blood now. I have all the escolas right here with me; I will never lose it. Yeah, I lost some cool repique calls and some cool breaks, in those escola recordings somewhere... but well, I have another lesson with Jonas tomorrow, another lesson with Scott Feiner Monday; there are always so many new cool things coming up in the future; and so many great people to keep learning from.

the stages of Portuguese

heh, funny, I'd sent a commentary to one of the Roda de Samba blog posts... and in that commentary I mentioned, by way of explaining my poor Portuguese, that I am an estrangeira here studying samba. One of the two blog authors, Leonardo, wrote back saying "tell me your story!" & asking about international samba. So a few days later I gathered my Portuguese neurons together and wrote him a long letter in Portuguese about it. A long long long letter. I didn't hear back from him, but a couple days later I looked at the Roda de Samba blog and there was most recent post, "Tem estrangeiro no samba!" (There's foreigners doing samba!") - with my ENTIRE letter reprinted verbatim. I guess I kind of knew he was going to do that - emails sent to the blog authors can go on the blog - but I didn't QUITE realize - or I would have phrased some things a little differently or at least had somebody look over my Portuguese!

In the letter I just told my little story of how I got hooked on samba, and then tried my clumsy, poorly-informed best to describe how there are little samba groups, and even little Carnivals, all over the world now. I think I made a lot of mistakes, both factual and linguistic, but at least the idea got across. A bunch of Brazilians have written back some really nice comments about it all. Pretty cool!

They have since gotten completely side-tracked on another topic - the Mangueira bateria is forcing some kind of "stagemanship" training on all its directors - such is blog life!

You know what's funny, my emails are just as long in Portuguese than they are when I write in english. The Portuguese doesn't seem to slow me down at all! It's pretty easy to write. I make a steady stream of little grammatical errors, but can write about just about anything now.

I guess my Portuguese really IS better. It's so incremental that I had't really noticed... but now compared to five months ago, it's so much better. I get different reactions now from friends whenever I say my usual "My portuguese is still so bad" - they flat contradict me now with "No, it ISN'T. Really. You're talking WELL now." I still stop and hesitate over certain verb tenses, little black holes of lost vocabulary that temporarily suck me into silence, but I can almost always tear free of those now and move on with the sentence. It's fragile & I fear I will lose it, back in the US; I've got to find some people to speak Portuguese with.

My vocabulary surprises me now and then: Why was I able to say "Look, it's a bat!" to the caixa player next to me when a poor lost bat was flying around inside the hall at Monobloco's last Fundicao show? Where did I ever learn the word for "bat"? Where did I pick up "paw" and "doorknob" and "landslide"? When did I stop needing a dictionary for the newspaper? I catch myself starting sentences with Brazilian introductions like "Look only, look only" and "The business is the following" - and sometimes accidentally use those phrases in my English speech too.

But I'm not fluent. Anyone with a strong slurred favela accent can still knock me into slack-jawed, drooling puzzlement. I lose little things if people start going fast. And still can't talk about heartfelt things... well, I can, but it's slow. I don't even really "believe" in fluency any more. It's sort of like losing your faith in true love or world peace; I just don't think it can truly happen! There are glimmers here and there, the fog slowly lifts, the veil thins, but it never clears entirely.

But slowly it improves. Looking back I can remember a lot of stages to the process:

The Two-Year-Old:
"Want coffee. Want now. No coffee? No coffee? Want coffee! Want coffee now!"

The Illiterate Country Hick: (a la David Sedaris)
"Can youse folkses gave me some of them those cow meats?"

The One-Word Wonder:
"Did you like my show?"
"YES! It was great! Great! It was great! You were great! It was VERY GREAT! You were VERY GREAT! VERY VERY GREAT!"
"Hey, thanks. Did you go to that other club later?"
"It was not great."

The $100,000-Pyramid Contestant:
"So I went to get the - the - the thing that you open a door with."
"Key?"
"Key! Correct! Yes! But it became ... it became... When something will not come out of something."
"Stuck?"
"Yes! So I went to ask the.. the... the man who is on the corner."
"Doorman?"
"No, the man who is on the corner who has many keys and works with keys and doors."
"Locksmith?"
"Yes! Correct! And he said he could not... could not... When you take a broken thing and make it not broken."
"Repair?"
"Yes!"

