The bloco parades begin

This past Saturday was the first real taste of Carnaval. It was the Saturday that is just two weeks before Carnaval, which in Rio means, it was the Saturday when all the bloco parades start. It's the unofficial start of the "extended" Carnaval that Rio celebrates - beginning 2 weekends before Carnaval and going 1 weekend after. (Because one weekend of Carnaval just isn't enough!)

I spent all Friday night playing with Cubango (more about Cubango soon. I have got to write a whole separate post about their street rehearsal.) Like most escola rehearals, the rehearsal started after midnight and ended about 3am - yes, I said the rehearsal STARTS after midnight, yes, that is life in Rio. I got separated somehow from my friends at the end of Cubango rehearsal, thought I remembered the way to the bus stop but apparently didn't. Long story short, I walked for over an hour through Niteroi searching for the bus station. Dodging pigs! Enormous pigs! Mama pigs with little piglets running at their feet! Daddy pigs! Running around loose on the streets! This isn't a rural type of area, either - it was a completely urban area, all concrete and asphalt and tall buildings. With pigs running around loose. And then packs of wild dogs came running along and started chasing the pigs. Much barking and squealing. This was all under a full moon... a memorable scene, to say the least, and it made me glad I'd done my Long Walk To Nowhere, just to see the dogs chasing the pigs under the full moon.

Eventually a taxi came along. I was pretty sure I was getting close to the bus station, actually, but my feet were getting pretty damn sore (my feet aren't that used to walking miles in flip-flops) so I flagged him down for a quite expensive cab ride back to Rio. Hey, it is for exactly these occasions that I keep a 50-real note tucked in my bra.

I got home at past 5am, and then woke up at 11am, very bleary and confused, to hear somebody pounding loudly on my apartment door. I staggered over to the door, half-asleep and limping, and looking very lovely, I'm sure, with extra-puffy eyes and my hair sticking out in all directions like a giant dandelion puff. I opened the door to find my friend Ben saying brightly "You ready to go see the choro in Laranjeiras??" (Ben from Seattle, the great trumpet and conga player, a friend from way back in my VamoLa days). Oh riiiiiight... the choro....in Laranjeiras.... riiiiight...... Ben started to say "You still want to go?" but I interrupted him with "Yes yes yes, of course I still want to go! Just give me two minutes!" Park Ben at the computer to check his email. Quick shower. Dress. Flip-flops. Cup of coffee. Grab my bag. "Let's go!"

On the way out the door I paused. We were only planning to spend maybe two hours at the choro, and then come back to our respective homes. I had nothing else planned for the entire day, except for a Jorge Ben Jor concert that wouldn't start till midnight. But I suddenly thought "This is the first day of Extended Carnaval. Things happen during Carnaval....you get caught up in unexpected parades... suppose I don't get home for 24 hours?" I grabbed a few extra supplies - extra cash, a few tiny maps of remote corners of Rio, my drum belt, my Banga and Monobloco id cards. Just in case. You never know.

We made our way to the free Saturday choro. For any choro fans who come to Rio - this is a little Saturday morning street market on Rua General Glicerio, in Laranjeiras. Almost every neighborhood here in Rio has 1 day a week when a bustling fruit-and-veggie market suddenly appears on the streets. It's a different day in different neighborhoods, and at this particular neighborhood, a tradition has arisen of having a free performance by a great choro band every week. Free! Did I mention it is free? It's free! 11am-1pm.

The choro was, indeed, superb. I was newly inspired to start memorizing choro tunes and building pandeiro accompaniment that will go nicely with each particular tune. We had a wonderful time there, ate shrimp pastries and had fresh-ground sugar cane juice (OH MY GOD. It is SO GOOD. This is the way sugar was meant to be eaten! Fresh squeezed with the chlorophyll and everything!)

Ben split after that to go check out another bloco up in Lapa, and I was planning to head home, but, on the walk to the subway station, Ben and I spotted a truck unloading drums. Of course we had to go over to investigate, and who should it be but Odilon Costa! Former mestre of Grande Rio and Salgueiro and Beija-Flor! Author of the revered book "O Batuque Carioca"! I'd been hoping to arrange some more lessons with him, so I trotted up to say hi and to ask about the lessons. He was looking particularly perky and happy, singing and dancing around in a rather un-Odilon-like way (I know him mostly in his persona as mestre of Grande Rio - stern, focused, professional, and a bit formidable. But this year he's taking a year off from mestre-dom and he sure seems to be enjoying it!) He was setting out a large pile of drums, and I realized this must be his famous bloco. Odilon runs a little bloco that only parades once, and for which he hand-picks all the players. Only the best play, the top-end guys from the escolas all around town, and so it is supposed to be one of the best blocos in Rio. But I'd never found them before!

So of course I had to stay and watch them.I watched Odilon's group for about an hour but then realized I was running out of time if I wanted to head back up to Lapa. So I tore myself away, dashed to Largo do Machado - OH LOOK! IT'S ANOTHER BLOCO! I stayed and watched them for a while.

HEY! BANDA DE IPANEMA IS ABOUT TO START! I suddenly remembered that one of the most famous blocos in Rio, Banda de Ipanema, was doing their first parade today. I hopped on the subway and zipped to Ipanema. Bloco de Ipanema's one of the more famous blocos, particularly well known for its drag queens and other fun costumes. Here's a little taste:

It seemed to be very popular to pose with these two fake "cops", pretending to be threatened by them for a bribe:


I really need to get a better outfit. I feel very underdressed.


A beautiful bride:


Two particularly lovely drag queens: (yes, these are men. Except for me, I mean)


Another drag queen - this was a GREAT outfit:


A Carmen-Miranda type drag queen:


Jungle dude:


WHAT A GREAT MAKEUP JOB. Why is it that drag queens do a better job than actual women with makeup?


I am actually not sure of the gender of this person, but it's sure a great outfit. Oops, I did not get all the feathers in the picture:


I backed up to try to get all the feathers in the picture:


I backed up some more and still could not get all the feathers in the picture:


My second favorite pic of the day:


And my very favorite picture of all. Portland folks, look who I ran into! In the middle of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people!

It's Beto!!!! (dancer extraordinaire from Pernambuco, who, very fortunately for us Portlanders, now resides in Oregon.)

And then a phone from Brian Davis - he was up at the Sambodromo with Bruno! I charged up the Sambodromo at 7pm, saw Estacio de Sa, Porto da Pedra and Portela, ran into my friend JP but could not find Brian and Bruno to save my life. I kept getting tantalizing phone calls from them - "we're at the entrance gate!" "Now we're under the Bradesco sign!" "Now we're right in front of the Grande Rio camarote!" and I kept running around and running around the Sambodromo, and I mean running, up and down and front and back. I found at least six different gates that could all be considered "the entrance gate" (entrance to what exactly? There's 3 entrances to the runway and a different entrance gate for each of the 13 sectors), I found 3 or 4 Bradesco signs, but never found Brian and Bruno.

However, I did get to see an extraordinary moment when, as the Porto da Pedra bateria was warming up, all of Setor 1 started booing and making big thumbs-down signs and HURLING objects onto the runway, the part of the runway right in front of the bateria. Water bottles, beer bottles, and these were being thrown FAR, like, football passes. Water bottles flying fifty or sixty meters. They were actually trying to hit somebody! What on earth was going on? The bateria was in my way and I couldn't quite see. Next morning the papers had the story: A famous actress, who apparently is not actually from the Porto da Pedra community, had somehow convinced the directors to bump the current queen of the bateria (who IS from the community) out of her position and let the actress take her place. The poor girl who was being bumped had burst into tears at the change and the crowd had become enraged and started throwing bottles at the actress, who was actually forced to run for cover. The girl-from-the-community, looking stunned and grateful for the crowd's support, was restored to her spot, and rightfully so.

Hey! It's almost midnight! Time to head to Jorge Ben Jor! And that, it turned out, was the single best concert I have ever been to in my entire life. I was EIGHT FEET from Jorge Ben Jor! Looking very Mr. Cool in plain white shirt and shades. If you don't know Jorge Ben Jor... he is the author of a set of several dozen brilliant old-time funk classic Brazilian songs. His songs are intensely popular here in Rio, especially at Carnaval time, when it seems like every other song that every bloco plays is a Jorge Ben Jor tune. (Filho Maravilha, Do Leme ao Pontal, Taj Mahal, Santa Clara, and on and on and on.) His songs have this rootsy groovy funk riff to them that I adore. And he sang all his great hits, all those classic funky Brazilian songs that I've been playing all these years in Monobloco and Banga, all my very favorite songs, and the whole crowd was deliriously singing along. I danced for, oh, another five hours maybe?

