Playboys & Patricinhas samba too

Fresh back from Monobloco's last Friday show. Soooo fun. My caixa leader Fred was missing but Celso filled in some of the caixa cuing, and the caixa section managed to remember the rest on their own. Fred was apparently laid out with a nasty case of heat stroke while the Monobloco pros were playing in the Brahma camarote (the most celebrity-filled of the private boxes at the Sambodromo). The temperature in the Brahma camarote was over 104F and they just had to keep on playing! Yikes! I'm glad now that I didn't buy that Brahma camarote ticket from the scalper! Apparently Fred is ok, but, what with that and Andre getting clobbered in that Banga parade, jeez, my caixa teachers are dropping like flies.

Monobloco feels so much more relaxed and happy now, after these four Friday shows. Everybody is very secure now on all the repertoire, and it all feels confident and solid. It must be rewarding for the leaders when there are moments like tonight, with the caixa section on their own but doing fine; and there was another interesting moment when the lighting guy turned out all the lights for dramatic effect but accidentally turned off Celso's (the leader) spotlight too, so that we couldn't see his crucial cue to change patterns. But glory be, all the surdos came thundering in just when they were supposed to, in the pitch dark; they'd all unconsciously learned that particular song and knew it was time to come in, even without Celso's cue.

My favorite moment was actually.... well, to back up a bit, last summer (northern summer) in Seattle I got into an odd situation playing Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" on pandeiro with a jazz band. I was just innocently sitting in on a samba and next thing I knew they were playing Purple Haze. I thought "What are the chances that I'll ever play a samba-Purple Haze medley again? Certainly it'll never happen in Rio." Guess what: Monobloco had a wonderful guest visit from Os Paralamas do Sucesso's famous lead singer, and guess what he launched into, impromptu: Purple Haze! It was clearly unrehearsed and you could see Celso's mind racing through the possible choices for rhythm backup. Samba? Xote? Ciranda? He chose the Marcha 1, which turned out to be perfect. But then he couldn't figure out where to call the breaks! It was funny - all the gringos in the band (there are a handful of us) were automatically hitting a big break in the same place: "WHAM!, Scuse me, while I kiss the skyyyyy!" - but all the Brazilians were fumbling around doing the break a hair early or a hair late, or just playing straight through it. Really funny. The crowd didn't care at all about the break, though, of course, they were just completely thrilled anyway. It was really fun.

I'll close with a translation from one of O Globo's samba writers. As background: my blocos Monobloco and Bangalafumenga are a relatively new kind of bloco, what I call a "stage bloco" instead of a street bloco. They rehearse year-round, run lots of classes, and do lots of stage shows. Both aim for a very high standard of playing, and have a very diverse repertoire. They are also both white blocos from Zona Sul, which is kind of a new thing. Samba didn't used to be popular with white kids - not before about ten years ago. Both blocos have been huge hits with the younger carioca crowd, which has caused some resentment among the old-guard cariocas, because the old guard just don't trust white middle-class kids trying to play samba. (There is a pervasive, unspoken prejudice here that you have to be a poor black Brazilian to play really good samba; it's a reverse racism). I still get comments from the old-guard players along the lines of "Monobloco can't play samba."

But I've seen how hard those players work. Sure, a lot of them are new to drumming, "just students", and sure, they're white. But they REALLY work at it. And I've seen lots of their players travel dozens of hours per week to play with the distant escolas, too. They are not dilettantes; they really love samba, and they really love to play. I don't know how they were playing a few years ago when both blocos were fairly new, but they can sure play now.

Check out this recent article from last week from O Dia's main samba reporter Daniel Pereira:

"It's hard for me to write this, but I have to take off my hat for a set of people who've made me break one of my preconceived ideas. I confess that I've always distrusted Monobloco. For me, it was just something for "playboys and little Patricias" [spoiled rich white kids]. And that bateria... all white kids from Zona Sul. Until this Friday, when I decided to check it out for myself.

"The Fundicao was completely packed. Five thousand people. The guest was the great Jurandir da Mangueira, winner of 12 sambas from the escola of Cartola [Mangueira's brilliant songwriter]. For harmony, there was just one cavaquinho, which, God knows how, managed to fill the whole space. The cavaquinho player managed to solo and accompany at the same time. The sound was perfect. No fights. Everybody full of spirit, but everybody getting along. Sure, there were lots of those little blondes dressed in outfits from Fashion Mall, but they were singing like crazy, and many of them had kicked off their shoes so they could samba better. Literally, with "black feet". [African roots]

"And I was standing there with my arms crossed, not risking singing along with a single song. Until the bateria made me humble myself. I confess it: it was thrilling. My preconceptions about samba and carnaval changed that day. I follow samba all year long, and I can guarantee that this bateria is good enough to parade even in Sapucai [the street of the Sambodromo]. And, even more, I can state that Monobloco is an example of success and transformation of the Rio carnaval. I say, transformation for good.... in musical quality, in fun, in peace, in daring, in infra-structure... all this, allied with the grand old spirit of Carnaval festivity, and all for the good of "that panting epidemic that we call Carnaval." [quote from Chico Buarque's song Vai Passar]

"They taught me a lesson. They showed that the Carnaval spirit has nothing to do with preconceptions or stereotypes."

And from today's column, summing up the year's last parades, the same writer added:

"Without a doubt, writing about that bloco was the most complicated moment that I've had here writing this column. I'm so used to the rodas-de-samba of "malandragem" [old-style black samba with a street-tough attitude] that I had an enormous preconception against the new generation of Zona Sul sambistas. What foolishness! For the next Carnaval , we'll remember the lesson that the beauty of Carnaval comes from change, from mixing it up. In the end, if you've got a tamborim in your hand and a fantasia costume on, social classes make no difference. We're all Carnavalers."

BEIJA-FLOR DE NILOPOLIS... DEZ!

Spent the afternoon watching the Sambodromo results, from a great seat under the big-screen tv at Garota de Ipanema (the bar in Ipanema where the legendary Girl from Ipanema came walking in every day. Yes, she was a real girl and she caught the attention of a couple of soon-to-be-famous songwriters who hung out at the bar.) There was a little clump of Brazilians behind me who were rooting for Salgueiro and Viradouro "and Beija-Flor, a bit". They asked me who I was rooting for; I said I was hoping Mocidade didn't go down, and to win, I was rooting for Beija-Flor. "Which is the escola of your heart?' the guy asked. I said Mocidade. He reported to his friends, "She is Mocidade, and secondarily Beija-Flor."

It was awfully cool watching the announcements. It's broadcast live from the Sambodromo. Every single score from every single judge is announced, in every single category. The judges are shown by name and photo - no anonymity allowed! It's a very momentous event. For each category, the announcer goes down a list of a single judge's scores, sonorously announcing each escola's name and the score. The top score is 10 ("dez"). The announcer always uses the full, formal, grandiose name of each escola - none of this "Beija-Flor" or "Mangueira" shorthand, no, it's "BEIJA-FLOR DE NILOPOLIS... DEZ!" or "ESTACAO PRIMEIRA DE MANGUEIRA... DEZ!" or maybe "NOVE PONTO OITO" (9.8) or whatever. There were live camera feeds set up in every escola's quadra, all of which were completely packed with fans, and every time the announcer said "DEZ!" they'd cut to that quadra, which would be erupting in huge cheers.

Forty judges, thirteen escolas, and 520 grandiose score-announcing moments later, Beija-Flor's quadra had racked up so many "DEZ!"'s that they looked dizzy from all the cheering. The whole Beija-Flor quadra was going nuts, people jumping and waving the blue-and-white Beija-Flor flags ... and, of course, starting to samba as the bateria members grabbed instruments and started playing.

So, yes, Beija-Flor won! Grande Rio once again came in second. I was pleased. My whole Sambodromo adventure on Monday was just so I could see Beija-Flor and Grande Rio. They are two of my favorites. Beija-Flor was the escola that gave me chills during their last technical rehearsal, and they did it again during their parade. As I have said before, they are INTENSE. They were stunning from start to finish. I got those chills again at their life-size walking giraffes and elephants (full-size animal costumes hiding two stilt-walking people inside the legs). Loved their brilliant costumes, loved their floats - especially that huge African hummingbird - loved their song, loved the theme (Africa).

Next goal for me: trying to snag a couple of Beija-Flor's gorgeous lion costumes after the champions parade (for my Oregon band, the Lions of Batucada, of course!) and somehow ship them back home.

Poor Imperio Serrano went down! Not a surprise, with their tiny budget and float trouble this year. A historical moment, though, because Imperio is one of the original Great Four escolas of Grupo Especial (the other three are Portela, Mangueira and Salgueiro). Back in the old days, only the Great Four ever won titles. BUT... at least Imperio's bateria completely rocks. Perfect ten's across the board!!! They also won the Estandarte de Ouro award for Best Bateria. So the best bateria in Rio will be parading in Grupo A next year.

Mocidade just barely scraped by and hung on to Grupo Especial by their fingernails. Whew!

And my grupo A escola, Sao Clemente, won Grupo A and will parade in Grupo Especial next year! Rah!

Estacio de Sa is going right back down to Grupo A. Just like Rocinha's up-and-down bounce last year. It's so hard for the Grupo A escolas to scale things up to Especial level when they get their one chance. They have to ramp up everything, immediately, and they never have the financial resources of the long-time Especial escolas.

Here's the full list. I noticed a stunning correspondence with each escola's reported budget this year (numbers from O Globo, 18 february 2007), so I added the budget after each escola's name. Each escola was guaranteed 2.9 million reais this year (300,000 from the city of Rio, and the rest from Liesa's ticket sales and tv deals). Beyond that they're on their own.

2007 Grupo Especial results:
1. Beija-Flor (budget this year: 7 million reais!, more than half from their bicheiro Anisio)
2. Grande Rio (budget 4.9 million, including 2.5 from Duque de Caixas & some from their bicheiro Jaider Soares)
3. Mangueira (5 million)
4. Unidos da Tijuca (5 million)
5. Viradouro (6.5 million, including a small deal with the Brazilian Olympic Committee to include an Olympics float)
6. Vila Isabel (4 million, with several corporate sponsorships)
7. Salgueiro (4 million)
8. Portela (4.1 million; 1.8 from the Ministry of Sports for their Pan-Am Games theme this year)
9. Imperatriz (4 million; an undisclosed chunk from the Norwegian fishing ministry for the codfish theme this year)
10. Porto da Pedra (3.5 million)
11. Mocidade (3.25 million)
12. Imperio Serrano (demoted to Grupo A) (3.5 million)
13. Estacio de Sa (demoted to Grupo A) (3.8 million)

There's an almost perfect correspondence between budget and final placing. The outlier is Viradouro, which placed lower than its budget would predict. Viradouro's parade was simply fantastic, and until I saw the next day's parades, I was sure they'd win. But some judges didn't take to the unique design concepts of Viradouro's eccentric, brilliant float designer; and the bateria float, while a huge crowd-pleaser, caused a big bobble in parade flow.

Grupo A results:
1. Sao Clemente (promoted to Grupo Especial)
2. Caprichosos (which was knocked out of Grupo Especial last year)
3. Santa Cruz
4. Uniao de Ilha
5. Imperio de Tijuca
6. Renascer
7. Cubango
8. Rocinha
9. Tradicao
10. Arranco (demoted to Grupo B)

Waiting for Liesa

With Carnaval almost over my thoughts are automatically turning to packing up, heading home, starting my life back in the US. I still have a couple weeks here but need to plan my instrument purchases. A Fabiano pandeiro? A cavaquinho? Leave my caixa and repinique here, or ship them, or carry them? Buy a better repinique? I've gotta plan this out because travel home is going to be tricky, with my 2 alfaias, zabumba, suitcase of pandeiros, box of hammocks, backpack and laptop. Hmm. I better ship some stuff. I'll have a 9-hour layover in New York - lucky, because I also have a transfer from JFK to LaGuardia, which is going to be extra fun with the 2 alfaias and zabumba. I just put some feelers out to some old friends there; one who I hope can help me haul my drums across town; and one who I have lost touch with and would like to reconnect with. Hope it works out so that I can see them both, and get the drums across town too.

Strange to be thinking about New York. Time feels so short that I'm already getting nostalgic for Rio even though I am still here! Today, dancing in the wild, overheated Rio Maracatu parade along Ipanema beach, jumping in the surf afterwards with Pat with all my clothes on (Pat, intelligently, had worn a bikini under her clothes - I had not)... (oh, and, we didn't go in very far - the rip current was vicious, and just in the ten minutes while we were there, Rio's helicopter-rescue crew pulled 3 swimmers to safety right in front of us! - scooping them up in a giant net, like huge fish) Dancing more afterwards.... then a fantastic meal ... more time with friends... walking along the beach sidewalk in the lazy, happy end-of-Carnaval crowds... the warm air, the sound of the surf, all the street vendors, happy packs of Brazilians chattering all around us. I thought, I really do love this city. It's funny, a month ago I'd been feeling kind of Brazil'd out and restless. But now that I am in the last phase of my stay here, I don't want to leave.