The Poet: (tackling something that is a bit beyond your vocabulary)
"There is a church the color of lemons,
Beyond is a stone, in shape of horse and man.
Beyond the horse of stone, a place where buses sleep.
At that place, the place where buses sleep, when hours are twelve, when sun is hot,
I wait for you."

The Mystic: (accidentally using the wrong words entirely)
"This music, I understand an ocean, but to my drum come turns and owls. I play the third owl beyond the moon. I play the box of claws. Do you understand?"

The 95%-Comprehension-Is-A-Long-Way-From-100% stage:
[music director is talking:] "Now, gather round, caixas, I've got something really important to stay. Can everybody listen up and pay attention? We're about to start our first major stage show and I just wanted to give you one really crucial last-minute piece of advice. I think this is the most important thing to remember. And it's this: Xboshgr, ngUNGUNGpfsy! Grlakblshfs! Okay? Is that perfectly clear to everyone? Now let's go and knock 'em dead!"

The Living-In-The-Moment stage: (you don't know any verb tenses except present tense)
"I run to bus. But the bus go. I run run run. The bus stop! I go up! I am on bus. The bus goes. I arrive at club. The band plays! It is great!"

The Catatonic:
"I went to the club but I had no ticket! But I ...................................[vacant stare, silence]............
......[mumbling: "would....could?.....would?... losted? losed?.... "].............
- COULD NOT HAVE LOST the ticket."

The Broken Record:
"I was walking along the beach and then a hhhhhelllllppppooooopterrrrrrrrrr ?"
"Helicopter."
"helplicopterrrr?
"Helicopter."
"Heliclopter?"
"Helicopter."
"Helicopter?"
"Helicopter."
"A helicopter went right over my head!"

The War Veteran:
"What would you have done if I hadn't been there?"
"Oh...." [glazed stare, shudder of fear] "I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"I... I... I can't explain."
"What's wrong?"
"I can't remember the conditional tense."

Shipping drums

Spent yesterday racing around starting my mega-packing job. Sorted out ALL my stuff into: bring on airplane; ship to US; "why the hell did I ever bring this in the first place, I didn't even like it when I bought it"; give to friends; give to street beggars; see if I can sell (all my electronics - ipod, camera, Edirol recorder & laptop). Went through all those zillions of little pieces of paper that somehow accumulate. Ripped all my new cd's.

After the usual inefficient scramble of not knowing how the post offices work in Brazil (see below), and after several late nights of haunting grocery stores after midnight to beg for boxes, I successfully shipped off my capoeira pandeiro, shekere and a disassembled caixa today, with a pile of clothes and sandals. And returned my two borrowed congas to the kind friend who had lent them to me for so long - god, that was an all-afternoon workout for sure! Of course, as soon as they were gone, I immediately felt an INTENSE desire to practice conga! The repique is going Monday...I have one more repique lesson scheduled for Friday with Jonas, probably my last lesson here, and box it up and away it goes.

Also scooted down to American Airlines' office at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, and, miracle of miracles, they found me the perfect flight - eliminated my godawful airport change in New York City, eliminated a stop in Chicago, and lengthed my NYC layover. For free!! Also found out that American has lightened their extra-bag and overweight-bag fees, so I'll bring more stuff on the plane. Now I have 12 full hours in NYC and once I clear customs, the bags can be checked right away and I don't have to haul them around! I immediately set up a lunch with two of my old VamoLa drummer buddies who are now living in NYC, Robyn & Fernanda. And I'll see if that beautiful big black horse who I rode last time in Central Park (in October, on my way to Brazil) is available for another ride. Falstaff was his name. The last thing I did in the US was go galloping around Central Park for an hour and a half with Falstaff, on a beautiful crisp October morning. Somehow it seems like it'd be cool to come full circle and have another ride on the same great horse to finish my trip.