I didn't get home till 5am. I'd been running around, chasing bands, following blocos and escolas and dancing in parades for sixteen hours straight. My feet were so sore I haven't been able to walk right for the two days since then - so sore I started worrying that I wouldn't be able to walk for the Cubango street rehearsal the next day.

And that was just the first day of Extended Carnaval.

Unidos da Tijuca

Uh-oh, I am falling way, way, way behind on my blog entries! Let's see - just so I don't forget:
Thurs: the hike to Praca Maua and the Unidos da Tijua street rehearsal
Fri: Cubango street rehearsal. Stranded in Niteroi. Packs of wild hogs.
Sat: Choro! Drag queens! Odilon Costa! Running in circles round the Sambodromo! JORGE BEN JOR with Ben!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sun: CUBANGO STREET REHEARSAL blows my mind. (and my feet). Flamengo beats Fluminense 5-3 and I see the last 2 goals with a frenzied crowd at a street bar while the entire Viradouro bateria is thundering away fifty feet behind us.

OK. So. Thursday.
Thursday I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get to the brilliant escola Beija-Flor, which is a million miles away in a place called Nilópolis. I knew the buses to Nilópolis leave from a plaza called Praça Mauá, so I walked all the way from my apartment to the little bus station at Praça Mauá to try to figure out the bus schedule. I know it's only a mile walk or so, but in the burning summer heat of Rio it started to seem a lot farther. Once I got there, everybody I asked was completely certain where the bus to Nilópolis was, and they all pointed me accurately toward a bus that was, indeed, going to Nilópolis. But what I want to know is how late the buses run, and nobody, NOBODY knew the schedule. Not even the bus driver knew the bus schedule. (He knew the schedule of his own personal bus, but had no idea how late buses run on that route, or how late they return.) Dang. Nilópolis is a long haul away, and I've had 3 previous experiences of getting stranded at Beija-Flor late at night, and though I do really love Beija-Flor, I don't really want to spend a night at the Nilópolis bus station curled up on a concrete floor.

I hovered around Praça Mauá for a while, hoping the attendant would return, and had even gotten bold enough to step into the attendant's booth and start rifling through all the incomprehensible bus schedules that were all wedged in a clipboard together. When it suddenly occurred to me that I was not all that far from the Cidade do Samba. That's the huge ring of big, new warehouses where the 12 Grupo Especial escolas build their floats. Beija-Flor is a Grupo Especial escola, right? So - I suddenly had the bright idea "I bet the Beija-Flor guys who are building the floats could tell me how to get to Beija-Flor tonight!" I asked a street vendor which way to the Cidade do Samba, and off I started on another long walk up a long, long street.

Halfway there I passed a huge open doorway and got a glimpse of... what are those... are those parade floats??? It wasn't one of the classy new warehouses of Grupo Especial - I wasn't anywhere near the Cidade do Samba yet. So I thought it must be one of the tiny, cramped, run-down warehouses that the Grupo A escolas have to put up with. I spotted a banner outside, a big red and white banner with a regal lion's head, and I realized it must be Estacio de Sá!

I love Estácio de Sá! So I stopped to talk to a guy who was standing just outside the doors gazing at a half-built metal framework. He seemed pleased that I've heard of Estacio, and further pleased that I'm interested in their floats. He showed me around a little bit, and I got to go inside and peek at some of the finished floats. (There's an amazing one that's all covered with pieces of mirror, and that's all I'm gonna say about that. Ya gotta wait till Carnaval Saturday to see it!)

I asked him "So, is everything ready?" (For Carnaval two weeks away. They've been preparing for it all year - they've probably been building the floats since May or June.) He said "Yes! Almost! Welllll, there's just a few "coisinhas" (little things) left to do," One of the "coisinhas" seemed to be the enormous metal framework that was sticking out of the front door, obviously a completely un-built float that they are only just starting on today. I can't imagine how they'll get it done in just two weeks.





I said thanks, and start walking on when I got distracted again: There's Imperatriz's old warehouse! I also notice there seem to be a lot of beer vendors trundling up the street, including the vendor that I asked for directions.

Hm... something about this all seems familiar.... Estacio, Imperatriz, and beer vendors... and a big street lined with old brick warehouses....

The fuzzy memory clicks. A dark street years ago, crowded with people. Thousands and thousands of people, singing and parading in the dim street lights. Night time. Seeing the huge dim "IMPERATRIZ" sign on the warehouse in the distance, seeing the Estacio lion, of seeing lots of beer vendors.... memories of.... THE UNIDOS DA TIJUCA STREET REHEARSAL!

WAIT a minute! Am I on THAT street? Is today the day of the Unidos da Tijuca street rehearsal? Am I on the Avenida Venezuela? I've never spent much time in this part of Rio and my mental map of the area has never been too good. I ask a beer seller ( who is carefully stacking hundreds of beer cans in neat rows in a vast styrofoam cooler the size of a coffin) and he says, yup, I'm about to start chilling all these beers to sell tonight at the Tijuca street rehearsal that's just ten hours from now, yup, right here. yes it's the street, I'm on the Avenida Venezuela, and yes, today is Thursday. How could I possibly have forgotten that Thursday is not just Beija-Flor day, it's also Unidos da Tijuca Street Rehearsal Day?!

New plan! Forget Beija-Flor, I'll get there next week when I've had more time to figure out the buses. Tonight is Tijuca night!

I scoot on back home, and at 9pm I walk allllll the way back over from Lapa to the Praca Maua, meet up with my friend JP, promptly run into my Germans too, and we all have a fabulous time at Unidos da Tijuca. I don't have time right now to upload the videos, but here's some pix:

Drummer guys spotted my camera:




... no, I'd never met them before.

Hey, there's Tanit! I'll put this one in my increasingly large file of "Tanit playing chocalho in every escola in Rio":


I love this pic of the drums. Think I will make it my desktop pic.


... I love this one of the porta-bandeira (flag-bearer) and her escort whirling around in their fancy dance. Look at her smile!


.... and, one more little detail. Remember that half-built Estacio float? The big metal framework? Well, two days later, Saturday, I was at the Sambodromo for the last full weekend of technical rehearsals. The first escola to go was Estacio de Sa. Like many escolas these days, they'd made a special little float just for the technical rehearsal, not because they had to, but just for fun and make the whole evening more festive. So check out the float:

Recognize it? That's the float they were welding together on Thursday! (The reason I am certain is that by late Thursday night, in the Tijuca street rehearsal, they had the "ESTACIO" letters on it - JP got a pic of it at that stage.)



Yes, they put that float together in TWO DAYS. In Seattle that would have taken us nine months and I don't know how many weekend work parties and months of committee meetings! But for these Rio guys a "little" float like that is literally two days' work

Viradouro's carnavalesco

Interesting story today in O Globo about Viradouro's carnavalesco. This is a fascinating life story.

***

Viradouro's Carnavalesco was a street boy
by Alice Fernandes
Translated by me from the O Globo website. Click here for the original Portuguese version.

***
Carnavalesco Edson Pereira has the job of carrying Viradouro to victory this year, after more than a decade of drought. But this is far from the biggest challenge he has faced in his life. The 32-year-old artist, who is new at Viradouro this year, had a difficult childhood that didn't include much in the way of Rio Carnival spirit. Born in Bangu, and raised in a shack in the favela of Rio da Prata, Edson was forced to begin working at the age 7 years, along with his 27 siblings. At the age of 15 years, he decided to try his luck on the streets, and ended up living on Copacabana beach.