I'm feeling a little disoriented at the realization that the escolas are DONE. It is done. It is over. Everything I've seen them working towards for the last four months... all those rehearsals, all the planning, the costume design, the months of float construction, the porta-bandeiras practicing their flag dance, the thousands of residents learning the lyrics, the bateria diligently going to three rehearsals every week. Jonas drilling the bateria over and over not to rush the 7-boom entrance. Nana making all those long bus rides out to Padre Miguel. Beija-Flor's diligent paraders working on their choreographies every Thursday; Mocidade's robot ala practicing their robot moves every Saturday. Mestre Gil of Sao Clemente working with that skeleton bateria back in December, trying to get the Friday rehearsals rolling. And the guy on my street who plays the samba-enredo cd every day all day at top volume, so that the whole neighborhood can learn all the songs (like it or not). It's all over. Till next year.

Now they are all just waiting for the results. My dear Imperio Serrano is hoping against hope not to go down; but they know it looks very bad. It's not that they did a bad parade; it's that everyone else did such a sensational parade. Every year the parades get better and better, and this year was spectacular. And poor Imperio had the float jinx this year - doubly dangerous since it costs points both in the float category and in parade flow. Last year it was Rocinha who had the float jinx, and they went down.

Beija-Flor, Mangueira, Vila, Viradouro, and Salgueiro are all hoping to win. Mocidade, the grand old escola fallen on hard times, is just trying to stay in Grupo Especial; Estacio, the new arrival from Grupo A, is hoping to prove it's a true Especial escola.

Liesa's formal results will not be in till tomorrow, but O Globo (the major tv/newspaper media network of Brazil) has announced the results for the Estandarte de Ouro awards. These are decided by O Globo's own team of judges. The Estandarte de Ouro awards have no formal effect on an escola's ranking but are quite prestigious.

Estandarte de Ouro 2007

Best Escola - Beija-Flor
Samba (song) - Beija-Flor
Bateria - Imperio Serrano (yay! despite the float jinx, the bateria still rocks.)
Enredo (theme) - Unidos da Tijuca (the theme was photography)
Puxador (singer) - Wantuir, Unidos da Tijuca
Mestre-Sala (flag-bearer's partner) - Rafael, Vila Isabel
Porta-bandeira (flag-bearer) - Lucinha Nobre, Unidos da Tijuca
Commissao de frente (opening dance act) - Mangueira
Personality - Sebastiao Molequinho, Imperio Serrano.
Revelation (best debut, basically) - Alessandra, Portela's new porta-bandeira
Male passista (dancer) - Ruanderson, Portela
Female passista - Danuza Regina, Salgueiro
Ala das baianas (baiana hoop-skirt dance wing) - Salgueiro
Ala (parade section) - Bacalhau do Batata (Imperatriz)

Best escola of Grupo A - Imperio da Tijuca
Best samba of Grupo A - Imperio da Tijuca

Tomorrow: Liesa's final results.

Grande Rio loses a float

The Salgueiro float crunch that I saw last night, and the hurried haphazard way the float handlers were dealing with it, knocking down phone lines without even noticing, was a sign of worse to come. Early this morning Grande Rio's first float was being hurriedly rolled down a side street when the top of the float hit some power lines. Onlookers yelled to the float handlers to stop, but they just kept on pushing. The power lines sparked and the float caught fire. Firefighters didn't arrive and the float was completely destroyed. It was a serious scare for the residents of the nearby buildings. (Nobody was hurt but several people would have been if rescuers hadn't raced in to pull people out.) Residents complain that "the street isn't getting any bigger, but the floats are".

It was after the parade, so it won't affect Grande Rio's score.

One resident said "The Carnaval show is just for gringos, and it's the poor who suffer."

Pictures from O Dia:

Outside the Sambodromo

whew.... been up every night past dawn for so many nights now.... Blocos all day, escolas all night.

The Sambodromo parades have been unforgettable. I couldn't even really afford tickets this year but went anyway.... blew the most of the rest of my budget on a setor 3 ticket for Sunday. (fabulous night, will post photos later) Monday night was tricky: I really wanted to see Beija-Flor and Grande Rio, but could only afford 200 reais. Tickets were going for 300 or higher. So I decided to go late, hoping the scalpers would drop their prices after the first couple escolas. I watched the first one, Porto da Pedra and the first bit of the second, Unidos da Tijuca, at home on my crappy tv - Tijuca's theme this year is photography, and I'd really wanted to see Tijuca's re-enactment of the famous photo of the poor girl in the Vietnam war running from a napalm attack. Spooky float. As soon as that float passed, I took off and jumped on the subway.

I LOVE riding the Rio subway on Carnaval night, because it is full of people in crazy escola fantasia outfits heading to the Sambodromo and everybody is buzzing with excitement and laughter. Whenever a crazy new costume came on board the whole subway car would applaud. Sometimes I wish I could just ride back and forth on the subway all night and just take pictures.

I rode in with some bodybuilders from Portela's sports parade, and some fire gods from Imperatriz's Norway-themed parade:




I exited the subway with a large crowd of happily drunk 7-foot-tall seahorses who were having some trouble walking up the steps to street level. First search point for scalped tickets: exit point of the Central metro station. There was somebody here selling Brahma camarote tickets! wow! But the prices were way above what I could pay. Turned out Unidos da Tijuca was still parading, only the second escola, and scalped tickets still full price... so I had to cool my heels.

I embarked on a huge, fascinating walk around the entire Sambodromo. The Sambodromo is mammoth, and surrounded by strange little alleys, and people always tell tourists to never, ever walk around outside the Sambodromo; so of course I wanted to do it. I walked....

.... past all the gorgeous floats lined up on the east side of the Sambodromo. They're so eerie when they're lined up here waiting, in the dark. (actually these pictures are from Mangueira's floats the night before, in the same spot - I didn't get my camera out here the second night - but you get the idea)



.... through hordes of people milling around in outrageous costumes and past literally hundreds of tiny little bars. People had set up full bars with little tent roofs, chairs and tables, and tiny battery-powered tv's to watch the parades. It's a whole street party outside the Sambodromo, all night long.

Fireworks started going off. That meant Salgueiro was starting.

I walked all the way to the start of the parade route at the very north end of the Sambodromo, where I found a whole row of little wooden bleachers set up facing the street that feeds the parade into the Sambodromo. The free seats! I'd always heard about the free seats! The free seats are for the locals (who can't afford full price tickets) to get a taste of the parades: the great floats scraping under the highway viaduct on their way into the Sambodromo, the huge parade sections of people in full costume walking slowly past. I squished my way up into free seats. I was the only tourist there and people gave me a few double-takes but let me squish right in. And I mean SQUISH. This is the tightest crowd I've ever been in! Absolutely jampacked like cordwood. Every now and then someone would need to leave, and it would get almost too tight to breathe as they painfully squished their way past. But despite the smush, everybody was in a good mood, happy and friendly, and the view was spectacular. We were right at street level with a super view of the floats and paraders. Almost as good as the real parade; the only thing missing was that the paraders weren't actually dancing yet and it was hard to hear the music. But I really enjoyed the free seats.

Until I felt the guy behind me try to lift my skirt up!!!! EW!!! I scooted out of there and to the next bleacher over and he actually followed me! I squeezed well into the crowd, thinking he wouldn't possibly be able to follow, but somehow he did, he got right behind me again, and he actually started groping me. I elbowed him and got out of there. He was kind of gross-looking, too - a grimy pot-bellied guy in a filthy t-shirt. Ick. He tried to follow me again but I just started walking, and there's almost nobody in the world who can keep up with me when I walk fast. I wasn't worried about him; I knew I could ditch him easily. So I left him in the dust, zipping my way through the endless fascinating foot traffic along the north side of the Sambodromo.

I was, of course, wearing a silver tiara. I'd bought it for 5 reais on the street the night before. It has a cheesy little battery-powered light in front that flashes different colors, and it looks just FABULOUS. I bought it for bloco parades, in theory (you really have to have a silly hat of some kind in a bloco parade), because I am always stumbling across a bloco parade. But in truth I have found that I just really like wearing a little tiara all the time, just because it's so nice to have to say every now and then "Wait a minute, I have to adjust my tiara."

So as I was zooming along the dark Avenida across the north end of the Sambodromo, I guess I must have stood out - certainly the only gringa there, pale and tall, flying along in the dark, and wearing a flashing tiara. Every beer vendor that I passed had something to say about it. "Rainha!" (queen) "Rainha, you must need a beer!" "Princesa, a fresh cold Skol for you!" "Look, it's Princess Di! She's still alive! Princess Di, don't you want a beer?"

The beer guys were fun. And the grimy guy had disappeared. Eventually I found a footbridge that took me up and over the assembling Portela parade to the Sambodromo's long west side. From the footbridge I had an incredible view of Portela's sports-themed parade - floats lined up on the left and alas on the right. The ala on the right is all dressed as soccer balls, basketballs, etc.:



Here was that same ala during the parade later:


Security guards shooed everybody along the walkway, so I couldn't stay there, and I headed on down the west side. It's another world going down the west side of the Sambodromo - a warren of tiny little dark alleys. You'd never know you were near the biggest show on earth, except you can distantly hear the music, and there's a faint glow in the sky from the lights; and every now and then there is a little gap in buildings, where the lights are suddenly brilliant white, and you can suddenly see glimpses of floats regally passing by like giant ships. At each of these gaps was a little clump of locals watching raptly.

I was walking through these little dark alleys when, very suddenly, I turned a corner and there right in front of me was a huge line of those enormous, amazing, impossible floats, right in front of me, all crammed up behind one another in a tiny little street by a gas station. I was at the exit point of the floats from the Sambodromo. There was a lot of shouting and commotion, and a team of guys running around. The float in front, some kind of enormous magical tree, was too wide to squeeze past the gas station, and all the guys were trying to break pieces off the sides to let it squeeze past. They had a little forklift that they were driving into the side of the float, trying to crack pieces off of it. (Escolas get fined heavily if they block the exit path from the Sambodromo, since that can cause the next escola to get stuck on the parade route and go over the time limit.)

While I was watching, a branch came tumbling off the other side, unnoticed by all the guys, and crashed down onto a set of phone lines. Another little clump of locals was watching the show from the safety of the gas station, as pieces of the float came flying down.

Here's what it had looked like during the parade:


Here's what I met in the dark alley:


Look on the right side - there's a folklife that is pushing up on one of the branches, trying to crack it off.



I darted through, along with some other people, to the relative safety of a small herd of elephants just behind. It is surreal beyond belief to be walking through the grimy back alleys of Rio and suddenly be walking through a herd of peaceful, regal elephants.


Kept walking. I had reached the south end of the Sambodromo. I walked past lines of people watching the floats exit. There were several bars here and people just hanging out watching the floats.


Past weary beer sellers and their sleeping kids.


Past piles of discarded costumes.


A pair of enterprising guys had figured out a way to sell beer over the fence to thirsty paraders coming off the parade route:



They spotted me!


Past a huge line of eager cabs that was scooping up tired paraders.


Eventually I worked my way around to the east side, to Setor 11, the sector with the best view of the bateria. (From Setor 11, you can look right down on them in the second recuo.) Salgueiro had just finished. Third escola of the night over. I found a scalper who let me bargain him down to 200 reais. Bingo! I was in. I'll write later about Setor 11.

Turns out Salgueiro was one of the very best parades of the weekend - the only parade I missed completely. But I'm not sorry I missed it, because the walk around the Sambodromo was one of the best things I've done here.

Sunday Carnaval: Banga and Sambodromo #1

wow.... just got in from a hell of a day.... I just staggered out of bed in time to dash to the Banga parade. So, so fun.... Played third-surdo again. We got a huge crowd again, so huge we couldn't really parade very much. An hour into the parade and we'd only moved about three blocks. And it was HOT today and we were in full sun... I was totally exhausting at the end. For some reason the first and second surdos were kind of obliviously pushing the tempo. A LOT. It got a little maddening - and definitely got hard to play! I guess people were just excited because it was Carnaval. So after four hours in the sun and crushing crowd, playing hard, carrying a surdo, and trying to hold tempo the whole time.... man... tired.

But it was great. My Banga. It was so great. Such a huge happy crowd.

No rest for the weary. Walked a mile down the road to the first bus route and hopped straight on a bus downtown to the Sambodromo.