Here's the scoop on shipping stuff.
- You have to use the Brazilian post office (Correios). "There is no other way" to ship boxes, said my friend Macapa, who does this sort of thing full-time. (He ships Artcelsior drums to any country; and makes incredibly good straps, too.)
- There are only two ways to ship large boxes: Express and Economico. Obviously you want economico.
- The post offices are nice and are dotted all over the city. Look for the yellow "CORREIOS" signs. They are quite helpful. They don't have the brown paper that you'll need (see below) but they have some empty boxes for sale and they usually will let you use their own tape, and often will help you wrap the box.
- Sum of length+width+ht of box must be less than 1.5 meters. (Some surdos are too big.)
- Here's the thing I kept forgetting: your box HAS to be completely wrapped in plain brown wrapping paper. A plain brown box is not good enough - it has to also have the plain brown paper. The plain brown paper, and tape, is for sale in any papelaria (paper store). Ask for "papel parana" (accent on last syllable: paraNA) and "fita para embalar" (tape for
wrapping).
- Be prepared for the shipping to be expensive! The approximately 20-lb box I sent yesterday to the US was 130 reais (about 60 dollars). It is more economical to send more stuff in a bigger box than two smaller boxes - the price per additional kg declines. You also want to balance this against your airline's extra-bag fee (currently $80 per extra bag on American, for up to three extra bags. After that it gets more expensive.)
- You gotta pay in cash. No credit cards.

Hmm... now that I know American only charges $80 for an extra bag up to 50 lbs ... and up to three extra bags allowed .... that's kind of a bargain! ... and no airport change ... maybe I should go down to Casa Oliveira and buy a bunch more drums!

Roda de Samba's "Carnaval judges" speak up

Here's an interesting analysis of the Carnaval results, from Leonardo Bruno (one of O Globo's two escola-de-samba reporters who write the O Globo "Roda de Samba" blog):

******
Friends, the post I put up yesterday here was a success, about who deserved to go to the Parade of Champions and who deserved to be sent down to Grupo A. There were over 40 comments posted, and, from those, it was possible to calculate an average classification of Carnival from your opinions, adding up everybody's votes. Here we go, so that we can analyze it:

1. Beija-Flor
2. Salgueiro / Viradouro
4. Mangueira
5. Vila Isabel
6. Unidos da Tijuca
7. Portela
8. Grande Rio
9. Mocidade
10. Imperatriz
11. Imperio Serrano
12. Estacio de Sa
13. Porto da Pedra

Well, starting from these numbers, we can reach the following conclusions (many of which have already been discussed here):

- Beija-Flor's championship is deserved.

- Salgueiro suffered the largest injustice of Carnaval; they should have been in the race for the title, but they ended up out of the Parade of Champions.

- Grande Rio, with its strange results in recent years [comment from KH: There is widespread suspicion that Grande Rio has been buying votes], is turning into an extremely disliked escola. Even with its good parade this year, the blog readers only awarded it 8th place.

- Ten escolas were mentioned as being the "group in front" [the better half of Grupo Especial]. Eight were mentioned as being in the "group behind" [the worse half].

- Mocidade was poorly judged by the official judges.

- Imperatriz has become an apathetic escola [that people also don't care much about]; nobody thought that it should be among the champions, and nobody cited it as deserving being sent down either.

- The sending-down of Imperio Serrano might not have been fair, but the escola did do a poor parade.

- Porto da Pedra was judged generously; it deserved last place but ended up ahead of Estacio, Imperio and Mocidade.

*****
[KH again] There were another 25 comments posted in response to this, and I was interested that many of them wanted to speak about Imperatriz and Grande Rio. They all agreed that Grande Rio has become a widely disliked escola, and many of them said "Grande Rio is taking Imperatriz's place." Apparently Imperatriz used to be widely disliked too, but has since improved to the point of being simply ignored.

In Grande Rio's favor, however, many readers said it does, in fact, do good parades, and its local community still supports it (which was apparently not the case with Imperatriz). But apparently Grande Rio's results in recent years have caused many cariocas to start to distrust the escola.

For my own part, I have visited Grande Rio quite a lot since I have a friend in the bateria and I have taken lessons from the mestre, Odilon Costa. Odilon is excellent, one of Rio's very best mestres, and Grande Rio's bateria is top-notch. But I did notice that the overall ambience seemed not as joyful as in other escolas. Out of the bateria and down on the floor, there was sort of a dispirited and disengaged feel. Few people were dancing. Some of you may remember that Grande Rio is the same escola that was insulted by the Viradouro fans, at one of the last Sambodromo technical rehearsals. The insult was that the crowd sang the Viradouro song while Grande Rio was still parading, which, in Sambodromo terms, is quite an insult. At the time I thought this was an indication of rudeness on the part of the Viradouro community, but maybe it reflects a more widespread dislike for Grande Rio.