Instead of luxurious Carnival floats, Edson's debut came with the construction of little rolling carts [? "carrinhos de rolimã", anybody know what rolimã means?]. Along with an older brother, he used these little toy constructions to help supermarket customers carry their packages, close to where he lived. The daily take, which at the time was in the old "cruzeiro" currency, rarely was more than the equivalent of ten reais today. [about US $6 for a day's work]

"I was never a child. I became an adult very early. Everything in my life was very difficult, and, because the financial conditions in my family were precarious, my dad sent me to work very early. There were a lot of kids in the house. My dad couldn't take the pressure all by himself, and he ended up beating me and my brothers because of the stress," he said.

He was a dedicated student at a public school, where he got good grades in geography and art history. Edson saw, in the cultural richness of Bangu, the possibility of becoming an artist. He began to study painting and art with a set designer at Globo TV. Soon he became a teacher's assistant, and he began to develop sets for soap operas and other TV productions, such as "The King of Cattle" and "Xuxa Planet" [a kids' show featuring an extremely famous TV star called Xuxa]. Meeting this "queen of the toddlers" was one of the most important moments in his life.

"When I saw Xuxa in front of me, I couldn't even believe that it was happening," remembers Edson. With the money from his TV job, he managed to buy his first pair of tennis shoes.

He held jobs as diverse as bricklayer, car mechanic's assistant, car painter, message boy and set designer's assistant. By the time he was 15 years old Edson had grown tired of this hard life, and he made a decision that radically changed the directory of his life: he left the humble house where he lived in Zone Oeste [West Zone] and moved to Zona Sul [South Zone] - more specifically to the beaches of Copacabana, where he lived for a year and a half as a homeless street boy.

"Because I was well-mannered and educated, I thought that on the beach I might be able to arrange a job as a houseboy in a rich lady's house. But my dream, actually, was to be a doorman and to be able to live in the same building where I worked."

However, he didn't fall into the good graces of a rich family, and instead Edson spent his days begging food from beachgoers and from the kiosks along the road. He managed to get some small change cutting open coconuts [at the coconut stands that sell coconut water]. On rainy days, he sought shelter under the balconies of the nearby buildings. To take baths, he relied on the generosity of the waiters of restaurants along the Avenida Atlantica. But even all these difficulties could not dampen the spirit of the man who would become, today, the carnavalesco of Viradouro. (He is sharing the post of carnavalesco with Junior Schall).

"I never felt sorry for myself. I knew that someday things would get better," he remembers.

His excess of confidence finally paid off when he was 17 years old. While passing the door of a nightclub, he decided to go in and ask for a job. He was hired the same day, and he ended up working as a janitor there for two years.

With renewed hope and now with a salary too, at 19 years old he decided to return to art. He went to Projac in search of new opportunities with Globo TV. After confronting a battery of exams, he was hired and began going to the College of Fine Arts. Soon came an opportunity to work as a designer and painter with several samba escolas, including União da Ilha, Império da Tijuca, Unidos da Ponte and Vila Isabel. It was in the float-construction warehouses of the escolas that he met Dona Ester, who was at that time an important "destaque" on the parade floats [a Carnival star, a famous person who rides on the very tops of the biggest floats]. She took on a role of being his guardian angel. With a show coming up in New York, she invited him to come work in the United States for fifteen days.

"I didn't have anything to lose. I was 21 years old, I'd already lived a little bit of everything, and I took advantage of every opportunity."

The experience with Dona Ester, on foreign soil, was only for a short time, but it was enough time to him to see the wider world and to convince him that he should return to New York, even though he didn't speak a word of English. In less than a month, Edson had managed to arrange this, and he returned to the United States to live.

In just three weeks, he got an interview and was hired to design the sets for an exposition of a cosmetics brand. He got the job due to his experience with the Rio Carnival. When he got his first payment after his first day of work, he had a nice surprise. His daily pay would be US $5000. [no, that's not a typo! - KH] In addition to the money, this experience resulted in an invitation to produce all of the events of the then first-lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton.

But the good life lasted less time than he hoped. Because of a medical error, Edson was forced to abandon all that he had won and return to Brazil.

"My plan had been to stay there a long time, not just the five years that I stayed. But I began to feel strange pains in my stomach and I went to a hospital to get some tests. When the results came, I was told that I had cancer and that I only had a little while left."

Thinking that he was about to die, he called up one of his sisters, asked her to find a house that he could buy to leave to his mother, and explained that he would be returning to Brazil in a few days. However, once he arrived, he discovered he didn't have cancer after all, and that the stomach pains had been due to a bacterial infection. With his health recovered and with plenty of money saved up, Edson Pereira bought the long-dreamed-of house for his family to live in, far from the favela, and he returned to his work in the escolas da samba. In 2006, he became a carnavalesco (chief artistic designer of the multi-million-dollar parade of a single escola) and won the championship with Unidos de Padre Miguel, where he stayed for two more years in Grupo A. In 2008, they ended up in third place, but he won several awards for the parade, which won him an invitation to go up a level to Grupo Especial and sign on with Viradouro. This triumph has erased, for him, all the sorrows of the past.

"I have won everything that I could. I've lived in luxury, I've met important people, my work has been recognized. Viradouro has given me one more opportunity, and it is a demonstration that we should never give up, never. It will be the biggest challenge of my career to assume so much responsibility, but I am ready. Everything that has happened to me has made me stronger and stronger, and it is with all this strength, together with Junior [his co-carnavalesco], that I will bring Viradouro's carnival parade to the Avenida."

Finding Cubango....(part 2)

Cubango was primarily recognizable simply by the fact that there was a large crowd of chattering Brazilians milling around in the street. I finally spotted a tiny door that said "Academicos do Cubango", through which people were slowly drifting in ones and twos, and I followed them, climbed up a tall, broad flight of green-and-white stairs, and emerged high up in a long, tall vast room whose walls were completely painted in green and white. With green-and-white banners handing from all the rafters, green-and-white flags hanging from the walls, and green-and-white drums in neat rows all over the floor. The Cubango quadra (rehearsal hall).

I looked around for Jonas, didn't see him, and then noticed a little pack of gringos. Some of them looked familiar... three or four of the faces... a little bit familiar... but from where??? I finally just went up and asked, in English, "Do I know any of you from somewhere?" and one of the women peered at me and said, in perfect English with a slight German accent: "Yes.... but from where?"

We stared at each for a second and then she said:

"Bloco X!"

Of course! It was Martina from Bloco X! It turned out they were all German samba players, and I'd met some of them three years ago when I went to the Bloco X samba weekend in Germany. (Bloco X being the mega-bloco of the best European sambistas that forms briefly in the summer, as a sort giant party/reunion/rehearsal/samba weekend. Attended by players from almost every country in Europe. I'd been the sole American.) (Yes, I once flew 8000 miles from Oregon to Germany just to attend a samba weekend. Yes, I am an addict.)

So suddenly I had a whole new bunch of German friends. A lot of them (most? all? can't remember) were from Cologne, which apparently has forty! I said FORTY! FORTY! different samba groups. Just the one city of Cologne. Forty samba groups! Of varying quality, sure, but how is forty samba groups in a non-Brazilian city even possible? (And what the hell is wrong with the United States? No, wait, never mind, it'll take years just to begin to commence to start discussing what is wrong with the United States...) Anyway, they also tell me Cologne has a "very good" Carnaval, apparently quite the party. It's a real Carnaval, i.e. on the actual Carnaval weekend, in February. "Icy cold," they warned me, "but lots of fun." It's going on my list of Carnavals that I have to visit some day (and now I've got friends there, too!)

Finally Jonas arrived, bateria members started arriving, people were putting on straps and grabbing sticks, grabbing drums....

I was hovering by the bateria when something happened that has never happened before. One of the Brazilian caixa players looked at me closely, and then came up and said (in perfect English): "Are you Kathleen?" Huh? Yes, but how did he know my name was Kathleen? I said yes, and he said "I read your blog. One of my friends sent out a tweet, you know, on Twitter, saying he'd just found a blog that mentioned Cubango, and it was your blog. Last night. So, I thought that might be you. Welcome to Cubango!" Wow... It honestly had never occurred to me that a Brazilian bateria player might find a blog entry of mine, let alone find it less than 24 hours after I'd posted it. I felt very surprised, and very welcome... and suddenly at home, because suddenly I already had friends in Cubango. (HI DANIEL!)