And bang, there I was again in that mystical world, that great dark avenue outside the Sambodromo, thousands of people rushing in all directions carrying unbelievable costumes. People pouring out of the Central subway stop laden with tridents and enormous blue bubbles and hoop skirts. And ranked in a great column stretching away from me, all the floats of Mangueira, Mocidade, and Vila Isabel. Great huge unbelievable moveable sculptures all lined up, one after the other, stretching down the road as far as I could see. I knew that in the other direction, on the other side of the Sambodromo, must be the floats of the other three escolas. Once again I was stunned that they do this every year... they spend six months making these magnificent, million-dollar floats, just for one night. One hour and twenty minutes. One parade.

Well, okay, the floats aren't exactly a million dollars apiece. But the full set of six or seven floats for one parade is indeed about a million US dollars. I read a breakdown of escola finances yesterday, and the main lesson I'd drawn from that is: You need money to win Grupo Especial! The poorer escolas don't really have a chance; they are just fighting to stay IN Grupo Especial, but they don't have a realistic shot at winning. It takes money to built elaborate floats; to hire the best float designer (like Viradouro did this year), and to make the most elaborate costumes. The government provides a good pack of funding to all Grupo Especial escolas (and some to the lower groups as well), but standards have escalated, and now escolas need to come up with twice that amount to have a realistic shot of winning.

Well anyway - turns out that my two escolas, Imperio Serrano and Mocidade, are among the poorest! They have barely half the budget of the rich escolas. Neither has a bicheiro (like Beija-Flor, which has more than twice the budget of either Imperio or Mocidade) and neither has been able to arrange much corporate sponsorship (like Grande Rio, Vila Isabel, and Viradouro), which increasingly is the new way that escolas get their money. So I'm worried for both of them. Two escolas will "go down" this year - be knocked down to Grupo A, out of Grupo Especial. Could it be my two???

Well, no shame in "going down". Especially if you've got a great bateria, and a loyal community, and it's just for lack of money. No shame at all in being in the company of good escolas like Sao Clemente and Uniao da Ilha.

So off I went to the Sambodromo tonight.

A lot of people get their fill of the Sambodromo in one visit. As one friend put it, "Once you've seen eight hundred people dressed up as a pineapple, you don't really need to see it again." Well, I seem to be a Sambodromo junkie. I saw eight hundred people dressed up as a pineapple last year and I want to see it again! I want to see eight hundred people dressed up as a pineapple tonight, and tomorrow night, and next weekend too! It's just so unbelievable; I can't get my fill of it.

Well, some impressions:

Imperio Serrano: The bateria was absolutely fabulous. Still one of my very favorite baterias! But I've got to admit, the costumes seemed a little dull and repetitive. (I noticed the same thing last year - guess Imperio's costume designer is not to my taste. I like a little more variety.) And the floats, though really lovely, did indeed look a little smaller, a little less luxurious and outrageous than those of the rich escolas. But they were really lovely, they WERE!
I missed one detail that made the news: The sexy Queen of the Bateria, as part of her glitter-and-rhinestone-bikini outfit, had her genitalia covered by a video iPod that was showing videos related of Albert Einstein. Well, OF COURSE she had her genitalia covered by a video iPod showing Albert Einstein - what ELSE would she cover her genitalia with?? Obviously!
To my alarm, Imperio had a lot of problems with their floats. This is often the death blow for an escola that's on the edge, since they'll lose points both for floats and for parade flow. Float after float got stuck at the turn coming into the Sambodromo... one nicked a construction crane on the way in and a giant angel's arm fell off... a beautiful spinning gold globe lost power... and some huge seahorses got a bit unruly. Damn. I am worried for my Imperio.

Mocidade - Oh, it made me so happy to see the Mocidade bateria in action! I knew everyone there - knew all their faces. I saw all my favorite directors. There was Jonas at the front, dancing away. I couldn't see Bruno - he's too little - but he was mic'd, and every time I heard a repique call, I thought "That's Bruno!" It wasn't an anonymous repique any more; it was someone I know! It made me so happy to be able to see them play after watching them prepare for this for all these months.
Mocidade had some really beautiful floats and costumes this year. Not quite up the luxurious standards of the big boys (the Mangeira/Viradouro league) but really beautiful. I think they'll pull in safely ahead of Imperio and Estacio.

Viradouro - All right. They blew me away. They blew everyone away. A great theme - "Games" - allowed them to do a wonderful set of really clever, funny, outrageous ideas - giant dominos, sets of cards running around, mobile soccer fields, jigsaw puzzles forming and re-forming, a huge "Where's Wally" float (I never could find Wally). Every costume fascinating. Every float fantastic (except one that was supposed to look like it was upsidedown - I guess it was a joke - but it was just dull). Beautiful choreographies, fluid and magical. My favorite was a whole ala that was dressed as a soccer field, except the soccer field was on the tops of their heads. Most people had green grass on the tops of their heads, but a few people had soccer players on their heads, and one guy had the soccer ball on his head. And they'd all run around, the soccer players sort of bumping into the ball guy and the ball guy running around. It was just so cute!
Kickass bateria. And YES, the bateria marched right up onto a float, right in front of me, I saw the historic moment! And it worked!
Viradouro is clearly the one to beat. They were the odds-on favorite going on - hot bateria, the best float designer in Rio, formidable will and tradition, and a pile of money. They were the only one that had the crowd chanting "E Campeao! E Campeao!" (you're the champion, you're the champion). There's nothing like hearing the Sambodromo crowd start that chant.... they don't do it very often, and it means you're seeing something truly spectacular.

Mangueira was pretty hot too. But it's a mark of how great Viradouro was that I can remember every Viradouro float distinctly but am having trouble remembering Mangueira's, and Estacio's too, though I do remember Estacio had a really, really impressive giant lion that could turn its head and roar.

One news item about Mangueira: the great singer Beth Carvalho was refused access to a Mangueira float tonight. She'd requested to be able to ride on a float, and they'd turned her request down because she'd asked too late, and all the float positions had already been allocated. Tonight she apparently just tried to climb on up onto the float, and was turned back. She did not parade, and she says her decades-long relationship with Mangueira is over.

Saturday Carnaval: Basic beach-and-Lapa

Saturday Carnaval: Just your basic beach-and-Lapa day. I haven't had a beach day in months, so headed down to Ipanema. Dodged bloco parades all the way there and all the way back....

The beach was luxurious. I just love that sun, and jumping in the cool clear water after lying in the sun....

I've decided I'm a Posto 7 kind of person. There is a nice mix of families, little kids, and surfers there. (The surfers because Posto 7 is close to the Arpoador, where there is often a nice point break). I had to wade up to Posto 9 to meet a friend and was pretty turned off by the crowd there. It's supposed to be the posh place on the beach, but it is mostly a bunch of rich 22-year-old posers standing around showing off for each other, it's hopelessly crowded, no surfers, and no little kids digging holes in the sand. What's a beach without little kids digging in the sand? Posto 7's also a little lower-class and Brazilian, Posto 9 more upper class and gringo-tourist. Yeah, posto 7's more my style.

After the beach, that evening I spent a lot of time wandering around Lapa last night with a friend, which was fun but we both tuckered ourselves out milling around, unsuccessfully trying to find cheap tickets and then unsuccessfully trying to find good free music.... we had a good time just wandering through the noisy Lapa street party, but never did find any good music. At 2am we almost went to the Sambodromo to check out the Grupo A parades. We trekked all the way to the Cinelandia metro station - and stood there transfixed by the eerie lunar landscape of the Cinelandia plaza at 2am after a day of bloco parades. Cinelandia is usually a classy plaza, a long stretch of cobblestones facing the regal Teatro Municipal. But tonight it looked like it had snowed eight inches of Skol beer cans and bright yellow Skol sixpack wrappers. And here & there, amid the Skol snowdrifts, were dark huddles of people sleeping on the sidewalks. Rows of them, just lying around in the open, like dead people. (not just Rio's regular homeless, but also whatever travellers can't afford the outrageous Carnaval prices for beds this weekend.) But no, they were just sleeping. It was peaceful, spooky and alarming all at the same time.

We scuttled out of there down to the Cinelandia subway station, waited for a train north to the Sambodromo.... and then a southbound train pulled in first. South! Toward bed! BED.... Well, suddenly I jumped on the southbound train, and my friend followed me without even the slightest resistance. I felt like I'd let down Rio a bit, reneged on the "But it's Carnaval!" spirit, but I was still sick; and I knew I had to play surdo in a four-hour parade the next day, and would be up all night at the Sambodromo too, so, south it was.

Word is, though, that Sao Clemente did very well and might win Grupo A this year! Uniao da Ilha also had a good parade and the news reports say it's a tossup between the two of them. (Though of course you never know what the judges will think.) Whoever wins will be elevated to Grupo Especial next year.

My friend Olivia ended up parading with Imperio da Tijuca; she'd had a gut-level love for their song all along. I'd barely even heard of Imperio da Tijuca before but maybe she was on to something, because the news reporters have also said that Imperio da Tijuca surprised everybody. Nobody was considering them at all but they had a very nice parade too.

So it was a lazy low-key Carnaval Saturday. I'm not feeling much like chasing all over Rio looking for bloco parades this year.... I'm just taking things as they come.

Friday Carnaval: Monobloco de novo

I haven't written any entries the last couple days because I got sick again - the same vicious stomach cramps that laid me low (and knocked me unconscious, once) last year. I still managed to get out to see Imperio Serrano's last rehearsal (frustratingly boring - only a tiny part of the bateria and by 1am they'd still not gotten around to playing the samba! - just diddling their way through a bunch of old songs) and Estacio de Sa (more fun, bigger bateria, and they were actually playing the samba). A pretty early evening, home by 2:30, but I crashed in bed afterwards and spent most of Friday curled up in bed with a fever and more of those gnawing stomach cramps. It wasn't bad - any time I got too fevery I'd go take another shower and then lie under the ceiling fan for a while. But I couldn't seem to stand up and eventually I missed Xuxa's happy hour and bloco parade - dang! I'd really wanted to go see him play!

Tottered out of bed eventually to go to Monobloco. I was hoping that by having spent all day in bed, I'd have enough energy to play a four-hour show that starts at midnight, but in the elevator down to the street I wasn't so sure - I was doubled over from the cramps and had a clanging headache. But I'd started on antibiotics that day and dosed myself silly with a triple dose of ibuprofen, antihistamines and decongestents, and that all seemed to help. An hour later I had my caixa on at Monobloco good to go. It was a GREAT show. The first chords and my energy came rushing back.

This time around, two weeks after my last frustrating show with them, this time, it was GOOD. The caixa felt GREAT. Every pattern felt solid and steady and sure, I knew all the calls, all the new breaks they'd added, all the new esquentas (thank god I'd made such an effort not to miss rehearsals).

The Fundicao was completely packed, floor to ceiling, with a huge happy crowd. We played all my favorite songs, all the songs I've been listening to for years on the two Monobloco cd's. I was so happy to be there actually playing in the band whose cd's I'd been singing along with for so long. I was IN THE BAND playing Que Beleza and Rap do Real, with Pedro Luis singing right behind me! hey! I was really happy.

Boy, it really is Carnaval....something in the air, in the energy....I left the Fundicao at 4:30 am, floating with energy and good cheer, on the 50-meter walk between the Fundicao Progresso and my bus stop, I was propositioned by about 10 guys. "Can I kiss you?" "You are very pretty, can I kiss you?" "Do you want to kiss?" "Would you like to kiss?" To my complete surprise my answers were "No" "No" "No" "OK" - and there I was making out with a complete random stranger on the Lapa streets. I left him behind eventually (he wanted my address, but I said nah, thanks, just this one kiss), got to my bus stop and got in a little van that was headed south. But there was a thick traffic jam and we were only moving about ten feet at a time. The window was open and a cute guy stuck his head in the window and started talking to me. He knew a little English and was so charming, I ended up making out with him too. (Hoping that whatever stomach bug I have is not contagious! But my theory is, whatever it is, it's endemic to Rio and these guys are already immune to it.) Then his brother pushed him aside and wanted a kiss too, but I told him "I like to wait at least 5 minutes between men" and he said "Five minutes? Five minutes! OK! Where's a watch! Does someone have a watch? In five minutes you will kiss me!"

Unfortunately for him, the traffic jam cleared up four minutes later and I was headed south to Flamengo, wondering what sort of Carnaval spirit has gotten into me. I didn't used to be the sort of girl who would do that sort of thing. And certainly not one who would expose innocent strangers to a potential stomach bug. What's happened to me?

But - all together now - the universal rallying cry - the infinite excuse -

"BUT IT'S CARNAVAL!!!!"