Ilha Grande: swimming under sun and moon

Ilha Grande! I went there for 2 days and ended up staying for a week. Each day I'd delay my departure by one more day... finally I got to the point where I HAD to go back to Rio to get to work on a full-time writing job that has just started, but instead I just made a 12-hr roundtrip to Rio, and came right back to the island on the morning ferry (missing an entire night of sleep) with my laptop. If I have to work, it might as well be in the most beautiful place in the world, right?

Ilha Grande, the Big Island, had the good luck of being the site of a notorious prison until quite recently. (The famous transvestite singer Madama Sata ended up there.) That was "good luck" because it means nothing else was built on the entire huge island. While Copacabana's forest was being completely razed for high-rise hotels and condominiums, Ilha Grande remained a completely pristine patch of Atlantic coastal rain forest and mountain waterfalls, lined by idyllic coves and spacious beaches.

When the prison was shut down about 15 years ago, the state of Rio began carefully allowing tourism development there. They've been very savvy about keeping tourism's footprint small. There's just one tiny little town full of little pousadas dotted along the beach. No buildings more than 7 meters high. No big chain hotels. Any new pousada now has to buy a large plot of land and leave 80% of its land untouched and vegetated. 60% of the island is a national park, and it's about to be increased to 90%. The number of tourists allowed on the island will soon be limited by quota (reservations will be required). All to keep it pristine and tranquil. The former prison guards were hired to patrol & enforce these new regulations!

And there are no motorized vehicles on the island! No cars, not even motorcycles. (well, actually, there are 2 tiny police cars, one ambulance, and a tractor.) Instead there are dozens of skinny, hard-working guys with wheelbarrows and bicycle-carts, who shuttle the incoming food deliveries from the ferry to all the restaurants, and who will offer to take your suitcase in a wheelbarrow down the beach and across the stream to your pousada. After the endless traffic and noise of Rio, the peace and quiet of a motor-less island was absolutely a blessing.

It all adds up to the most idyllic, peaceful, safe spot... no noise, no crime, no pollution, no litter. No worries about feeling like a tourist or not knowing any Portuguese - everybody's a tourist there, so for once you don't feel out of place! And after Rio it seemed so clean.. even the working harbor (full of charmingly painted "boat taxis") is clean and lovely to swim in. The coast is lined with a rocky hiking trail - you can just follow it from one beach to the next - and the whole mountainous island is honeycombed with trails.

The booming metropolis of Abraao, on Ilha Grande:


I felt myself just relax and unwind.... suddenly I was sleeping all night and getting up at dawn, like a bird; like I haven't done in a year. I forgot all about nightlife and parties and just wanted to sit still and be calm. As my pousada owner Nicki said, "If you can't relax on Ilha Grande, you need a psychiatrist." It is the PERFECT post-Carnaval place.

I started practicing pandeiro again. I haven't touched it much since my Musical Confidence Crisis, but now it was fun again.

I did have to start serious work via my laptop - I'm working full-time now - but FROM ILHA GRANDE! I'd roll out of bed to a wonderful breakfast at my Tagomago Pousada (highly recommended - run by the incredibly friendly, helpful, and quadri-lingual Nicki). Then sit and work on my little balcony overlooking the bay. Tagomago's free fast wireless never let me down. Every couple hours, when I wanted a break, I'd walk 30 meters to the sea and jump in, swim around for a while. Play with the cute puppy on the beach. Lie in the sun till I dried off. Maybe grab a beer at the tiny beachside bar next door. Then back to work for another couple hours. God, I love wireless! Why haven't I ever thought of working from a tropical island before?

View from my balcony. I had a hammock too. It was sunny and 90 degrees every day.


Coffee break. Now that's a beachside bar. The waves were actually rolling under the tables. (it was high tide & full moon!)


There are boats that will take you to some of the more distant beaches. As soon as enough tourists show up on any one beach, magically some locals show up to sell you water, beer and sandwiches. If enough tourists show up, the floating bar appears - a boat with full bar on the stern, complete with bar stools and little tables. It anchors near shore and you just swim out to it and climb aboard.