I'd assumed I'd just be watching, at least at first, but then I saw that all the German players had put on straps, picked up sticks and caixas... so I thought "hey!" and I grabbed a caixa too, but Jonas started urgently motioning to me and I thought "aw..." but it turned out what he was trying to convey was that I needed to go get a bateria t-shirt from the t-shirt guy, and I thought "OH" and I went and got my bateria t-shirt and put it on and I grabbed a caixa, double-checked to make sure all the Brazilian caixa players who needed caixas had caixas, no prob, plenty of caixas to go around, cool, cool, and the repique started and we all started playing and it was ....

..... it was an earthquake, a volcano, an ocean, of samba. So, it turns out the Cubango bateria is really powerful. Yes, a lot of the players are new, as I'd heard from Jonas, but they're playing pretty dang well, and after about half a second of samba it became clear that there are a lot of very experienced players in the bateria too. The samba is SOLID. The third-surdos are killer. (I asked Daniel about the bateria later and he confirmed, yes, Cubango did hang on to some of its experienced people, and also lured some good people back who hadn't been playing recently. There's also some people who also play with Viradouro, and there's a van of tamborims and a set of directors that come all the way from Mocidade. So, piece by piece, the new bateria was assembled, out of a mix of good players who stayed, old players enticed to come back, new players freshly trained up, and a set of experienced directors who have a lot of Grupo Especial experience and who know each other very well.)

I noticed the bateria is still learning some of the bossas - Jonas stopped the bateria several times to re-explain certain bossas, to clarify where the caixas re-enter after a break, to drill the surdos on certain fancy hits. It rapidly polished up as the rehearsal progressed. And the samba itself was beautiful. The thing that always stuns me about the baterias here is the way the samba is so deeply solid and locked, from the very second it starts. A lot of foreign groups have sort of a wobbly start to the samba, and only lock in after about a minute or so; but these Rio groups, they're rock solid and swinging from the first millisecond. (I believe a lot of this is because of the very high quality of the surdo players. You cannot have that certainty, that clarity, if the first and second surdos don't start off with impeccable precision and thunderous volume, right from the repique call, right away with the first surdo's pickup and the second surdo's response.)

I played the whole rehearsal...over two hours... it was wonderful. I know I say a lot of things here are wonderful, and I tend to run out of superlatives, but this evening really WAS wonderful. It was just so amazingly thrilling and so, so RIGHT, to be right in the middle of all that fire, that energia, that thunder going right through your bones. Riding that wave again, playing in a real Rio escola-de-samba bateria again.

So, of course, I fell in love with Cubango.

As we were rolling along, I thought "Bless Gisele for mentioning to me once, years ago, that caixa is one of the most useful instruments to learn" - it was entirely because of Gisele's comment that I started learning caixa, and she was totally right, it's one of the few instruments where you can jump right in with an escola, not have to learn a lot of complicated desenhos (like tamborim), not have to fight for a spot on a rare drum (like surdo). (the other best-drum-to-learn is cuica, just btw.) I thought "Bless Jorge Alabe for teaching me this caixa pattern," and, a second later "And also for teaching me how to play em cima," and then "and also for that trick with the strap for tucking the caixa under your arm," and "And Monobloco for suffering my beginner-caixa-player fumblings" and "And the Lions for polishing me up to escola tempo, like, god, remember that couple of weeks last year when I was the ONLY caixa player and I could barely keep it together and Randy was so damn patient with me?" And a dozen other people and teachers and groups who have helped me along the way like that. All those little steps and all those different people and all those groups, all contributing, all helping me get to where I was tonight.

Two hours later it was finally time to stop... We ran through all the breaks a couple more times, and finally it was over. We had officially stopped and we were just supposed to be carrying our drums upstairs to the drum storage area, but as we were all carrying the drums over there, little bursts of samba kept breaking out. A caixa player would toy with 1 measure of samba, the next caixa player would pick it up, a nearby surdo would join in, and, like a contagious virus, it would spread through all the players till it was suddenly FULL VOLUME and the WHOLE BATERIA playing, and the directors had to blow their whistles and make us all stop. Then there would be maybe one second of silence. Then some other caixa player would start dinking around and another caixa player would pick it up, and a surdo would join in, and then, suddenly FULL VOLUME and the WHOLE BATERIA and the directors blowing their whistles STOP! (This all while we are carrying our drums up the stairs) Over and over... it's hard to stop a happy bateria, you know?

Finally all the drums were put away. Me and the Germans were all standing around sort of a mute happy daze, all grinning at each other. I got chatting with a girl - I am not actually sure whether she was one of the Germans or one of the Brazilians - I think she was in a separate set of tamborim Germans that was not part of "my" Cologne delegation, but, anyway, I noticed her because she was bouncing around (literally, bouncing up and down) in excitement because she'd just gotten her official bateria card. Meaning she was going to parade in Carnaval. I couldn't help thinking "Geeeee.... wowww.... to PARADE... wouldn't that be amazing.... to actually parade in Carnaval in the Sambodromo...." The one thing I've never done here. Knowing it was impossible, because Carnaval is, of course, only two and a half weeks away.

But then again, this is a new bateria, right? And they're still learning the bossas, right? Could it maybe be possible?

My bouncing, possibly-German friend asked in Portuguese: "Are you going to parade?" and I explained "Well, of course, you know, I'd LOVE to, but it's impossible, isn't it? It's too late, isn't it?" and she said "You should ask. Why not ask?"

She looked at me very seriously for a moment and said, "You'll never parade if you don't ask."

I gathered up all my courage and approached Jonas and said "Could I possibly maybe parade? I couldn't parade, could I? Would it be possible maybe what do you think?" I am pretty shy (really!) about this sort of thing - though certain Lions will laugh when they read this, I am not naturally the pushy type - and I didn't have my subjunctives all lined up the way they should have been, and I was very nervous and it all came out very garbled. But he got the idea, and he leaned over and said something complicated and fast that included the word "agogos" - bells. What is he saying, is he saying I should play bell? What? My trilingual German friend Nana was standing right next to me, so I asked her what he had said. She looked at me with that very wry, amused Nana look (Nana is always highly entertained by the Portuguese difficulties of other gringoes) and she said "He's offering you a spot in the bateria. To parade."

(Turns out what he'd said was, 3 bell players had gone missing and skipped rehearsals - meaning there were 3 extra costumes, and 3 spots, for, say, an extra caixa player.)

OH.

Sou Cubangoooooo!!

Finding Cubango... (part 1)

Last night was one of those extremely complicated Rio evenings where I was trying to do 3 different things at once: attend Monobloco rehearsal, attend the Odilon Costa workshop, and also attend the Cubango rehearsal over in Niteroi. In classic Rio style, I'd known about none of these 3 events twenty-four hours ago. Didn't even know about the Odilon workshop had been moved to this week (from next week) till I got an emergency call from the organizers while I was at Casa Turuna with a friend (we were trying on sequinned dance bikinis, goofy Rastafarian-dreadlocks hats, pricing out headdress frameworks, feather backpieces, Carmen Miranda fruit hats... I'd just found a shelf of Roman breastplates... and a stack of the cutest little tiaras.... you know, the usual).

So I executed the following series of rapid and expensive taxi trips: Taxi down to Copacabana to Monobloco. Hand off my goofy hat and my headdress frameworks to my friend Wendy (thanks Wendy!!!) Run up to the Monobloco rehearsal, grab my precious Monobloco t-shirt (and matching flip-flops! This year the entire Monobloco bateria is being kitted out with matching purple Monobloco flip-flops), sneak out of rehearsal (I'd already cleared this with Freddy, don't worry). Taxi to Laranjeiras to attend exactly 1 hour of the Odilon Costa workshop, during which I learn a whole new caixa hold and some very useful tamborim tips. Taxi back downtown. About to hop on the ferry to Niteroi when suddenly realize I am completely out of cash. I am worried about this because I think the likelihood is high that I am going to get stranded in a distant corner of Niteroi tonight at three in the morning, and might have to take a very expensive cab back home. Run to the Citibank. Discover my Citibank card is suddenly not working... oh, that's right, it's now been precisely 30 days since I arrived in Brazil, I knew that was going to happen... (It doesn't matter if you tell Citibank in advance that you'll be travelling for more than 30 days. They freeze it after 30 days anyway.) Dash back home to grab some actual cash. Catch ANOTHER taxi to Praça XV where the ferry terminal is. Taxi gets stuck in traffic within sight of the ferry terminal It's now 8:58pm - the ferry leaves at nine - taxi's stuck behind a double-parked minivan - uh oh - I tell the taxista "I've got to run to the boat!" toss some money at him, tumble out of the taxi, RUN RUN RUN across the huge plaza. Not quite sure where I'm going but I notice two other people also running, from slightly different directions around the huge plaza, and I notice that the two vectors of their running paths converge on a certain building, so I run toward that building too. Yes! It's the ferry terminal! YAH! I found it! All 3 of us pelt up simultaneously to a long line of turnstiles, I fling a twenty-real note at the ticket taker, she shoves change and a ticket at me, I charge through the turnstiles, sprint up the ramp just as the ferry is blowing its horn, WHEW! MADE IT with a whole 30 seconds to spare!