What happened to Banga

I limited my Recifie trip to just 5 days specifically so I would not miss the last rehearsals of my blocos, Bangalafumenga and Monobloco. Especially Banga's Tuesday rehearsal. Though Monobloco has been great for my caixa playing, Banga is still my favorite group. Not just because I like their repertoire and musicality more (Banga now has a Grammy-winning songwriter, Imperio Serrano's best surdo players, and a growing contingent of pros who have left Monobloco in favor of Banga. Plus they just have a great repertoire!) But mostly because Banga has been so kind to me. Monobloco always feels a little tense; students there always seem a little bit nervous. But in Banga, even though it holds to just as high a standard as Monobloco, the players are happy. The leaders and my fellow surdo players always greet me with big smiles and hugs. It feels like a family.

I have been especially grateful to caixa leader Andre Moreno and his wife Ursula, who I have been renting studio space from for several months. They have been renovating a beautiful little studio in Botafogo, Casulo Artes Musicais, which has become my major hang-out spot. (26 Rua das Palmeiras, if you're looking for a nice little practice space) Andre always sets up the studio for me with a little assortment of the drums and baquetas that he knows I'll need, and Ursula always brings me glasses of water when I arrive at the studio after the long hot walk from my apartment. And I just started a series of private lessons with Andre that has been really wonderful. He's an amazing snare player. He also has a particularly beautiful samba ride that I've never seen anyone else play.

By the way, it is Andre who you can hear yelling "CALMA!" on my mp3 recording of the Banga esquenta. He is an excellent caixa leader, a softspoken guy, always calm and encouraging.

So anyway, I caught a flight early Tuesday morning from Recife back to Rio, just to catch Banga's last rehearsal. I'd been a little sad to find out that Banga had decided to do a parade in Sao Goncalo during my Recife weekend. This hadn't been on their schedule originally, so I missed the parade. Well, here's what happened at the parade. (translation from O Globo's online bloco blog) This is an eyewitness account by a bateria member.

"The Bloco of Bangalafumenga did a marvelous parade this Saturday in the streets of Sao Goncalo. Those on top of the sound car estimated the crowd at between 5 and 10,000 people. We even had the surprise visit from Vantuil, the singer for Unidos da Tijuca, who is from Sao Goncalo and spend much of his career in Porto da Pedra [Sao Goncalo's excellent escola de samba]. However, after about two hours of the parade, a barbaric incident occurred, started by more than 20 security guards who had been hired by the Espaco Cultural Porto da Pedra (where Bangalafumenga has been performing shows every week since November, for crowds averaging 3000 people).

[...] There were only about 200 meters left before the end of the parade, and the mestres were preparing the bateria and the musicians on the sound car to play "Sao Gonca", which was going to close the whole event with a bang, paying tribute to the Sao Goncalo community. Just then an incident occurred right in front of the bateria.

The security guards began beating a parader. I don't know exactly why. The mestre of the bateria [this would have been my friend Dudu - KH] immediately interrupted the samba. A woman, who we found out afterwards was 23 years old and had recently become a mother, tried to defend the man who was being attacked, and the security guards began attacking her as well.

Andre Moreno, mestre of the caixas [snare drums] of Bangalafumenga and one of the long-time members of the group, impulsively ran to the woman's defense. She was being attacked, in a shameful way, right in front of him. The same security guards who were attacking the young mother (who, afterwards, registered a complaint at the police station) turned against Moreno and began beating him.

Then an even more unbelievable thing happened: The bateria members who were in the front rows of the bateria all ran to protect Moreno, but all, ALL the security guards who were there, without exception, blocked the drummers in a very aggressive manner. At least two of them displayed their guns in a menacing manner. One even pointed his weapon in the face of one of the bateria members. Everyone began talking and screaming that Moreno was a member of the bateria, but the only response from the security men was of the type "Do you want a beating too? Do you want to die?"

At least three members of the bateria were attacked by security members during this attempt to reach Moreno. And what is worse: several security men were armed, and there was not a single policeman within view.

The Sao Goncalo fans of Banga who saw this scene, including several women, ran to defend Moreno and were similarly attacked. One girl in the bateria told me that she saw a well-known fan of ours, someone who is always present at our shows, being backed up against a wall and menaced in a threatening way by a security guard who was twice her size.

Another fan, a teenager, was dragged by force by the security guards inside a building where, we think, he was similarly beaten. The next moments were terrifying. Several women in the bateria, one of them pregnant, panicked and began to cry histerically, because Moreno had vanished.

Several members of the bateria (where Moreno is much beloved) became desperate,thinking that the security guards might have taken him to some place to "finish the job." But apparently, Moreno had tried to flee from the security men through the crowd, but was chased and beaten badly. One member of the bateria who finally succeeded in reaching him saw a security guard with Moreno in a choke hold, and when the bateria member finally reached him, Moreno was lying on the ground unconscious.

Ursula, Moreno's wife, who had tried to run after him to defend him, was thrown violently to the ground by a security guard.

In the end, Moreno broke his thumb and will not be able to play for 20 days, as well as having bruises all over his body, especially on the neck. At least half a dozen members of the bateria, including women, were attacked by security guards. Several fans were also attacked and threatened, including a 50-year-old mother of one fan. And Banga, which has always aimed at creating peace through music, has been traumatized by this event, as has the community of Sao Goncalo, which has a veritable legion of fans of Banga.

It's enough just to see their stories on Orkut [an online discussion forum very popular in Brazil], in the online communities of Bangalafumenga and Banga's shows in the Porto da Pedra hall. More than one fan has said that the arrival of Banga in Sao Goncalo was a landmark for the culture of that city. Sao Goncalo has been impoverished in cultural attractions, and now they fear that Banga will never return.

As for the cowardly "security", we know that most of them work regularly for Porto da Pedra's hall, but many of them were contracted especially [by Porto da Pedra staff] for this parade.

****** [end of blog transcription]

I didn't know any of this had happened. I just showed up at Banga rehearsal and noticed the atmosphere seemed a little weird, and then I saw Andre had a black eye and had a cast on his right arm. I almost went running up to ask him cheerfully what had happened, thinking it would be some American-type accident like "I fell off my bike", but then I remembered that I am in Rio, and that Rio-type accidents can be a different sort of thing. So I decided to wait till after rehearsal to talk to him.

At the mid-rehearsal break, Andre talked to the whole band. He had seemed fine throughout rehearsal, but his voice started to waver as he talked; he was obviously still shaken by the whole thing. And he seemed to feel that he was the one who needed to apologize! For having left the bateria and put himself in a dangerous situation that frightened everybody. He kept saying "I should never have left the bateria. I should have stayed with you all." He also said, "The thing that made me lose control was that I saw that they were beating up people who had Banga t-shirts on. Our fans. I saw that and I just lost my head." Over and over he promised to not leave the bateria if something like that happens again.

I talked to him a little bit afterwards - since I still had no idea what he'd been apologizing about or what had happened. He gave me a very quiet, halting summary of the whole thing (leaving out the part about how he'd been beaten unconscious by 15 security guards! He just said he'd gotten in a fight during the parade). He assured me his hand will be fine in a few weeks.

The next night I returned to Banga's Wednesday rehearsal, wanting to put in a little more time with them. This time they stopped rehearsal a half hour early to have an INTENSE group discussion about the whole thing. Apparently, they had also had a show on Sunday, the day after the parade, and at that show, the bateria members were so nervous that when one guy in the crowd started throwing beer cans at the group, one of the tamborim players lost his temper and did - something, I'm not sure what. Man, was this ever a challenge for my Portuguese, listening to this Banga discussion. People were REALLY upset and had ten thousand opinions and thoughts and comments, chattering rapidly and excitedly, sometimes shouting over each other, 5 or 6 people at once. My impression of the the whole discussion was along the lines of:

"I just really really want to apologize for - " (this was the tamborim kid)
"But the thing is, I don't know a SINGLE security guard, NOT ONE, who isn't a bandit - "
"We should stop the music whenever -"
"We should never stop the music. Unless for something really serious. Stopping makes things worse -"
"It's not your fault -"
"I feel like -"
" - gotta apologize -"
" - those crazy morons - "
" - throwing beer cans and not - "
" - you should have talked to us more -"
" - we can't EVER play any soccer songs, those'll always cause fights - "
" - and there I was tuning about 500 surdos all by myself and I couldn't also - "
" - needed to RUN like that, my god -"
" - we should have - "
" - we shouldn't have -"
" - those security guards, this is what is happening to Rio - "
" - calm down, CALM DOWN, people! Let him talk!"

Rodrigo Maranhao was getting visibly choked up over it, and he made a really sweet speech about how, with every bad thing that has ever happened to him in his life, no matter how bad, has always had some good thing that came out of it. ("Even if it is a little tiny good thing, there is always some good thing.") He insisted: we will find something good out of this, we will learn from it. His impassioned recommendation in the end was: if the bateria gets into trouble again "We have to close ranks." Everybody in the bateria has to close ranks and group together and stay together. "We are a family, we have to protect each other, we are a family," he kept saying.

There was lots of ranting about the security guards and about the level of violence in Rio today. "When the people who are supposed to protect you start attacking you, what can you do then?"

And everybody is virtually burning with determination now to have a FABULOUS parade on Carnaval Sunday.

Even though it was a very difficult discussion for me to follow, I was really glad I was there. I am not sure whether I'm glad or sorry that I missed the parade, but I'm glad I was there for the discussion. I could feel people's intense determination that Banga will continue to play, and continue to do parades, EXCELLENT parades, and that Banga will continue to be a family and will continue to grow and thrive. I told Rodrigo afterwards, clumsily, that thought I hadn't been able to understand the whole discussion, I was glad he had spoken up the way he did. As an afterthought I said "Banga really is my family here, you know. because I don't have anyone else here. Here in Brazil." He gave me an intense look - I don't think he has ever known why I am here, or that I am here alone - and kissed me on the top of my head. I gave him a hug goodbye, and Andre too, and Ursula, and Dudu. They all asked "Will you come to the parade on Sunday?" and I said "Claro", of course.

The parade will start at the Praca Sao Salvador, in Jardim Botanico, Carnaval Sunday, around 4pm. (I think this is the little plaza on Rua Pacheco Leao, on the north side of the Botanical Garden.) And it will be WONDERFUL.

Why I am not parading in the Sambodromo

People have started to ask me "Why aren't you parading in the Sambodromo?" as if any musician's sole desire when in Rio should be to parade in the Sambodromo. That's never been my goal - not for this year, anyway. It'll be fun someday, and someday I'll do it; maybe when I return 2 years from now. But right now, I am here to learn, and parading in the Sambodromo, turns out, is not the best way to learn. Parading in the Sambodromo requires you to do almost nothing else. You can't miss a single rehearsal if you want to parade in a Grupo Especial escola - if, like me, you are new here, don't have escola connections yet and are not from the community. It means, three or four evenings a week, plus travel time (up to 2.5 hours one way.). And all that time you are only playing 1 song on 1 instrument.

And even if you do make all the rehearsals, you're still not guaranteed a spot. It's very political. The president of one of my escolas, Sao Clemente, over-ruled the mestre last week and gave away most of the bateria spots to a set of his friends who have never been to any rehearsals. So I won't be parading with them, and neither will my friend Olivia, who's been playing with them for months. She just laughs about it. "This kind of thing happens all the time... I can't even tell you how many times, how many YEARS, my mother has worked all year in a bateria and then not gotten to parade and we always go through this whole trauma about it, but you know, playing in the rehearsals is actually the best part anyway. And you know what is funny, finally it has worked to her favor - Grande Rio just gave her a bateria costume for this year, because she has connections there, even though she's missed all the rehearsals! And she missed all the rehearsals because she was playing in Sao Clemente! But Sao Clemente wouldn't give her a costume because the president gave them all away to his friends! Isn't it funny? You just have to laugh."

She's right; the rehearsals are the best part. Just by attending a few rehearsals, semi-regularly, you learn a LOT. And those rehearsals are such intense, wonderful fun. I think of those marvelous times I had with Mocidade, leaping around in the dark street and on the ramshackle stage in the quadra hall. And of how much it changed my caixa playing! But I don't need to be in the parade with them... I made that decision long ago, in January, when I decided to go to Banga rehearsals instead. But you bet I will be cheering from the stands when they go by.

In the end, I chose the blocos instead of the escolas. Almost every time I had 2 rehearsals scheduled on the same night for a bloco and an escola, I'd go to the bloco. And this happened every single Friday (Monobloco vs Sao Clemente), Sunday (Mocidade vs Banga), Tuesday (Banga vs Sao Clemente) and Wednesday (Banga vs Monobloco vs Mocidade). Why blocos? Because the blocos (the good ones) are more challenging for me - much more creative, and with a much more diverse repertoire. I learn more with the blocos. Simple as that. For all that Mocidade did for my caixa playing, Monobloco has done more. In Monobloco, I play 5 different caixa patterns, including Mocidade's; in Mocidade, I only play the Mocidade pattern. And the reason I was able to play third surdo so easily in Mocidade was entirely because of what I'd learned from Banga.