There is one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been on (Lopes Mendes) on one side of the island, a great vast curve of soft white sand so fine that it squeaks when you walk on it. It is empty... just some fallen palm tree fronds.... a few coconuts that have rolled down the sand. Empty. It is dotted with cute, shy crabs that dart into their holes when you look at them. Ilha Grande's rush hour consists of the daily pilgrimage of five or six large boat taxis that drop people off near Lopes Mendes in the morning, and pick them up in the afternoon. But even with several large boatloads of people there, the beach is so huge you can find privacy if you want it.







My friend Patricia (a sambista from the Lions, and windsurfer/beachlover):


At the end of the day, you walk back along a sandy trail to the boat that will take you back home. Families of common marmosets (tiny monkeys come visit the trail to beg for any stray bananas that you might be carrying.




Rush hour:




There are tiny little beaches in every cove; and a beautiful black-sand beach right by town. I was expecting the "black sand" beach to be not as dramatic as it sounded, maybe a little gray-ish, but it turned out to have patches of truly jet black, sparkling sand, so mesmerizing that I immediately lay down and rolled around in it, and Pat immediately starting making a tiny black-sand drip castle that became so elaborate it attracted 3 little girls, and we all spent the next hour adding pebbles and flowers to it and building small subsidiary castle outposts.

Then we played in the ocean for another hour. After the enormous castle-building enterprise, the girls had completely gotten over their shyness and started showing us all their tricks: how they could swim under water and how fast they could count to ten and how they could pick up pebbles with their toes. The youngest one, an adorable 3-year-old in water wings, started swimming up behind me and patting softly at my back and arms with her hands. I'd pretend to be surprised and would squeal, and she would burst into giggles, swim away, then do the same thing again, a million times.

The black-sand beach was perfect for little kids: a nice safe cove with 1-foot waves, just big enough to be a bit of excitement for a little kid, not big enough to cause any danger. Over on the other side of the island there is bigger surf (and some surfers).

When the sun set, the girls finally left, with their (grateful-looking) parents. The oldest girl, who had demonstrated the keenest eye for finding pretty stones in the surf for the sand castle, came running back from a long way away, just to give me a pretty rock that she had just found. Two minutes later she came zipping back again with another pretty rock for Pat, then waved goodbye again and took off running again to catch up with her family.



This photo does not do it justice! Every grain of sand was placed with care! There are 2 subsidiary castle-lets out of view to the right.



Monkeys and parrots. Skinny-dipping at night under the lunar eclipse. Building sand castles with the kids. Playing with puppies on the beach. Feeding delicious grilled shrimp to a friendly little cat. Shopping for little seashell earrings and beautiful woven-twig fishes from the charming girls at the sidewalk stands. My friend Patricia danced forro (I had to work) and we both stood mesmerized at the amazing display of home-baked goodies at the two Dessert Carts Of The Gods that patrol the main town beach. Ate a lot of mango ice cream (self-serve, pay by the kilo! wow!) Played pandeiro with a clump of locals on the ferry. Lay in the sun. Swam. Lay in the sun some more. Swam. Lay in the sun some more.

If you have 2 days free in Rio and the weather is good and you want to get out of the big city:
1) Very-early morning option: Take a taxi at 4:30am to the downtown Rio bus station (say "Rodoviaria" to any cabbie.) Look for the "Costa Verde" bus company on the ground floor and buy a ticket on the 5:20am bus to Mangaratiba. The bus arrives at 7:20 and deposits you right at the ferry dock; the ferry leaves at 8am. Bus is about 15 reais, ferry is only 5 reais. Dump your bags at your pousada and catch the next boat to the Lopes Mendes beach, where you can lie under a palm tree all day and catch up on your sleep.

2) Later morning option: Take a taxi or bus at 10am or so to Rio's big downtown bus station, find the Costa Verde booth on the ground floor, and buy a ticket on the 11am-ish bus to Angra dos Reis. Costa Verde has frequent buses to Angra & I don't remember the exact schedule - but this bus ride is about 3 hrs long so be sure you leave in time to catch the 3:30pm ferry. The person at the Costa Verde station will know exactly which bus you should take to catch the ferry. Get off where the bus turns around, by a little plaza. Ask anybody "Barco [boat] para Ilha Grande?" and they will point you toward the ferry terminal one block away. Bus is about 30 reais, ferry is 5 reais.