An eerily peaceful 20-minute ferry ride through the calm Guanabara Bay... a still moment of peace in a very hectice day...I hang my head out the window, watch the planes landing at the international airport, watch an extraordinarily beautiful Mystery Building gliding past on a tiny island. Someday I will find out what the Mystery Building is. We arrive at the terminal. A flood of people pours out of the ferry and disperses in all directions around a massive avenue running along the waterfront. After another long confusing cab ride to the Cubango quadra, I finally arrive.

I'd made it! And I had also burned through an entire week's worth of cab fares! But, oh well, c'est la vie, it was worth to finally get to Cubango. Jonas wasn't there yet. The bateria hadn't started; I was in plenty of time. (I could have actually caught the next ferry, but that wouldn't have been nearly so dramatic, would it?) All the tension I'd been carrying all evening, that foreign-city tension of "I hope I get there... I'm not sure how to get there... I'm not sure where it is... I don't know where I am... I don't know how to get home..." - all of that drained away. I had made it to Cubango, and that is where I wanted to be.

How Cubango lost its bateria, and found it again

Yesterday I could see that Jonas clearly misses Mocidade - the major clue being that, when we all piled into his little car, his cd player was blaring, for the entire long ride, a recording of the Mocidade bateria from a couple years ago. (Just the bateria. No song. Just the bateria. He played it over and over. And it was ... it was IMPRESSIONANTE! INACREDITAVEL! INCRIVEL!)

But he's also clearly very proud of his Cubango players too. Here's why.

Mestre Jonas has bee mestre of Mocidade for several years, but in all the time I've known Mocidade they've been in some kind of dark, mysterious politicking that even my closest Mocidade friends do not want to tell me about. There was a great deal of commotion when the previous mestre (pre-Jonas) left Mocidade, and many players left at that time - but those that stayed really loved Jonas. Jonas was there for about, oh, five or six years maybe? Then last year, after some further mysterious politicking, Jonas left/quit/was forced out, or something, I don't really understand the details. Anyway, Jonas was out.

Simultaneously, Mestre Odilon had a big fight with the great escola Grande Rio, so serious that they actually threatened to replace him between the Carnaval parade and the Parade of Champions one week later - so that another mestre would be leading his bateria in the Parade of Champions! - and he left/quit/was forced out, accounts differ. He got offers from several other escolas but decided to take a year off.

Simultaneously, Mestre Paulinho had a falling-out with Beija-Flor. And so on and so on.This kind of thing happens every year. Rright after Carnaval there is always some argument or politicking or complication that results in at least one mestre leaving an escola, usually two or three, and there's then a cascade of switches as everybody scrambles to lure the free mestres. Troca-troca, they call it, "change-change", or "swapping around". (See Gisele's blog , the Jan 1 entry, for the full list of Especial escola mestres right now. And for a lot of other fascinating entries too.)

It's not limited to Grupo Especial. Poor Imperio Serrano had fallen to Grupo A (I am compelled to add "muito injustamente!" - very unjustly! - that being the phrase every Imperiano always adds when describing Imperio's fall. Sometimes they say it twice or three times just to be sure you get the point. So here's a few more: MUITO INJUSTAMENTE! MUITO INJUSTAMENTE! There, I feel better now.) Where was I? Imperio has always had one of the most formidable baterias in all of Rio, with the very respected Mestre Atila at the helm. But when it became clear last spring that Imperio had been forced, probably for a while, down to Grupo A, Atila finally left. (He went to Vila Isabel.) So Imperio had to recruit a new mestre, right? And they lured away a good mestre from another Grupo A escola, a man who had previously worked as Atila's second-in-command at Imperio Serrano, a man who was currently mestre a solid but not particularly famous escola over in Niteroi, an escola called... Cubango.

What often happens in these cases is that mestre's best players all go with him. Particularly in a case like this, where Imperio still had literally the best bateria in Rio, and Cubango was a much less famous escola. For many of the Cubango players, this was a golden opportunity to get into a fiercely good bateria. Almost the entire bateria left - everybody who actually knew how to play. Cubango was demolished.

The Cubango directorship must have been terrified. And then they landed Jonas. As Jonas put it, "When I arrived last spring, Cubango had no bateria."

I love what Jonas did next. He did not recruit players from other escolas. He decided to try to build a bateria from the bottom up, in 9 months, just from the Cubango community. He started open classes last June, open to the entire community, drafted several hundred young kids and trained them all from scratch. From scratch! He trained hundreds and hundreds of people in caixa, surdo, tamborim, repique, all the essentials. Almost all of the players had never played before. He's now got a bateria of 270 people that are playing "really well". And he kept saying, with unmistakable pride, "And it's all from the community! Totally from the community!" - meaning, all home-grown players from the local Cubango area, not hotshots imported in from some other escola.

Jonas also mentioned he was very relieved that the Grupo A escolas are now allowed 1 practice parade in the Sambodromo (this is a new development this year). Cubango's was in December. He said: "That was SO important, SO useful. Most of my players have never, never, paraded in the Sambodromo. Some not even in an ala - many had literally never set foot there, didn't even know what the Sambodromo looked like!"

At the table with us while Jonas was telling this story was a young teenager from Cubango who'd first picked up a caixa last June and who, two weeks from now, is going to parade down the Avenida, in the Sambodromo, in an incredible glittering outfit dressed up as a French courtier of the 17th century, on national TV. (Grupo A is now televised nationally.) The kid had said almost nothing for the entire conversation and had shyly declined my offer of a bolinho-de-bacalhau. But then later when Jonas said "And Leonardo here is going to play caixa," I asked him "You play caixa?" Shy nod. "You just learned this year?" Shy nod. "Truly? You're serious? You learned to play caixa in just 9 months?" This time: Big smile! (I think he could see that I was truly impressed and that I knew how much work this must have taken. I don't know how well he's playing, but stick technique is a formidable hurdle, and it usually takes two years to get a new caixa player up to escola tempo.)

And then he finally got brave enough, or comfortable enough, to accept a bolinho-de-bacalhau. With another big smile.

So tonight I will take the ferry across the bay to Niteroi to check out the Cubango technical rehearsal. Now I just have to figure out where that ferry leaves from... and how to find Nana, who knows where the ferry is, but who apparently has her cell phone turned off... and how I can possibly also get hold of my required Mocidade t-shirt (which is my ticket to parade with them), which is being given out on the same night over in Copacabana.... hmm.....

Cubango and Monobloco

I knew when I planned this trip that I wouldn't have quite enough time to join up with any escolas. I'd be arriving just five weeks before Carnaval, really. That's just not enough time to connect with an escola and earn your spot. And I chose to spend my first two weeks almost exclusively with Bangalafumenga and attending Suzano's pandeiro workshops. The consequence, and I knew it when I was making it, was that I would not be able to play with any escolas, and few other blocos - certainly not the highly organized ones like Monobloco.

I was fine with that decision. Really I was. The Suzano workshop has completely transformed my pandeiro life and is probably the single most useful thing I'll do in the entire trip here. Banga is fantastic, and Banga is my family too, and I had the most amazing time playing with them on Saturday.

So it's one thing to be all logical about it, and it turns out it is quite another thing to see several different friends parading down the Sambodromo, this last Saturday and Sunday, and playing with Monobloco too, and.... suddenly a little voice was saying... oh, dang, I REALLY want to play with an escola! And oh dang, I REALLY want to play at the huge annual Monobloco parade again too! (even though I've already done both. Yeah, I guess I'm an addict...)