So, I AM parading in Carnaval with my wonderful blocos Banga and Monobloco! They both have marvelous parades coming up - Banga this Sunday afternoon (4pm) starting at the north end of the Rua Jardim Botanico, and Monobloco the Sunday the week after Carnaval at 10am on Copacabana beach. Come see them!

Especially, please come see the Banga parade. The next post will be about what happened to Banga this last weekend. They had something nasty happen. Please come to the parade & show your support. (Plus, it'll be a really great parade. Last year most people said it was the best parade they'd been to, and, as an extra incentive, the newspaper reviews afterward commented on the "unusual profusion of beautiful women.")

Night of the Non-Silent Drums

The highlight of my whole Recife/Olinda stay was my very last night. My little group of San Francisco Bay Area friends, plus Derek of the Lions from Portland (we had two Dereks - Bay Area Derek, and Lions Derek) had been in Recife rehearsing with Jorge Martins' group. We came home past 10pm. It had already been a really fun evening and I thought that was the end of my lovely Recife trip, and was planning to go home and pack up my two beautiful alfaias, but we ran smack into the Olinda's festival of the Night of the Silent Drums.

Recife and Olinda are always competing for who has the best Carnaval. There's a traditional night-of-the-silent-drums event in Recife, involving a parade of several maracatu groups to a church, and then a silent ceremony, and then all the drums playing at midnight. Well, little Olinda decided to start a night-of-the-silent-drums parade of its own, and to have it a week earlier, the Monday before Carnaval. They've only been doing it for three years. A Recife native told us dismissively "Oh, the Olinda thing is just for tourists; it's not worth seeing." Well, It IS worth seeing, we discovered, because it turns out whenever you get 12 genuine maracatu groups together for a parade, free on the street and open to everybody, it immediately turns into something real! Never mind if it is only three years old; it was huge fun. Olinda had scheduled a ton of different maracatu groups for this parade, even hired a separate plush charter bus for each group. The groups varied from the classic, well-rehearsed and magnificent (Leao Coroado, Nacao Pernambuco, and several others) to the little local blocos. The whole range of the community.

They all paraded right through town, and each one stopped and did a show at the Four Corners (right outside the window of my pousada!!!):


and then one at a time they all marched up to the Olinda's famous church. Each group did a full classic maracatu parade - meaning, a royal procession, with soldiers and torch-bearers in front, the great flag of the group, priestesses with magical little doll deities, king and queen, a parasol-bearer protecting the king and queen, a bevy of dancers, and then the band. Each group then did a short show (their one or two best songs) at the church, then the flag was lovingly propped at the church doors, and each king and queen ceremonially positioned themselves on the church steps. Then the next group would come up.

By the end of the procession the whole front of the church was completely hidden behind flags and parasols, and there were a whole herd of glittering kings and queens clustered by the doors.






Priestess dancing with the magical little doll:


View of the little church. There is a maracatu group (Nacao Pernambuco) waiting in the foreground.


A king and queen, with swords:


I squeezed up to the front of the church. Oh, it was SO fun watching each little group come up the hill, flag flying, giant parasols bouncing, the king and queen strutting along, and doing their best show! You know how it is - a little local event might SEEM little, but then each group realizes the other groups are there, and realizes there is an audience watching, and starts feeling competitive, and wants to do its best, and the whole thing starts heating up.





Leao Coroado was its usual powerful, impressive self. But the big surprise for me was Nacao Pernambuco. They had powerful drummers, a radiant king and queen, the best abe dancers, and they took absolute top prize for the most hypnotic dancing parasols. They had two enormous parasols that seemed like giant dancing space-alien jellyfish. I was mesmerized. I could not take my eyes off those giant dancing space jellyfish. It suddenly became clear to me that my life will not be complete until I have a giant dancing parasol of my own, preferably following me around full-time, with ostrich plumes bobbing, and a complete maracatu band in its wake. (I am posting a movie) It was like a revelation. How have I never noticed before that my life has been ENTIRELY lacking a giant dancing parasol?




Nacao Pernambuco also had some amazing shekere girls. I'll try to post a movie of that too.

The "silent drums" were not silent at all for most of this event, but eventually, once all 12 groups were there, the drummers all stopped playing and some sort of little ceremony took place, which I couldn't see or hear at all. But, the drums didn't stay silent for long. As soon as the ceremony was over, every group immediately started playing again.

The post-parade part was almost as fun. The ceremony was abruptly over and the groups started parading in all different directions, back toward the buses that had brought them, or toward their home neighborhood, or who knows where - there were parasols and flags bouncing in all directions and groups playing completely different things, funk and maracatu and rural-maracatu, at all different tempos, marching in all different directions. Kings and queens and giant jellyfish everywhere. Each group was more or less together, but they were each careering around in each others' paths, like big sailing ships tacking this way and that in a tiny harbor, nearly colliding now and then, then veering slowly away from each other. Twelve separate parties full of glittering royalty and half-drunken drummers. "This is complete fucking chaos!" yelled Lions Derek to me, beaming happily. We were trapped in a slow stampede of TWELVE MARACATU GROUPS! It was like the running of the bulls (second night in a row!), but in slow motion, and much noisier. Heaven!

The crowd slowly dissipated as the groups slowly spread further and further apart. We ended up following Nininho's group down one street to a sort of open cobblestoned plaza. Every now and then a huge charter bus, packed full of one of the maracatu groups, would nose into the plaze and carefully inch its way around the tight corner. Nininho's drummers would just keep on playing, grudgingly stepping over one inch at a time for the enormous bus, which was practically nudging them out of the way like an incredibly patient elephant trying to get through a herd of puppies. A couple buses went by and then, as I listened to Nininho's group, a sensation of peculiar sonic discomfort began to develop. Something funny was happening to the beat. I couldn't pinpoint what it was till one of the other maracatu groups suddenly came tromping around the corner - they were playing at top volume at a totally different tempo than Nininho's group, and it was causing such immense sonic dissonance for me (I was standing equidistant between both groups) that I felt like I was going to tip over from dizziness. Lions Derek, several yards away and also caught between both groups, wheeled around with a wide-eyed look of disbelief on his face and mouthed "Complete CHAOS!"

Night of the Non-Silent Drums. This was my best night in weeks.

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.

And now some happier kids

Well, for a change of pace, how about let's focus on some happy kids! My 5 days in Recife/Olinda was terrific fun, and turned out to be perfect timing. More details later but I thought I would first post some of the photos I have of the maracatu kids, to help erase any mental images from the last sad story that I posted.

The maracatu groups, even more than the samba baterias of Rio, seem to incorporate kids of all ages right into the bateria. We saw lots and lots of excellent young teenage drummers, and almost every group had a clump of teeny-tiny kids in the very front row playing teeny-tiny alfaias. And they were really playing them, not just messing around. Lots of these little kids had learned the full repertoire and were doing the full parade.

The biggest alfaia I saw: (Estrela Brilhante)


And the two smallest: (also Estrela Brilhante)



... and look how the little kids are watching the mestre as attentively as any adult drummer! (more attentively than some adults, actually)

An assortment of other tiny drummers:



This kid was too small to hold his group's beautiful flag, but he really wanted to pose with it for me. I really like this picture.


Here he was later during the parade! He was a torch-bearer.


I took a lot of maracatu movies. Usually I'd start filming, and after a few minutes I'd realize there was a small cluster of kids behind me, on tiptoe or clambering up on some fence or tree trunk behind me, to get a better look at the tiny screen of my camera. They know about digital cameras and they love to watch the little screen and see what I'm filming. They always were thrilled if I turned around and took a couple pictures of them:






Here's Matt (one of my "Bay Area drummers") with a pack of Estrela Brilhante kids. Sorry, there was beer on the lens.


And another pack of kids nearby. (More Estrela Brilhante kids)


That group of boys with Matt, in Estrela Brilhante's home neighborhood, had seemed especially rambunctious till I started asking their names, and they immediately became so shyly polite that I think I could detect the mark of some careful parenting about how to greet strangers. They very politely introduced themselves separately, one at a time, all waiting their turn, and occasionally with hushed little consultations about who should introduce two younger kids who seemed too shy to talk ; then asked my name and where I was from. When I said "Estados Unidos" there was a shy little pause and then one boy very carefully announced "Muito prazer em conhece-la!" (I am very pleased to meet you, ma'am!) and held out his hand for me to shake it - a very formal thing for a young Brazilian kid to do. I shook his hand and said "Muito prazer em conhece-lo, tambem!" (I am very pleased to meet you too, sir!) and then they all seemed delighted that the formal greeting had actually worked, and then every one of them wanted to shake hands and go through the same exchange. They were so cute! I felt like a foreign dignitary.

Another Rio horror story

Fresh back in Rio from Recife today.... I picked up a Rio news magazine in the airport, which was all about another sickening death of yet another innocent little 6-year-old boy at the hands of 16- and 17-year-old Rio criminals. This sort of thing seems to happen all the time here. The little 5- and 6-year-old kids seem especially likely to suffer. They're old enough that they might be a bit separated from their parents - sitting in a different car seat, for example - but are so young that they aren't alert enough or quick enough to recognize a crime in progress and dash out of harm's way.

This was a nasty one. Stop reading here if you have a weak stomach, or if you have a 6-year-old of your own.

It started as a perfectly ordinary carjacking, which happens dozens of times a day in Rio. A mother, the 6-year-old boy, 13-year-old sister, and a family friend were all in a car. Bandits charged at the car with guns and ordered everybody out. The mother, sister and friend jumped out, but the 6-year-old was not quite quick enough. He got halfway out of the back seat - his mom tried to help him - he got tangled in the seatbelt - and the bandits slammed the door and took off at top speed, dragging the poor little kid, who was hanging from his waist from the seatbelt, outside the car, hanging by the back wheel.

The poor mother and sister saw him being dragged away, and screamed, but the car wouldn't stop.

The thieves dragged the kid 7 kilometers, through 4 neighborhoods. Past bars where dozens of people watched in shock, at first thinking there was some kind of doll or clothing attached to the car; then everybody noticing the bloody trail it was leaving, and everybody screaming, and running after the car. But the car wouldn't stop. A motorcyclist followed almost the whole way - he'd been behind the car at the very beginning and had given chase the entire way, honking his horn and flashing his lights - until at last he managed to get up to the drivers' window to yell at them to stop, but they shoved a gun in his face, and he had to give up; and they wouldn't stop.

Witnesses said the car was doing did zig-zags to try to shake the little kid free. They knew he was there. They knew what they were doing.

The kid died, of course. The car was spattered with blood by the time they finally parked the car - in the same place where they had parked the previous 4 cars that they'd carjacked. They just jumped out, glanced at the little body that was still hanging by the rear wheel, which was so shredded by now that it was missing head, fingers and knees (police had to gather body parts from along the 7-km stretch of road). Witnesses said the thieves just glanced at the body and went on with their routine search of the car. Turns out they didn't even want the car - just purses, cds, and whatever other odd items they could get. Veja magazine referred to this as the "terrifying banality of violence in Rio today."

What kind of city can do this to a little kid?

What happened to those 16- and 17-year-olds to turn them into the kind of people who would do this to a little kid?

On top of the other recent violence, this has struck a very raw nerve for the Rio citizens. The O Globo newspaper website set its all-time record for the most emails received about a news story (2500 in half a day - and this in a country where most people do not have email access). Many of the emails were from people who said they had not been able to stop crying about it.

It is the cover story this week for Brazil's major weekly newsmagazine Veja, with the headline "And one more time, are we going to do nothing?"


PS: A week after publishing this post I got an anonymous comment complaining that as a self-professed "expert in Brazil" I should have done my research better, in that, a similar incident occurred in Kansas City a few years ago and that this sort of thing happens in US cities too. First off - I've never said, and certainly don't think, that I'm an expert on Brazil. I've only been here a little while and have seen a very small window into Brazilian life. This is a personal blog where I share some of my personal experiences and impressions for my friends and family; nothing more. Second, I never have said these things don't happen in US cities too. Of course they do. But they happen much more frequently here, to a degree that I have not personally experienced before, and to a degree that clearly also frightens and appalls the local Brazilians. And third, if you'd like to leave a comment, please leave your name and email; I don't publish anonymous comments. Thanks!

hit the ground running in Recife

I can´t believe I´ve only been in Recife/Olinda two days. So much has already happened.