These hours are for weekdays. I'm not sure about weekends. I know there's one extra Friday ferry that leaves late at night.

Lodging runs from 30 reais per person to 230 per double room, depending on spiffiness and view.

Bring cash - there are no ATMs on the island!

Monoblo-CO!

My last Carnaval event was the Monobloco parade Sunday morning. I caught two hours' sleep after the Parade of Champions (and thank god, there was a time change - daylight savings ended here - or it would have been just 1 hour). The alarm went off at 7am and up I jumped, bleary-eyed, so tired I was dizzy. Grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the sleeves and neck off my girls' pink Monobloco parade shirt (the system in Rio for every Carnaval event is, your t-shirt is your ticket and backstage pass; but the t-shirts are frumpy, so, ALL women cut up the t-shirts to make them into girls' styles. There is a whole cottage industry of seamstresses who will alter your t-shirt into a snappy-looking, nicely hemmed halter-top for you).

I put on my caixa skirt and parade sandals, slapped on some sunblock on in the usual spots - backs of arms, shoulders, nose, cheeks - and out the door I ran.

Jumped in a cab. We were almost there when we were broadsided by a van! My first cab crash! It was pretty scary but nobody hurt, and, thank, god, my cabbie had amazing reflexes and swerved so hard that his cab was only grazed in the end. But it was freaky to see that van charging right at my door. The van and cabbie pulled over to exchange information (taxi meter still running! HEY!), so I got to Monobloco a tiny bit late. Everybody had their drums on and ready to go. I didn't have time to go get more sunblock like I'd planned. Threw a drum on and off we went.

The Monobloco parade finishes it all off. It's always the weekend after Carnaval. It marks the end of the Carnaval season for all of Rio; the end of the Brazilian summer, the end of daylight savings time, the start of the school year... time to say goodbye to the friends here and started planning for the trip back.

It was a blazing hot day and we were in full scorching sun, on this sunny Rio Sunday, along Copacabana beach. The temp was 95F (35C) at 9am when we started. I don't know how much hotter it got, as the sun soared higher and higher in that blue blue sky, but, MAN, it was broiling. Seemed like all of us were near passing out at one point or another, but luckily there were guys running through the bateria nonstop with big coolers of water bottles, which we just kept grabbing and dumping over our heads. Most of the bateria was soaking wet most of the time. I think I spent as much time pouring water over myself as I did actually playing.

Here is one of my fellow players with the same idea. (all photos from O Globo and O Dia)


The lack of sunblock soon turned into a terror for me. Me and my Irish skin! I'm very savvy about the sun here and have not got burned yet - but, when you're playing in a parade, you can't escape! The sun started just radiating down, baking my right side. I had put on my one quick dash of sunblock, but I knew that would run out pretty fast. So, in between all the wonderful music, while watching Celso for all his cues, trying to get the 25 caixa patterns right and nail all the breaks - trying to stay alert for the sometimes long, complex cues ("Coco1 - then Coco 2 - segue to Maculele 1, but first and second surdos, do Mangueira - caixas Maculele 2 - watch for repique call - ") - Meanwhile I was on Sunburn High Alert. I found I could keep my legs in the shadow of the caixa player in front of me if I kept very close to her. Luckily, she ended up drifting back from her line to mine, crowding me out of my spot, so I had an excellent excuse for crowding her so closely. Partway through one of our sambas I spotted that she had a tiny travel tube of sunblock in her waist pouch. I tapped her on the shoulder and she instantly, apologetically scooted back to her row, but I went chasing after her gesturing "no, no, please stay where you were, I just was going to ask for some more drops of sunblock! Please stay EXACTLY where you were!"

She gave me several life-saving drops: Right arm. Right shoulder. Nose.

Eventually the sun got so high that her precious shadow shrank to a little dot right under her. Dang. High noon. Broiling. It felt like the top of my head was being microwaved. If I took tiny little steps, I could keep my feet and legs in the shadow of my caixa. Poor caixa; it was so scalding hot that the rim was painful to the touch.