But it's too late. It's less than three weeks till Carnaval. The escolas are locking down, closing the outsiders out. Even Grupo A is virtually impossible to get into now. Monobloco closed its bateria over a month ago. Plus all my best escola contacts have evaporated anyway: Odilon's not with any escola this year (he's taking a year off); the mestre I knew at Estacio is gone; a friend, or I thought she was a friend, in Unidos da Tijuca gave me a total, completely cold-shoulder brush-off when I tried to say hi! Total snub! Ouch! (oops, guess that was one Brazilian friendship that I misjudged. Sigh) Etc. etc. .... Even all my Grupo A contacts had fallen through. And my best lead, Mestre Jonas, has left Mocidade and gone to some distant hell-and-gone Grupo A escola that I'd never heard of, clear across the Bay, so far away you'd need to take a ferry to get there, some place called Cubango.

So I spent late Sunday evening in a total funk. Moping around... Second guessing all my plans and wishing I'd planned things differently... wishing I'd somehow, impossibly, been able to arrive here in November. Or October.

Monday morning I woke up freakishly early after just a few hours of sleep. Popped awake full of energy. I suddenly thought: why am I ruling out Monobloco? I'm a pretty good caixa player now, and actually I still remember the entire Monobloco repertoire. Might as well ask, right?

And then I thought: Why am I ruling out Mestre Jonas at Cubango? He knows me; he knows I can play. Why not at least go see what Cubango is like?

First problem, how to contact them. I shot off 2 emails: one to the a friend in England who I thought might be able to contact the Monobloco caixa leader. He came through almost instantly (THANKS MICK) and a few hours later I was writing an email to Fred, the Monobloco caixa leader, just saying: hey, I'm back in town, just wondering what the situation is with Monobloco, any chance I could play??? One to another friend from the US who I was thought might know how to reach Mestre Jonas.

God bless the internet (and god bless my two friends for checking their email that morning) - Freddy, bless his heart, replied almost immediately. He said, come to rehearsal tonight in Copacabana; most of the pieces are still the same; but there's a lot of new stuff, and the Monobloco bateria's more crowded than it has ever been, not sure if I can parade, but "I'll check with the guys." But definitely drop on by.

Cool.

A few minutes later my other friend replies: he says, guess what, I'm meeting Mestre Jonas at 4pm at such-and-such bar [a bar only a few blocks from my place!] for a chat; drop on by.

So I went charging down to the bar, hooked up w my buddy, and we're sitting there waiting for Jonas but instead his assistant shows up to fetch us and take us to Cubango's "barracao", i.e. a big warehouse where an escola makes its parade floats. Turns out Jonas didn't quite have time to come meet us after all (gee, why would an escola mestre be busy 2 weeks before Carnaval?) but he sent his assistant to fetch us instead. Next thing you know the three of us are all in a cab rocketing northward to Rio's warehouse district by the docks, which at this time of year is the float-construction district. Seems like every other warehouse in central Rio belongs to, or is being rented by, one of the 50-odd escolas, every warehouse packed with construction workers whipping together the last details on the floats as quickly as possible.

And next thing you know we're inside the Cubango barracao! And THERE'S JONAS! So good to see him again! A big welcoming hug (phew, that definitely takes the edge off the brush-off from the other friend last night!) and then he's leading us on a merry course through the barracao. Zigzagging around guys with welding torches, hopping over piles of festively colored, peculiarly shaped glittery whatzits, dodging sparks, hopping over half-built plaster horses, crawling under floats, weaving around sacks and sacks and sacks of bateria costumes, stacks of brand-new drums....

.... Walking in awe past huge, silent floats, looming dark in the shadows, wedged in every possible corner of the warehouse, filling up every inch of space clear to the ceilings. Some floats completely finished and lovelingly draped in protective plastic, others still a whirl of welding and glue-gun activity. We step over the edge of the Abre-Alas, the opening float, the one that has Cubango's name. It's a huge green arch that says CUBANGO in huuuuge letters, with crazy little blue spheres dangling from it. I love it. I love Cubango already and I don't even know anything about Cubango yet.

One wall is papered with a huge detailed sketch of the entire parade, to scale, with every float lovingly drawn, spaced out from each other just as they will be in the parade, all the paraders sketched in, the porta-bandeira and her flag sketched in, the bateria, everybody. (At this point I was so fascinated I could not refraining from bursting out with a bunch of questions: "How many floats are there? How many is typical for a Grupo A parade? How many paraders? How big is the bateria? What the heck is that costume supposed to be? Wow, that one's beautiful! " Jonas is nothing if not patient: "We have 5 floats; 4 is the required minimum for Grupo A. We've got 2000 paraders, and 270 people in the bateria. Hm, now that you mention it, I really have no idea what that costume is, but yes, that other one sure is pretty!")

I was absolutely beside myself to see a real Grupo A barracao and the floats all under construction. (tip to the tourists: you can actually see the Grupo Especial floats under construction too, if you go to the Cidade do Samba, ask nice, and don't try to take any pictures. I saw Mangueira's nearly-completed floats last week there - fascinating.)

Then we spent the whole rest of the afternoon hanging out with Jonas and his buds, drinking beer (it was socially required, truly) and eating the little bolinho-de-bacalhau, breaded codfish; talking about music, talking shop.... So fascinating to hear Jonas's take on what it means to be a mestre. And so fascinating to hear the saga of changing from Mocidade to Cubango. More on that next.

So you know where this is headed right? I'm heading out to Cubango tomorrow night, taking the ferry across the bay to Niteroi to check out the Cubango technical rehearsal. And yeah, I got an invitation to play.

But the getting-to-play was starting to seem beside the point. You know what really made my day: that feeling of belonging. Getting to see the barracao. Chatting with the guys who were putting all the stuff together. Getting that warm welcome from Jonas. Hanging out with him and all his friends from Cubango. Getting the warm good-bye from the whole bunch of them afterwards, even the ones I'd just met. That's what I'd been missing - that feeling of being part of it, part of the excitement, part of the community. Never mind about the playing. It's the community that matters. That's what escolas are all about, after all.

.... And then, I headed over to Monobloco. (feeling weirdly like I was cheating on Banga, cause this is Banga's rehearsal night too! ouch! But this is the only Monday I'm going to miss with Banga! I swear!) And LO AND BEHOLD every single damn one of the Monobloco directors came up and gave me a big huge welcome. "Good to have you back!" "Great to see you again!" Welcome back!" Easily the warmest welcome I've had yet - I was actually pretty startled. (the brush-off from that Tijuca friend is getting more and more distant... you know, I can barely even remember it....it's just about gone... poof) I'd sort of forgotten that the Monobloco guys saw me not that long ago in England. And - the Monobloco guys tour internationally. I think maybe they understand, more than a lot of Brazilians do, what it is like to be in a foreign country, what it is like to be lost and a little confused, stumbling in a foreign language. They know what it's like. And they really made an effort tonight to make me feel welcome. And you better believe it was appreciated.

Then Fred came up and said "I talked to the guys, and you can parade with us. You're in."

How to talk like Marcos Suzano

All this week I've been attending a great advanced-pandeiro workshop by the world-renowned Marcos Suzano. 2 hours every night from 9 to 11pm. (Kind of puts a crimp in any other plans for the evening... had to skip most of Monobloco's rehearsal Tuesday, and Rocinha Wednesday... but it's been SO worth it). (Week after next is Odilon Costa, if anyone is interested. It's all part of Maracatu Brasil's regular summer series of week-long workshops with percussion masters.). Suzano totally remembered me, which was kind of cool ("Kathleen!!! You're back!") - I always sort of assume that everybody will have completely forgotten me, so it's awfully nice to be remembered and welcomed back! )

Half the fun of a Suzano workshop is listening to him recount stories of all the crazy people he's met and the wonderful playing he's seen. He's one of those voraciously curious musicians who loves all kinds of music, from all over the world, of all types of other genres. He appreciates good playing, or just a good deep groove, wherever he finds it - Turkish sufi music, New Orleans second-line grooves, Parisian jazz, whatever and wherever it is. Thus his workshops tend to provide good Portuguese lessons in all the different possible ways to say "Man, that guy was amazing!"