After my strange exhausted Thursday travel day, I jerked awake to the sound of a HUGE frevo brass band. The sun was streaming in my window, hot and bright. The band was UNBELIEVABLY loud. (and good! This one had a really tight brass section. Harmonies and everything!) I looked at my clock - it said 6:00. Could I possibly have slept through an entire day - could it be 6pm? There couldn´t be a huge 120-decibel frevo band on the street at 6am, could there? Turned out, there could be. Frevo alarm clock, 6am. The whole pousada woke up. The whole TOWN woke up.

I sleepily crawled to breakfast a bit later, stepped into the dining room and heard somebody saying "Deh, eh deh, eh deh eh, DEH eh DEH!" Somebody was chanting the lefts (E, for esquerda, left) and rights (D, direita), for a maracatu drumming pattern. I thought "There´s going to be somebody that I know at that table," turned around, and sure enough it was an entire pack of Bay Area maracatu drummers who I´d met last summer at California Brazil Camp. Score! Presto, a great bunch of people to hang out with, and plus, they know everything that´s going on! I tagged along with them all day to: an excellent maracatu lesson in the park with Nininho; a bus trip into Recife; a tour of every single instrument shop in the city(looknig for alfaia cases!) and the only store that has 16" alfaias, plus skins and hoops; a visit to the best cd store for traditional music; a frevo performance; a 3-hour rehearsal with Jorge Martins´group; another frevo performance; a shared taxi home.

Played maracatu all day - abe and alfaia. Good to find out that the alfaia is still completely comfortable, and all my maracatu reflexes are still there, even though I haven´t played much since Halloween.

There is TONS going on in Recife. There are giant stages set up all over the city and about a zillion maracatu rehearsals & parades. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of frevo (to the day) and there was a huge frevo show. The last giant multi-nacao show is tonight! Tomorrow the parades start.

For future reference for other maracatu travellers: it looks like the big shows and public maracatu rehearsals start about six weeks before Carnaval. First each nacao (maracatu group) has just its own rehearsals, and then, in the three weeks before Carnaval, they start teaming up and putting on huge shows together, 3-6 nacoes per show. The amazing percussionist Nana Vasconcelos is hosting these giant rehearsals this year. Also, all the big-name Rio acts come to town the week before Carnaval - Gilberto Gil, Monobloco, Bossacucanova, they´re all here. The place is just buzzing.

Playing with Jorge´s group was such a rush. I have to go buy a bunch of alfaias. I have to get a maracatu group started in whatever city I end up in. Just have to.

Sleepless in Olinda

I just staggered through one of the all-time sleepiest days I´ve ever had. I was up all night in Rio - and after that extremely busy, no-food day, too. Packing for Recife, dealing with lots of sudden job-related crises back in the US, and backing up all my bazillion gigs of video and sound files. Next thing I knew it was 6am and time to head to the airport.... no sleep at all. I did, however, finally eat: 3 bowls of Brazilian Froot Loops. They taste different from American Froot Loops....I had to eat 3 bowls to decide whether I liked them or not.

I had the first of a series of exhausted hallucinatory naps on the plane (I´m dreaming I´m on a plane, no, I AM on a plane, I´m dreaming I´m sailing on water, no, I´m FLYING over water, I´m in Rio, no, I´m in a PLANE! I´m dreaming that - Hey! Did I miss the peanuts and juice? Stewardess!) Once I got to Olinda, every time I returned to my pousada I would accidentally lie down and then jerk awake a bit later out of a hazy, foggy sleep, always in one of that type of confused half-dreams that is so similar to reality that you´re not exactly sure whether you´ve woken up or not. The urge to just sink into sleep was nearly overwhelming but I kept jerking awake thinking "I´m missing some maracatu somewhere!"

Olinda is a lovely little town - very vintage colonial (a World Heritage Site). Winding rows of peaceful, pretty little buildings in a maze of cobblestone streets, all the little storefronts painted different bright colors. Every little hill has a cute old church sitting on top. Tons of little artists´ shops full of all kinds of paintings. I went into one shop and was enchanted with lots of cute little pottery. Reminded me of my favorite kind of Peruvian pottery: funny scenes of village life, little scenes of people doing their professions (everything from pot-maker to proctologist). I especially loved a tiny little 1" high pottery woman at her 1/2" high corn-on-the-cob food stand, complete with infinitesimal ears of corn and the tiniest little pot. Then fell in love with a magnificently sculpted tiny Amazonian lungish, two inches long. Lungfish art is a small, misunderstood genre, but this one was really beautiful.

Olinda was baking under a flawless blue sky, and a hot, hot sun, which I loved. (I´m really used to the heat now - I almost froze on the plane and had to wrap my towel around my legs to stay warm.) Carnival celebrations here start the Sunday before actual Carnaval. That´s this Sunday! There´ll be huge parades of frevo and maracatu, and several other mysterious musical genres that I don´t quite know. I passed a frevo/marcha brass band that was rehearsing quite seriously in a little house on a corner. All the windows were wide open and everybody from the street was leaning in the windows, watching the rehearsal. There was one snare drummer, who was doing... he was playing... HEY! It´s the MARCHA 3! (my nemesis caixa pattern) Aha, so it really IS a real marcha pattern, from the old Carnival tradition of brass bands.

It´s really nice atmosphere here right now because it´s quite quiet, people just trickling into town, but everybody´s getting ready and there´s a sort of buzz of excitement in the air. At the Recife airport there was a full frevo dance troupe and brass band, plus 2 of those mysterious men in the large colorful capes and gigantic 3-feet-wide wigs, plus an incongruous cigar and a big bell (who are those guys? This is something I don´t know about.) All waiting to greet our plane. They did a full performance right by baggage claim.

In Olinda today there were trucks working their way down the little cobblestone streets, full of crews of men standing in large piles of colored fluff, which turned out to be long strings of colorful fluttering paper that they are stringing from all the telephone poles. And the whole staff of my pousada, and the pousada next door, spent all day making piles of decorations - great big cardboard cutouts of frevo umbrellas, dancers, Carnival masks, and those famous bull costumes that I see everywhere (something else I don´t quite understand... I´ve gotta catch up on my Pernambuco Carnival traditions) which they were painstakingly painting and covering with colored glitter.

Ohh.... I might have to stay for Friday! Olinda´s famous Carnival has an especially famous Friday parade, when giant mannequin-like dolls are carried through the old streets. Of course there are ten zillion things I also want to do in Rio. Another dilemma, but this one seems much more fun.

Note to the last-minute planners: Olinda specializes in the last-minute Carnival market. Things are cheaper here and book much later than in Rio and Salvador. So there are still plane tickets and plenty of rooms available.

A lucky day

wow... crazy busy day today.... Since I'm not going to choro camp to study pandeiro this week, I decided instead to "do right by my local groups" and also to do every damn Carnaval thing that I could do this week, including squeezing in a quick visit to Recife! I found a cheap ticket online and jumped on it, found a cheap room and jumped on that too. I also decided, optimistically, to see if Marcos Suzano might be available for another private lesson. He hardly ever is; he's on tour constantly; but about once a year I get him in a lucky free moment.

Well, today was my lucky day!
First a THREE hour lesson with Suzano - holy moley, am I ever set for pandeiro stuff to work on now! It'll only take me about 5 years to assimilate everything he showed me. He was so nice. He showed me TEN THOUSAND DIFFERENT THINGS, and the best part was, they spanned a huge variety of techniques and genres. He drilled me in samba swing again (which I still, still, still, infinitely, forever, need to work on), gave me a pile of funk stuff, some new technique tricks including something I'd just been pondering the other day - a backwards buzz!; and then showed me several completely different ways of playing frame drums from other cultures: finger rolls from India; platinela tricks from North Africa; hand-flips from Italy; and a peculiar vertical style from the northeast. He's a very eclectic percussionist - his house is full of all kinds of stuff, talking drums, Peruvian cajons, everything, and he incorporates absolutely everything into his playing. Just my kind of thing.

Then I zoomed to Leblon for a two-hour session with Dudu of Bangalafumenga - I've been trading him English lessons for tamborim & repique lessons, which turns out to be REALLY fun. I love teaching English. Love it. And the tamborim and repique stuff I've gotten from him is phenomenal. He's a brilliant teacher, really gifted at breaking things down and explaining things. He seemed especially pleased that I could pick up long patterns quickly and get the timing right - "You're the kind of student we pray to God for," he suddenly said, and got into a hilarious account of some past students of his who could not even STEP TO THE BEAT. Literally, they could not walk to the beat of the music! He got me laughing with his imitations of the very clumsiest students. Truth is, though, I've seen him with those students, and he's unbelievably patient with them.

Then I zoomed to Lapa to catch Monobloco rehearsal. I'd put in that big practice session on Monobloco stuff on Monday and things really felt better tonight. I could finally do the funk stuff at tempo. But my nemesis rhythm in Monobloco has always been the Marcha 3, right? The only levada (pattern) that I really cannot play at tempo. So I was waiting for that one. Well, I walked in tonight, late from Dudu's lesson, and they were all playing some weird new thing, super simple. I got it in a second, wondering what it was, and then Fred pantomimed to me "This is the new Marcha 3! We decided to ax the other one!" RAH!

THEN I zoomed to Bangalafumenga to catch the second half of their rehearsal. They have all kinds of stuff going on this weekend! shoot, I didn't know! They had had nothing scheduled this weekend, so I thought it'd be safe to take a trip to Recife, but now they've gone and arranged a big show AND a parade. goldangit, I'll miss them both. But, I'll still be here for their main Carnaval parade on Carnaval Sunday, which is the most important thing.

I was so exhausted during Banga, my stomach cramping up, and took me a while to identify why: I'd forgotten to eat all day. I'd been running from lesson to lesson to rehearsal to rehearsal, from noon straight till 10:30pm, without eating anything. All I'd had was whatever my teachers happened to feed me: Suzano gave me three strong cups of coffee (very excellent coffee), and Dudu gave me a pile of Toblerone chocolates - he'd given me one at the end of the lesson, watched me eat it, then wordlessly poured six more into my hands.

Bless Suzano and Dudu too for something they each happened to do that turned my thinking around a little bit. I'd been feeling a little bummed recently at the thought of having to table music for a while - I am so broke, and I decided it'd be really smart to work a whole year next year. Rebuild my savings so that I can then take the two years after that for music again. Taking the long view, right, actually planning for the future for a change. A great job possibility magically appeared, teaching biology at the University of Portland, so I decided to hop on it. Sent my cv off today for that job; and arranged textbooks for another job this spring at UW; and also accepted an offer to teach a little ornithology course at the Seattle Audubon Society.

These job decisions are what is underlying my recent panicking about music. It was so odd to be revising my cv today and remembering my life of North Atlantic Right Whales and grizzly bears, and my years with the tundra birds and prairie birds... in the middle of all this samba...

I love biology, and adore teaching, but I have been feeling a little dismayed at the thought that I am "just a scientist and not a Real Musician" and couldn't shake the sensation that to put music on the back burner, even just temporarily, is some kind of failure. I somehow had picked up an attitude, from some pro musicians, that science is something lesser, something mundane.

But today, I walked in to Suzano's apartment and heard a bird cheep. I recognized the cheep. Suzano saw the change in my expression and said delightedly "Do you want to see my bird??? Come see my little bird!!" We went over to a corner where he had the cutest little zebrafinch in a cage. It was the tiniest little thing and it came hopping right over to nibble at his finger in that fond zebra-finch way, and let him scratch its head. He had a whole story about having rescued it and how it had a thread tangled around its foot, and how it loves water baths, and likes to sit in the sun, and really loves millet seed, and... It was obvious he was fond of the tiny little thing! So cute.

Well, he was excited that I actually knew what species it was and where it comes from (he'd never known) and we progressed into a huge conversation about birds, conservation biology, tapirs, jaguars, deforestation.... So nice to find a musician who values that sort of biological knowledge.

Then I went over to Dudu's place for the tamborim lesson, and, again, somewhere along the line it came out that I am a biologist. Dudu immediately said, unbelievably, "Biology! That's such a cool field! I always kind of wished I'd been a biologist. It's so fascinating." Turns out he gets a kick out of marine biology & microscopic life, & even does some biology-related art in his spare time.

Well, it was really nice to be reminded, by these two world-class Brazilian percussionists, that the biology side of my life is something valuable too.

And ... I navigated all of those 10.5 hours of lessons & conversations entirely in Portuguese! yay.

Viradouro's first-ever bateria float

Just posted a movie from Viradouro's Sambodromo rehearsal last weekend. (This was my last Sambodromo rehearsal of the year because, guess what, I'm going to Recife for the weekend!) The most prominent lesson from the movie is, wow, the crowd sure does love even the simplest bateria choreography! I noticed this last year too - Imperio Serrano did the same kind of thing with the bateria dividing and then coming together, and the crowd went absolutely nuts.