I went through phases of fuzzy fatigue that always turned out to be due to my head being microwaved. Got into a routine: Dump water on head. Play. Dump water on head. Play. Dump water on head. Play. Player next to me is dumping water on head - stick my legs in the shower coming off his shoulders. Dump water on head. Play. Keep watching Celso. "Caixas - Timbal samba! Caixas - switch to Salgueiro! Caixas - Mocidade! - Caixas - break 4, then Mangueira!" Dump water on head, play.

And all the time the crowd was growing and growing and growing, and getting more and more and more packed.... it was later reported at between 70,000 and 80,000, the biggest crowd Monobloco has ever drawn. We in the bateria, thank god, had our own bubble of empty space around us (maintained by a complete square of security guys around the entire band and sound truck, carrying a rope barrier that they just kept pushing ahead through the crowd.) But the poor crowd, my god, they were so wedged that when one of them started jumping, they all had to jump! When they all put their arms in the air, they couldn't put them down again! ho-ly moley! Sizzlin' sardines, Batman!

The blue truck is our sound truck, and the cluster of pale dots in front of it is the bateria. Pedro Luis & the other singers were on top of the sound truck:




Apparently the crowd spread all the way over to the major commercial streets of Copacabana. Copacabana and Ipanema were completely impassable and the traffic jams spread all the way to Lagoa and Botafogo. Hey, MY band managed to shut down half of Rio! Cool!

But amazingly they looked so HAPPY out there all wedged together, all carrying their Skol beers, all bouncing up and down together, singing every song. People seemed just delirious with this one last chance to party.





The city of Rio actually made good on its promise to bring some porta-potties to the bloco parades - and a bunch of skinny guys had climbed up on them, where they carefully balanced on the fragile plastic roofs, one guy per porta-potty, and started doing the most ridiculous funk dances, cracking everybody up.



It was so wonderful. Despite the heat. We played all my favorite songs, every last one, all the Monobloco classics, all the crowd favorites. We played my very, very favorite songs, like Que Beleza (well, actually, it's Imunizacao Racional, but everyone knows it as Que Beleza). Monobloco has converted it into the Monobloco anthem by adding their trademark chant:
Em-eh,
oh,
en-eh oh beh el-eh oh,
seh oh,
que beleza,
OO!
Monoblo-CO!

This used to be a totally mystifying chant to me until I learned to pronounce the alphabet Portuguese-style. It's just M-O-N-O-B-L-O-C-O.

And we did Rap do Real, a song with an old personal connection for me. And all my other favorites.

I couldn't believe I was there actually IN Monobloco playing those songs that I have danced to and sung to for so long.

And there's nothing like playing a well-known Brazilian song to a Brazilian crowd - they just light up like they have been electrified, and all start jumping around like a mob of excited puppies, waving their arms, delirious with excitement, and singing along at the top of their lungs. Whether or not they can actually sing. Totally un-self-conscious. Everybody dancing. Every time we would hit the chorus of any of our songs, BOOM, ALL the arms in the air, ALL the people jumping up and down, every last one of them, EVERYBODY singing, EVERYBODY dancing. Oh, I am going to miss Brazil....

The famous singer Elsa Soares came out on the balcony of her penthouse apartment to watch us go by, and we all waved up at her and played an Elsa song in her honor, and she waved back and she started dancing too.

I forgot, when I was allocating my precious few drops of sunblock, I forgot that I play left-palm-up now. Forgot that the INSIDE of my left wrist was going to be facing up, full-on to the sun, for four hours solid. I ended up with a brutal second-degree burn on the inside of my left wrist, just a little 3" by 2" strip but wow, it is a beauty of a burn! Second-degree! Cool! My whole wrist was swollen and purple for days! (It's nice having a very SMALL dramatic sunburn. You can show it off and boast about it, but you're not truly miserable.) It's almost a week later now and it's still purple and blistering. But I'm very proud of it: it's my Monobloco caixa burn! Ever since I heard that band play, and heard that they did a parade, I've wanted to parade with them. And I did it!