This is particularly helpful for those of us gringos, as beginning Portuguese students, who often get into a frustrating fix where we have only 1 or 2 ways to say "good". I once saw Jorge Alabe do a deadly accurate impression of a gringo saying earnestly, in a very thick accent, "Eu fui a Mangueira ontem. Foi muito bom! Foi MUITO, MUITO BOM!" (I went to Mangueira yesterday. It was very good! It was very, very good!"). You get tired of saying a show was "very good" when that doesn't really express the kind of truly impressed, enthusiastic compliment that you really want to be able to give.

So, Suzano to the rescue. I started jotting down his adjectives as well as his pandeiro patterns and came up with the following list. Want to talk like Suzano? Mix 'n' match:

-------------------------
"There was this one time I saw this group that had..." [select from following list]
1. a tuba, a trombone, an accordion and a pandeiro
2. just a beat-up old "kit favela" (favela drumkit) - made of half a surdo, and a caixa played with a tamborim beater
3. most of the London Sympathy Orchestra
4. 3 atabaques, 3 caxixas and this crazy 7-string bass player
5. An ancient cassette tape that must have been about 50 years old, and a bunch of old singers grouped around just 1 microphone
6. A Wii video game controls interfaced with a music sampler and a surround-sound 360-degree music system
7. A bunch of guys dunking different-sized buckets into water to make different pitches of "plop" noises
8. Twelve pandeiro players and 3 basses
9. One guy with a gigantic frame drum that had so many strange little metal things on the inside, it looked a project of Leonardo da Vinci
10. A whole parade of ancient guys marching down a hill, emerging out of this wall of black smoke, carrying some kind of enormous frame drums and a strange shaker, at a festival in the Northeast

"and they were playing..."
1. A samba, but it was in 3
2. A Turkish rhythm in 9
3. Stevie Wonder's "Superstition"
4. Old Bob Marley tunes
5. This crazy baile-funk tune by this new dj kid from the Northeast
6. Michael Jackson's "Thriller"
7. Those wonderful old pagode songs from Martinho da Vila
8. a candomble religious trance rhythm to summon the ancient African god of fire
9. The theme song from Mission Impossible
10. A Cuban guaguanco

"and it was..." (here's the Portuguese lesson):
1. Sensacional! (sensational)
2. Inacreditável! (unbelievable) For the full Suzano effect, enunciate every syllable: "EEN-AH-CRE-JEE-TA-VEU!!!!"
3. Espetacular! (spectacular). Or rather, "ESH-PE-TA-KOO-LAHH!!!!"
4. Uma loucura! (a craziness)
5. Incrível! (incredible)
6. Sinistro! (sinister - I hadn't heard this one before but it was used several times, both by Suzano and his students - I'm assuming it comes across as one of those inverse-meaning slang compliments, something like "wicked" or "sick")
7. Impressionante! (impressive)
8. Alucinante! (crazy)
9. Chocante! ("shocking" in the sense of amazing, stunning)
10. Maluco! (insane)
11. Legal pra caramba! (roughly: super-cool)

There you go. Now when you start your sentence, "I went to Mangueira last night..." you'll have a few more choices for how to finish it up. (Though personally I would finish that particular sentence with "... and it was OK", saving my superlatives for Salgueiro and Beija-Flor and Viradouro, but maybe that's just me. The Mangueira bateria rocks but you can't see OR hear them at their Saturday rehearsals.)

PS One of the Suzano stories came out like this: "Then there's that amazing pandeiro player Carlinhos Pandeiro de Ouro, you guys know him? He lives in the US now, I think, Los Angeles or something. You kids haven't seen him? You gotta see him! Man, that cat is INCREDIBLE! UN-BE-LIE-VABLE playing!" - Cool to hear our beloved LA pandeiro guru praised by the master of modern funk pandeiro.

Bloco Vigario

Tremendously exhausting Monday evening, with 4 hours solid of Bangalafumenga rehearsals that left me completely staggering with fatigue by the end. I'm on repique this time in Banga and I was playing all out, forgetting that I don't usually wear drums with shoulder straps, and forgetting that I haven't played repique in over a year, and at the end my back was burning and my left wrist has been sore ever since. Worth it though... how I love playing with those guys.

After that, a brief chat with JP and another new friend I ran into in Banga, a great Italian drummer called Andre. The brief chat somehow went till 2am (JP and I were both completely startled when the restaurant closed - we'd been sure it was maybe midnight at the most?). It's especially nice having Andre in the mix because it keeps JP and me talking in Portuguese instead of lapsing into English. Andre recommended that we all go see Bloco Vigario, playing at the Teatro Odisseia on Monday nights. He said it was directed by the guy who plays repique at Viradouro. (A language tangent occurred here: What do you call someone who plays repique? A "repiqueiro?" A "repiquista"? We weren't sure) and that it was a very good bloco. (Off in the middle of some other sentence, Andre suddenly remembered and interrupted: You just call the repique player the "repique"! As in, "Have you seen the repique of Viradouro? He's very good.")

I wasn't too excited about going and seeing another bloco after 4 hours already in Banga. Honestly, there are a zillion blocos around these days, a lot of them good, some not so good, and I've seen quite a lot of superb repique players. So JP and I decided to pack it in, JP hopped a cab back to his place in Zona Sul. But JP happened to flag down his cab in a spot where I then had to pass the Teatro Odisseia on my walk home. So as I was walking past the Odisseia, I couldn't help but overhear a stunning repique solo going on inside...and next thing I knew I was inside. Hey, it was only 2:15am, right? Still one and a half hours left in the show, probably!

OK, so the Bloco Vigario left me floored. Damn, this place is still so full of amazing things that I still don't know about! Bloco Vigario is from Niteroi, a city across the Bay from central Rio, and Niteroi apparently has its whole own thing going on. Vigario uses the same Monobloco/Banga model, of a small professional group that does regular shows, and that also trains up a larger bateria by running classes all year. Like Monobloco and Banga they seem to have accumulated a fanatic fan club of mostly white, middle-class cariocas, and also like MB/Banga, they do quite a variety of rhythms that have a rock/funk/pop tinge. But Vigario stood out for several reasons. They've got a particularly strong Pernambuco influence including a lot of maracatu rhythms. They've got a really nice brass section. They've got CRAZY energy and enthusiasm. I don't think I've ever seen quite so crazy a bloco! and I've seen a lot of crazy blocos! Including the fanatic fans - around 3:30am I made the mistake of trying to sit down for a moment and immediately a girl raced over to me, grabbed my hands and physically DRAGGED me to FRONT ROW CENTER to make me dance. The whole crowd watching, of course! She was thrilled that I was actually willing to dance and then was completely startled when I actually could samba (I'm not great, but I can do a standard samba) (and the whole crowd cheered to see the gringa samba!). She then raced over to another person who was sitting down. I watched for a while as she patrolled the perimeter of the hall like a bulldog, always on the lookout for somebody who wasn't dancing. She was truly a force to reckon with.

And the bloco had us doing games with them, racing back and forth on the floor, crouching down and leaping up, making giant conga lines... people were just jumping around like maniacs at the end, truly Carnaval spirit all the way. I thought, in the US, people try to act too cool to want to join in. In Brazil, people never seem to lose that childish joy of just plain jumping around. Here, it's actually cooler to dance badly, even if you look like an idiot, than to not dance at all.

And last, their playing. OK, so, Vigario plays like bats out of hell. And their samba is the real thing. After all, their leader is the repique of Viradouro, remember? I looked him up later - Gabrial Policarpo, just 22 years old. He's been playing with Viradouro since he was 10. The guy is a monster. He rips on pandeiro too.

Here's a nice clip of Gabriel doing a repique-pandeiro duet with one of my favorite pandeiro players, Bernardo Aguiar:


Bloco Vigario, every Monday at the Odisseia, and a parade in Niteroi on the Saturday of Carnaval. Click here for Vigario's website. Highly recommended!!!!