Something weird happened that night. I was surprised to find Grande Rio still parading when I reached the Sambodromo. They were supposed to have finished by 9 but they were still going when I got there at nearly 10. I found out later there'd been a horrible 1.5-hour delay, entirely due to a TV news crew that suddenly decided to do a feature piece on the two queens of the baterias of both escolas, Grande Rio and Viradouro, before the parades started. They just sort of started doing it, and both escolas had to wait an hour and a half. Here's where it gets ugly... the president of Grande Rio finally made an announcement to apologize for the delay, but the crowd had gotten so impatient they booed him, and then, this is almost unheard of, the crowd started singing the Viradouro song while Grande Rio was playing! This is a really vicious thing for a crowd to do to a parading escola. Talk about disrespectful. A huge fight also broke out in the grandstands. Some friends of mine were so turned off by the Viradouro fans that they are now rooting against Viradouro.

I wasn't all that impressed with the rehearsal myself. Sure, the bateria was great, but Viradouro, alone of all the escolas that I've seen, just treated the rehearsal like a rehearsal. They didn't bring any floats, glitter, costumes, nothing; even the porta-bandeiras didn't have their gowns on and hardly danced at all (at least, not in my section of the Sambodromo). And the song turned into one of those nasty earworms for me: It turned out to be catchier than I thought, too catchy because it's actually kind of boring and I don't really like it BUT I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD. They do have a cute opening dance act, though, the dancers horsing around like the Keystone Kops, which I'm sure will be even cuter once the dancers are all dressed as playing cards. (their theme this year is Games.)

Viradouro is the odds-on favorite, as it happens. Their bateria is smoking, and the escola scored big this year in luring the top carnavalesco, Paulo Barros, away from Unidos da Tijuca. The carnavalesco is the guy who designs all the floats and costumes, and has the overall artistic design for the whole parade. Barros had been with Tijuca for about five years and is an audacious artist who always tries something wild. He is the guy responsible for the float a few years back that was entirely made of glittery naked blue people. This year he is putting the Viradouro bateria on a float! Nobody has ever done that before. The idea seems impossible - the floats are not really all that sturdy, and they always seem to be vibrating so much that everybody on the float has to hang on to little handholds. There are two problems: Can the float survive the drummers? And, can the drummers survive the float? But, after a few trial runs in the Cidade do Samba, it appears that it might work. (however, the trial runs have only been a few feet forward and a few feet back...)

A problem is that the float cannot maneuver in and out of the recuos (side areas that the bateria stops in). So, the plan is for the bateria members to walk into the first recuo on their own. Then the float will come meet them, and they will all walk onto the float from the recuo, while drumming. Then, at the second recuo, they will all walk off, still drumming. The ala behind the bateria will then walk onto the float - they will all be carrying fake drums! The fake bateria will continue on the float; the real bateria will go into the second recuo and continue on foot later.

This is such a silly idea that I am going to have to buy a Sambodromo ticket for Monday just to see if it is going to work.

back on track

Got back on track today with a solid four-hour stint of caixa practice. Went through every Monobloco pattern I know, every samba pattern I know. I finally cleared up some lingering confusions that have been bugging me about the Monobloco repertoire, especially the hand signs:

"Big C" sign means Coco in Bangalafumenga, but means Congo in Monobloco
"Pointed-roof" sign means Maracatu in Banga, but means Coco in Monobloco
"Big X" means Xote in Banga, but means Samba-Charme in Monobloco
"Two Fingers Down" means Afoxe in Banga, but means Samba Break 2 in Monobloco
"Circle" means Funk in both groups. Thank god.

I played a long, long time. Started with slow drills that Andre Moreno gave me to improve my technique and efficiency; then moved on to Fred Castillo's single-stroke warmup (see below); then went through all the samba patterns, slow and fast. Then went through every Monobloco pattern I could remember. Then found all my Monobloco practice recordings and played along with all of them. It was a really, really good workout and I could feel things clearing up even just during this one workout. The Xote Pattern #2 got easier. The double-buzz in the Afoxe was buzzier, more believable. Marcha 3, my nemesis, is a bit faster. The Mangueira samba started to click sometimes into a lovely swing.

So, it GOT BETTER! Practice makes better - it always does! I just wish I had this much time to put in on every instrument every day! I'm aching for a stint on repique like this, and one on pandeiro, and one on third surdo too.

After my little choro camp crisis, I have been re-thinking my musical goals and what exactly I am aiming for. The reason I was panicking about the choro camp, I now realize, is that I have been getting incredibly nervous about time running out and I've had this awful sense that this next month is my last chance to learn EVERYTHING that I ever want to learn, every genre, every instrument, quick, learn it all NOW, INSTANTLY! I'm running out of money and have to go back to work soon, probably for one year, to earn some real money again. That means I'll have to table music for a while, and I very likely won't be able to come to Brazil next season. "Tabling music" doesn't mean I wouldn't do it at all - in fact, if it all works out, I'll be playing with the Lions! But, I definitely won't have as much time for it, and won't be able to travel.

It'd only be for one year, and I'd earn enough money to be able to travel the year after that, so you'd think I could be patient about it. But as I just told another friend, the thought of putting music on the back burner even for just one year is freaking me out! I just have to have faith that if I work hard for a year, I can pick up music again on the other side, and go travelling again. Keep chasing my strange little dreams.

Anyway it was good today to realize that my playing IS improving. I've been thinking of what one of my friends told me recently about not being too hard on myself: "You have to accept your limits". But, if I had accepted my limits, I wouldn't have gotten this far. I think I have already exceeded my limits! I would never have started snare drum if I'd had any logical sense of knowing my limits.

There's some physical limits I do accept: power, and speed. I know I'll never have the power of the guys, and never have the blisteringly fast rolls of the young drummers. But outside of those two, it all seems up for grabs...even a sestuplet roll at 140bpm seems within reach, if I can just put in enough practice time! (I know it's within reach, because every now and then I accidentally do one correctly.)

I remember what Chris Stromquist told me once during a conga lesson: "There'll always be some young kid who's faster and louder. But if you can play really beautifully, really musically, you'll always be in demand."

My know-your-limits friend had a good point though. Her real point was: Don't be so hard on yourself. The number-one piece of advice that every one of my close friends eventually says to me. I can't help it; I seem to have built-in high standards.

OK, enough philosophizing for now. More about caixa, for those who are also learning:

Fred always starts his Monobloco caixa classes by taking everybody through a series of very simple single-stroke drills that sort of stunned me with its obviousness and effectiveness. Why had I never done these drills before? Somehow I'd always just drilled with paradiddles, but my single stroke drills have been stupidly unorganized. Fred simply takes you through a logical sequence of 8 measures each of:

Rlrl
rlRl
rLrl
rlrL

...always tapping your foot on the main beat. duh, this is obvious, I should have been doing this all along! I couldn't believe how clumsy I was with the syncopated left-hand ones! My foot wouldn't keep going! This should have been dirt-simple but it wasn't.

Next, circle through the possible combinations of having 2 strong accents:
RLrl
rLRl
rlRL
RlrL

This last one is the basic samba caixa pattern, and at that point Fred starts swinging it, and then starts cycling us through Monobloco's five samba patterns:

1. Basic RlrL, aka "Timbal" or "Iniciante" (beginner)
2. Salgueiro
3. Mocidade
4. Mangueira - he uses the version with a lot of double-rights
5. Ilha

I add a #6, Sao Clemente, and a #7, Banga. That about covers every possible motif for samba caixa.

Fred INSISTS that you MUST TAP YOUR FOOT on the downbeat during all of these drills. He doesn't make you do the little stepping patterns that some teachers do, but he insists you've got to have the beat going somewhere in your body. Monobloco is rather fanatical about this - there's nothing they hate like the sight of a drummer standing stock-still.

Like Michael Spiro says: "God gave you feet so you could tap the beat!"

The blocos have started, the blocos have started

Carnaval has unofficially begun! The Carnaval parade season spans 4 weekends in Rio, with bloco parades always starting 2 weekends before Carnaval and ending 1 weekend after Carnaval (the Monobloco parade is the last of all). The escolas only parade on 1 weekend, but the blocos see no reason to limit Carnaval to just one weekend when you can spread it over a whole month.

A little bit about the street blocos. Blocos are informal little neighborhood bands, with a drum section and sometimes a brass section. If they have brass, they'll usually call themselves a "banda". Either way, they'll rehearse for a month or two, or maybe not rehearse at all, and then they rent a sound truck for the singers and guitarists to ride on, and have a big parade. It's sort of a "Let's have a party!" down-home approach to Carnaval. It's actually the way the escolas-de-samba used to be, way back in the old days. Before the Sambodromo, before the judged competitions began, before the expensive floats and the TV cameras. And before Sambodromo tickets started to cost $150 for a cheap seat!

People love the bloco parades because it is bringing Carnaval back to the street, free, to the people. It's a fairly recent development. The first blocos started only a little over ten years ago. In the last three years they have exploded and now there are over 300 blocos. Over 40 new ones appeared this year alone. A local magazine even had an article on how to start your own bloco. (If you have always wanted your own Rio bloco, they recommended budgeting about 5000 reais - the biggest costs being purchasing a set of drums, and renting a sound truck. Blocos typically own a set of extremely battered drums that are loaned out to the drummers.)

Some of the most famous blocos are:
"Simpatia e Quase Amor" (Friendliness is Almost Love)
"Cordao de Bola Preta" (Carnaval Group of the Black Ball)
"Suvaco de Cristo" (Armpit of Christ - they parade in a neighborhood that's under the Christ statue)
"Ceu Na Terra" (Heaven On Earth)
"Carmelitas" (they always parade near an old Carmelite convent, and the whole bloco dresses as nuns.)
"Empolga As Nove" (Excitement at 9 - their parade always starts at 9pm)

As you might have noticed, bloco names range from poetic to bizarre to funny. Here is a selection, in English:

Play For Me 'Cause I'm Tired
If You Don't Want To Give It To Me, Loan It To Me (yes, there's a sexual connotation)
An Excuse For Drinking
We Get Together But We Don't Go Anywhere
Calm Down, You Little Piranha (piranha is slang for prostitute)
The Chicken of Noon
What Bullshit Is This?
Bloco of Anxiety
Dry-Mouth Bloco
Anyone Who Can't Take It Drinks Water
Hold On So You Don't Fall Down
Wake Up And Come Party
Kiss Me, I'm A Film-Maker

Most blocos play samba or, if they have a brass band, they might play marchinhas, the peppy European polka-type music of old-school Carnaval. Carnaval music used to all be marchinhas, back in the 30's, before samba was brought to Rio by immigrants from Bahia. There are a few modern blocos that mix in other rhythms too - new rhythms like funk and hiphop, and rootsy Brazilian rhythms like coco, ciranda, afoxe and maculele. One new bloco is planning to do only hip-hop ("We love to party just like anyone else, but we're club kids, we don't like samba!" said the organizers). And there are at least three blocos that specialize in a musical genre from outside of Rio: Filhos de Gandhi (afoxe), Rio Maracatu (maracatu), and AfroReggae (samba-reggae) - all 3 are great, so if you want a taste of something different, check them out. There's an all-woman's bloco; there's one just for drag queens; one just for dancers; and several just for drinking. There's one that's all pandeiros, and another that's all tamborims.

In the last three years, some blocos started drawing a bigger crowd than the entire Sambodromo. The Sambodromo holds 88,000 for the formal escola parades. Bola Preta now draws a street crowd of 200,000! Simpatia e Quase Amor is now drawing 100,000. Monobloco's parade will probably be about this big. The city of Rio has been a bit taken by surprise by this development & has only slowly realized that the blocos are now the biggest part of Carnaval in Rio, and that perhaps a crowd of 200,000 should get a few porta-potties and maybe a policeman or two. The organizer of "Escravos de Maua" (Slaves of Maua) told a newspaper reporter: "In 2006, when the police detachment arrived that was responsible for security, the "detachment" was composed of just one policeman. And we had about 18,000 paraders." Last year, a team of art thieves robbed millions of dollars worth of impressionist art from the lovely Chacara da Ceu museum in Santa Teresa during the Carmelitas parade. They just melted into the thick mob around the museum. There was no way that any police car could squeeze through the crowd to get to the museum. The thieves got away with $50 million dollars' worth of Picasso, Matisse, Monet and Dali. (As a bonus, they also mugged 5 tourists who happened to be inside the museum - why settle for $50,000,000 when you could have $50,000,250?)