(I am the girl in the pink t-shirt on the left, with my back almost completely visible. Somewhere in there are my friends Mick, JP & Emily from London. And a lot of other great friends too.)

parade of champions

I´m on ilha grande now without email access, so have been unable to post anything to the blog (already lost a whole post when my computer at the internet cafe froze and lost everything after an hour of writing... dang... )

so just some quick things to get up to date:
I got completely into Sambodromo overdrive all through Carnaval - I could not seem to stay away from that place. Bloco parades all day, then I´d end up drifting over to the Sambodromo. I accidentally ended up back there Saturday night for the Parade of Champions, which I´d never been to before, but I went there with Party Jason (always a dangerous influence) and of course we ended up buying scalped tickets and heading on in for the evening.

It had a really cool relaxed, fun feeling. The paraders were totally relaxed, waving signs to their moms, kicking off their uncomfortable shoes and hats. The floats were falling apart a bit, everything a bit bedraggled; and several places on the floats were missing people; the baterias were only half the size that they are for the Carnaval nights. But it was really cool! It still all looked damn impressive, and it was really nice to know that the paraders were leaping around and singing because they really wanted to, not because they had to for judges.

And the crowd in the stands was much more mellow. Fewer tourists, many more locals. On Carnaval night, the vibe in the grandstands is very strange - people are so territorial about their seats (sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not) that they get very grumpy and unfriendly. You can spend all night getting scowls from clumps of French and Germans on either side and never feel like you´re in Brazil. But on Parade of Champions night, everybody just packed in cheek-by-jowl, friendly and chatting. (and overheated. we did get a wee bit too packed. Maybe the French and Germans were onto something after all)

Seeing the parades again was interesting... some that had impressed me the first time were no longer as interesting (Viradouro - I guess its tricks only last one time - and Grande Rio) while others remained as stunning as before (Mangueira and Beija-Flor).

I´ve heard griping comments from various escolas about Grande Rio´s perfect-10 bateria marks, but I have to say, it seemed to me like the other escolas were really rushing their breaks terribly. Beija-Flor consistently rushed their major break so badly they got probably a full quarter note ahead of time. Mangueira suffered a HUGE out-of-phase tempo fracture while going in and out of the recuo, and their surdos were flamming during the breaks! I´d heard the exact same thing in their parade on Sunday and was so startled I thought I´d imagined it - I didn´t think it was possible for Mangueira to get out of phase? I thought it must be a speed-of-sound time delay, or an echo off the walls, that was confusing me. But later I talked to several other musicians who heard the same thing, and then I was watching extra-carefully Saturday, and they did the exact same thing in the Parade of Champions.

Unidos da Tijuca´s opening float had a huge devil with a giant flash bulb and a camera (I guess it was the Devil of Photography, or something... I never could figure it out). The flash would go off every now and then. Until, just past us, the whole flash caught fire, and then the whole arm... it was scary! The flames just kept spreading and a huge column of black smoke was boiling up into the sky. All the dancers scrambled off the float, and, then a few moments later, some little trapdoors popped open and several guys came bolting up out of the inside of the float. Looked like everybody got out in time. Finally a fire truck pulled up and put the fire out, to huge cheers, and the parade finally went on its way with the sagging devil, sans dancers and sans arm, still leading the way but looking very pathetic.

That´s the second float fire this week. When Grande Rio came along I had a double-take moment when I thought "Oh, that´s the float that was destroyed by fire. What a pity, it´s so pretty! WAIT a minute..." how could the float still BE there if it was destroyed by fire? As it drew nearer I realized it was a replacement float that Grande Rio must have thrown together in 4 or 5 days. The old float burned to ashes on Tuesday morning (when it hit a power line in an alley on its way out of the Sambodromo), and here it was Saturday night and they had somehow pulled together a float of huge oranges and orange blossoms with a big Grande Rio logo, and feathered dancers all over. Damn impressive for a five-day job! I studied it as it drew nearer, and it was a cool lesson in how to toss together a float - just get a bunch of giant flowers, 35 enormous oranges, a huge drum with your escola logo, drape it all in orange cloth and enormous silver streamers, put a tall thing in the back with some stuff on top (giant oranges, silver pipes, whatever), put girls in feathers all over it, and hey presto! Of course, the girls in feathers are the key.

dashed back home from that, caught 2 hrs sleep and raced to the Monobloco parade. Very, very cool. Very, very hot too. More next time, I have to go lie on a beach now.