So, Rio's paying a bit more attention this time, and they say there will be more police and more porta-potties, though I haven't seen any evidence of either yet. Regardless - the bloco parades will go on. Nobody can stop them! They are like a force of nature. They just keep growing and growing.

Schedules for bloco parades are at:
http://www.riodejaneiro-turismo.com.br/pt/
click on Carnaval and then on Blocos & Bandas.
Don't forget to wear a silly hat.

AfroReggae

This past weekend was the first bloco parade weekend, and I ran into 3 parades just in the Largo do Machado while trying to walk home. Or was it the same parade in 3 different places? I'm not sure, but it took a while to get home. I heard the huge drag-queen parade of Bloco Ipanema, down on Ipanema beach, drew 30,000 paraders. But I went instead to Bloco AfroReggae, which had its first "rehearsal" (party) Sunday at the park in the Arpoador.

AfroReggae is Rio's sole samba-reggae bloco, and one of the few black blocos as well. (Not a coincidence - samba-reggae is a black-pride genre.) It's the group that was featured in the Oscar-nominated American documentary "Favela Rising" and also in a Brazilian documentary "Nenhum Motivo Explica A Guerra" (No Reason Can Justify War). (If you've already seen Favela Rising, check out the other movie - it's a different point of view.) They are a brave and community-oriented group that is working hard at community service, trying to convince favela kids to join AfroReggae and learn to play music, instead of joining the drug gangs.

Well, they were REALLY great! For their big Carnaval bloco they keep it simple, and just play a basic samba-reggae and faster frevo-type axe, backed up by their excellent pro band. But where they really shine is their energy. Nonstop dancing and incredible power. They'd painted their drums all kinds of different colors; looked beautiful and it all seemed very festive.

I got dancing and couldn't stop. Partway through it all I thought, wow, I really LOVE samba-reggae. As opposed to, say, pagode, which I sort of tolerate, and even play and practice, but do not really deeply love. Pagode usually makes me yawn. (One exception: the fantastic Monday band at Carioca da Gema, where I am going tonight.) But samba-reggae, like escola-de-samba, always makes me dance. The whole crowd got jumping and leaping around and doing silly conga lines. (I posted a little movie. The sound is pathetic because the camera mic was clipping nonstop, but you can see the fun everybody was having.) Awesome. They'll be there again next Sunday, 4pm, in the park at the Arpoador, right between Copacabana & Ipanema.

Their repertoire made me laugh because it was actually Rio-style classic samba songs and funk songs, the same songs lots of other blocos play, but just played to a samba-reggae beat. There's definitely a Twenty Greatest Hits for songs that every Brazilian crowd will sing along to, and most blocos draw heavily from that small set. The good blocos add in their own stuff too, but it's funny to hear the same songs turning up again and again. There are 4 songs that Monobloco, Banga, and AfroReggae all do - but each bloco uses completely different rhythms for any given song. The same song might be played as a merengue by AfroReggae, a funk by Banga, and a coco by Monobloco. It has been interesting to see how freely they experiment with putting classic songs to different rhythms. Makes me realize we are a little strait-jacketed in the US.

My Mocidade

Saturday night I was still recovering from my MCC (Musical Confidence Crisis). On the advice of some smart friends, I decided to go somewhere where the music has always been wonderful and fun. Something special and unique to Rio that I could only do during Carnaval season. Somewhere where I could play and feel good. So I went to Mocidade!

This was my last time at Mocidade. I won't be able to attend their few remaining rehearsals between now and Carnaval. So it was precious for me. My last time in that wonderful green-and-white quadra, feeling that thunderous driving Mocidade swing, watching Jonas dance every cue (I love his leading style - he is as graceful and fluid as a professional dancer). Seeing my bateria friends. I don't even know most of their names... but I feel welcome there. Even the director who used to scowl at me, smiles at me now.

And it was really intense tonight. The crowd was HUGE. The amazing wildcat samba singer Elza Soares was there! Mestre Jonas was under constant assault by about 400 people who all wanted to talk to him simultaneously - jeez, I don't envy the life of an escola mestre right before Carnaval! The lead guy from Funk 'n' Lata was there with a TV crew, doing a huge feature on Mocidade, interviewing everybody. They were crawling through the bateria all night, with lights, boom mic, huge camera, the works, zero'ing in on Jonas, on little Bruno the repique player, on everybody. The new queen of the bateria was prancing around all evening in an astonishing glittery outfit - she'd finally won the Queen of the Bateria spot last week over another contender, after a highly publicized series of catfights, and was glowing with triumph. We were bathed in spotlights all night. Everybody was a star!

I stayed the whole evening up in the bateria. I wanted to stay there as long as possible and soak up that wonderful driving Mocidade samba. I video'd for a while, till the bateria break; then grabbed a caixa, and played and played and played. The caixa felt GOOD tonight. Such a relief after the night before! I remembered how stiff and slow I was at the Mocidade pattern just two months ago. I couldn't even play it at their normal tempo, when I first arrived. But now - it felt smooth and solid, and I could play for hours. So, I guess I have improved after all.

Later I got bold about third surdo. I didn't wait for a free surdo; I took the other approach of getting on third, where you ask a player you know for a turn. I've never done that before, but I picked one of the regular third-surdo guys who kind of knows me, tapped him on the shoulder and gave him the series of gestures that means "can I take a turn on your surdo, later, after the next song?" He whipped the surdo off his strap and offered it to me instantly. I mimed "no, later is fine, you don't have to give it to me right now" and he mimed "go ahead and take it now!" So I did.

Back on third at Mocidade. It was wonderful, as always. And suddenly I was able to do a few more things! I've spent so much time watching third surdos here in Rio, watching and watching and watching them. I've made ... what ... thirty escola visits by now, this season? - and at every one, I stay for hours in the bateria, watching the thirds (and the repiniques!). And I've been playing third again in Banga this year, picking up some tricks from Rodrigo Maranhao and the Imperio Serrano guys; and got that 1 lesson with Jonas (just 1, all he's had time for, but it was a great lesson!) and have been playing next to him too, and studying him, and studying the other Mocidade players..... week after week.

And suddenly, last night in Mocidade, I could DO it all. Every third-surdo possibility suddenly seemed easy. It seemed obvious. It seemed simple. It was all just rolling out.

I even played chocalho for a little while later - I've never tried that in an escola - and found I could do that too. I have never played chocalho for real, in a group, though I pick one up at home sometimes for practice. This was my first try for real. I could do it! It was erratic, it came and went, and my arms got tired pretty quick. But I could do it.

So. MCC at bay for now. I CAN play third surdo and caixa better than I could before, so there. And even a bit of chocalho. I HAVE learned something here, this season in Rio. One step at a time. No need to chase the pro drummer boys. I am who I am, and I am following my own path and I'll just keep on following it.

And most importantly... it was fun. It was really, really fun. I was at home. I have a family there now, it was a hell of a party, and I had a great time. My Mocidade. Till next time, guys.

The view from the bateria:


Lead repiques: (Bruno on right; don't know the other guy's name)


Directors giving hand signals:


Third-surdo player blowing bubble gum:


Mestre Jonas. (Behind him is the portrait of Mestre Andre, the guy who added paradinhas to Rio samba.)

patience

I cannot BELIEVE how much mental agony it has cost me to make the decision about the choro camp! It seemed to tap into some deeply searing dilemma about how fast, or rather how slowly, I have been progressing musically.

The decision was just: What should I do this week - go to choro camp and work on pandeiro, stay in Rio and continue working on caixa/surdo/repinique, or maybe go to Recife and work on maracatu? Seems like an easy enough choice, 3 good options. But - next thing I knew I was in a full-fledged Musical Confidence Crisis. One of those terrible downward spirals when you start to think: This has all been a terrible mistake. I can't play anything. I'll never be any good. Why did I think I could ever really be a musician? I should just give up and go home, wherever "home" is, anyway, and stop trying to play Brazilian music, and forget about Brazil.

I've been hanging out this week with a lot of pro musician friends who pick things up about a hundred times faster than I do. They come zipping into town for a few weeks, seem to already have a million more friends here than I've managed to make in four months, and seem to absorb everything at lightspeed - choro, pagode, candomble, maracatu, escolas, everything - while I still struggle, after months and months here, to just play escola samba halfway decently. It's making me feel a little panicky! No FAIR, I want to say, you should have to struggle like I do! It doesn't help when they cavalierly dismiss what I've been doing: "Who've you been playing with?" (I start to list my groups, and don't get past the first word, which is "Monobloco") - "Let me tell you about Monobloco. They don't play good samba. They play bad samba. I'll tell you why." [continue with rant against Monobloco for five minutes. Finally move on to next group] "Bangala-what? Banga-what? Never heard of them. They can't be any good." [continuing] "Who have you been studying with? Why them? You should be studying with my friend, HE'S the best tamborim player you'll ever see. Your other teacher can't possibly play as good. You should have studied with so-and-so. You should have taken more lessons. You should have...."

All the things I have done and struggled for and worked so hard for started to seem like nothing much.

I haven't learned enough, haven't improved enough. I only have a few weeks left, and I'm running out of money. Soon I have to go back to work, to my old life, biology, to make some money again. It won't be for forever - but it reminds me that I'm not "a real musician", not a pro - as those friends keep reminding me. Just an amateur. I don't even want to be a pro musician, not really, but I really DO want to play like one. And I still don't.

In this frame of mind, I went to the Sambodromo to see Unidos da Tijuca and got completely drenched in a horrible thunderous downpour. Well... I had to leave anyway to get to Monobloco on time, so I gave up on Unidos da Tijuca (damn! I really wanted to see them!) and went to Monobloco, but security would not let me in the door. The security guys told me "You have to wait out here until maybe somebody from Monobloco comes out to vouch for you." I couldn't understand anybody's Portuguese. It took almost fifteen minutes just to convey that I did NOT want to buy a ticket, I am IN THE BATERIA. No, I do NOT want to buy a ticket, I am PLAYING CAIXA IN THE BATERIA and I NEED TO GET IN!!!! NO, I DO NOT WANT TO BUY A TICKET! Finally they understood, reluctantly (how can an American tourist be in the Monobloco bateria?) but they still wouldn't let me in.

It was raining unbelievably hard by now, howling, monsoon rain, and I got completely, utterly sopping wet. I huddled under the security guys' umbrella, waiting for the mythical Monobloco person who they said would come out sooner or later, but nobody ever came out.

They were actually very nice guys. They were concerned about me getting wet, and seemed especially concerned that I was alone ("Don't you have any friends? Where are your friends? You're not here alone, are you?"). But they still wouldn't let me in. An eternity went by. The rain got even more ferocious. After a string of cell calls I finally reached Junior, the tamborim leader, who told me the secret way in (a side entrance through a parking lot). I guess all the other bateria members knew this somehow. (I am still perpetually at risk of missing a key announcement in rehearsals, due to the language barrier; and I think they've never remembered to put me on their email list; I think I must have missed an announcement about the email list, due to the language barrier....)

I got in at last, but was dispirited and tired and hungry and cold. Squelched around backstage in my wet shoes for an hour. Ate a cold cheese sandwich (all they had). Did not succeed at talking to anybody; the dj music in the background was too loud for me to follow anyone's Portuguese.

In this frame of mind, I played the first Monobloco show of the Carnaval season. Midnight to 4am. I felt I wasn't playing well. I did ok but was still having to fudge some things at fast tempos. I was very displeased with myself. It was discouraging: I think my caixa playing is still not good enough. It does not meet my standards.

I didn't get to bed till 6am and woke up past 2pm. Still exhausted and still unsure about whether I need to work more on caixa or pandeiro... whether to even try.... Musical Confidence Crisis suddenly in full flower. Should I go to choro camp, where I will suck at pandeiro? Or stay in Rio, where I will suck at caixa? That terrible sense of time running out.

I talked to two friends today about it all, and both immediately asked, "How long have your pro friends been drumming?" About fifteen years. "How long have you been drumming?" Three years. Yeah... okay, I know. Patience. Don't be so hard on yourself. Patience. Though one friend did add the deadly words "You have to accept that you are 41. It's never going to be for you like it is for the boys who start when they are young. You have to accept your limits."

In the end the decision was: no choro camp. Basically because choro happens all year; but Carnaval only happens now. And I have commitments to Banga, Monobloco, Sao Clemente, Mocidade, connections growing, bonds growing, that I don't want to drop. I don't want to get scattered all over, trying to do everything all at once, making a hundred half-friends and never getting to know any of them, starting a hundred instruments and never mastering any of them. I'll stay with my groups in Rio. Maybe one weekend in Recife, because Carnaval is happening there too. But as my dad reminded me: there will be time for pandeiro later. There will be time. I hope. I am starting to lose faith but I will just set aside the worries for now and just let Carnaval happen.