O Globo Carnaval videos online

Four years ago I remember wishing this would happen, and it's finally happened: O Globo is putting most of their Carnaval-related videos online in streaming video. I hope you don't need to be using a Brazilian server to access it (somebody let me know, ok?) though you might need to do a free registration. Here's how to find it:
- Go to oglobo.globo.com
- click on "Videos" at the top, Sometimes you then have click on "veja mais videos" (see more videos) to see the full list of videos. And sometimes not.
- From there you can choose any category you want - news, novelas (soaps), whatever.
- For just Carnaval-related stuff, click on "mais catalogos de jornalismo" in the left, and then Carnaval 2010 or Carnaval Historico, whichever you prefer. It's worth taking a look at the other categories too, especially if you're at a stage with your Portuguese where you can start to follow the news shows and the novelas.

PRESTO! All the Carnaval videos your little heart desires! Search on your favorite escola name (Salgueiro, Unidos da Tijuca, etc.) to pull up more clips. If you know some Portuguese, you might like the clips introducing each escola that O Globo's been doing over the past several months. These typically start with the carnavaleso of each escola explaining the theme of the parade, and then a visit to the community, with interviews with luminaries like the mestre or the porta-bandeira, and finally, a small band (with puxador, main singer) singing the entire song complete with lyrics. Here's Unidos da Tijuca: (and yes, the mestre of Tijuca's bateria of Unidos da Tijuca really is a taxi driver. Come over to Lapa sometime and pick up the tall gringa with the pandeiro case, buddy!!!):


Fans of samba dance and elaborate passista costumes should be sure to search for "Musa do Carnaval 2010", the TV competition for best dancer to be the Muse of Carnaval 2010. There are two competitions, one for Sao Paulo and one for Rio ("Musa do Carnaval 2010 RJ"). These take place on the TV show "Caldeirao de Huck". I ran across this while sitting in a restaurant last week - they were doing the semifinals for the Sao Paulo Musa, and I picked this girl as the one of the better samba dancers. Not because of fancy footwork, just because she's just got a nice classic samba. (At the time I couldn't hear the audio, but now I notice that the female judge said the exact same thing - You've got a nice classic samba.) What do you think, do you like her? (I also like her hat) Be patient, she will do a fast samba at the end of the clip:

I know what you are all thinking: NICE HAT! :) I won't tell you yet what happened in the voting. (It's now down to 2 contestants, who will meet next week in the big final). You can find clips of all the other contestants too (warning, O Globo's search engine apparently only searches on the title of the clip, and the title doesn't always include "Musa do Carnaval". But if you can find one of the clips, related clips will pop up on the right side with the other dancers.)

I especially have to point out this clip of a professional ballet dancer dancing samba en pointe !!! I never would have thought this was even possible! With the occasional full split thrown in, just in case it wasn't difficult enough already. (she also says during the interview part that yes, she is planning to do the full Carnaval parade en pointe, and also that she wears a corset 12 hours a day to keep her waist thin enough for the professional ballet world... yeesh)


I notice that American jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan somehow got on the judge's panel for the Sao Paolo show. He doesn't speak Portuguese but seems to be fully in the spirit of things - his only question for one of the more impressive contestants was (in English) "Do you need guitar lessons?" The host translated, and she said she'd study guitar with him if he'd dance for her, which of course he promptly did. Smart guy.

Brief report from the back end of the Sambodromo

Ah, it's 1:30 in the morning, late Sunday morning, and I have to get up ridiculously early to meet a Brazilian friend for a Pilates class (how did I agree to that? It seemed like a good idea five days ago....). But I just have to report briefly that I had the most amazing encounter with the Grande Rio bateria at midnight tonight, with my friend JP from London, as the wrapup for a phenomenal Sambodromo evening. (Sao Clemente, Viradouro, Grande Rio). I'd had quite the Sao Clemente adventure on my own, then JP found me shortly before Viradouro (stunning - this bateria really bowled us over), and then, with Grande Rio, we saw the warmup, then ran around to the Setor 11 recuo and saw them there, then ran around to the end of the Sambodromo and met the entire bateria coming off the parade runway.

Thousands and thousands of people there, at the back end of the runway, and we were THE ONLY gringos there. The massive crowd of Grande Rio revelers had all gathered there to greet the bateria. Sometimes the last bateria of the evening puts on a whole nother show back there, at the end of the parade, at the back end of the runway, as sort of a wild last-call celebration at the very end of the night before everybody piles onto all their buses to head back home. And we were in luck, Grande Rio was pulling out all the stops for us. The bateria put on a whole huge show for us, all their breaks, everything. JP and I were pressed up RIGHT next to the bateria, right smack in their faces, scrambling to get out of their way actually. Unbelievable. (will post vids and mp3s later.)

We were so thrilled we stayed and stayed and stayed... to beyond the bitter end... we watched the bateria pack up... talked to the beer vendors... chatted... chatted some more... waved goodbye to the each and every bus of Grande Rio paraders heading back on their long, long journey back to Duque to Caxias... then just as I was thinking "Is it too drum-geeky to suggest that we go look at the drums close up?", JP suggested that we go look at the drums close up. We looked at the drums close up (an entire brand-new set of drums, all King brand! Interesting, King is definitely stealing some market share from Artcelsior.) (Plus timbals! I even took a photo to document it. Grande Rio not only has a timbal section but even has a break that features the timbals).

Eventually, even we had to concede that the night was over. JP and I were the very, very, very last people out the back gate of the Sambodromo. The security guys were actually swinging the giant gate shut as we sprinted up to it - swinging shut with quite a lot of momentum, so that the 6 security guys had to all fling themselves against it in a full-body throw to slow it down enough (with much yelling and cheering) for us to dash through. We squeaked through, and got out, and they slammed the gate shut (another huge cheer). And we headed back to our respective homes.

Such a fine night. And I haven't even written yet about Xuxa's party that afternoon, and the amazing experience of watching Sao Clemente prep for their Sambodromo rehearsal (I'm just glad I wasn't one of the guys who had to carry the giant ten-foot tall papier-mache sea lions on their shoulders all the way from the quadra!).... and oh, the Viradouro bateria, that's a whole nother story.

I'll wrap up with just this one vignette from Sao Clemente. I'd played there several times, three years ago, and didn't think anybody would remember me. But the mestre (Vivi) spotted me and zoomed over to give me a huuuuuuuge long bear hug! Like, a HUGE hug. Apparently he remembers me.

But all he said to me was: "Sumiu!"("You disappeared!"). Meaning, why hadn't I come and played during the last two and a half years?

I was stunned he would even remember me, let alone that he would have noticed that I'd vanished.

I said (in Portuguese) "I had to return to the United States to work for a while," but it sounded like a flimsy excuse even as I was saying it. I could see what he was thinking, and I was thinking the same thing: what on earth had made me think it was a good idea to return to the United States, when I could have been playing samba with Sao Clemente?

More Salgueiro vids

Some more Salgueiro videos.... Sound quality sucks on all of these (due to the generall suckiness of the sound quality of every single amplified event here in Rio. How do they put up with this??! I wonder if the sound guys think the "clip" light is supposed to stay on constantly). And I had to turn the resolution down to get them to upload. But I think you get the idea. (if you're getting this blog via email you might need to go to the actual blog website if you want to see the vids. not sure. The blog is at riostories.blogspot.com)

The second row of passistas struts their stuff:


A male passista shows his best moves to O Globo TV:


A girl passista is next with O Globo:


Check out the teeny passista up front:


I happened to get a long sequence of the girl in the white bra-type top. She has a nice smooth style.


Another vid of a male passista. I love that double spin that the guys do! Sorry for the rough cut in the middle, I clipped out some of the more noninteresting stuff.


The bateria. I couldn't get any closer than this because I couldn't turn the gain down on my camera mic, but I think you can just make out the tamborim desenho.

Four Quests in Uruguaiana

Those who live in foreign countries know the peculiar problem of not knowing where to buy a certain kind of item. You don't know the local stores, you don't know the brand names, and what seemed like a simple task at the beginning of a day (say, buying a sponge) ends up taking a week of detective work and a National-Geographic-scale expedition into the city's back-alley economy. A peculiarity of developing nations seems to be an extreme abundance of very tiny shops that each only sell 1 kind of item, or what I call a Sponge Economy - named after an eventful day in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when my friend Rikki and I set out innocently one morning, looking for a sponge. It turned out supermarkets in Plovdiv did not sell sponges. Nor did any other kind of store we could think of. After many hours of exploration we at last found a district lined with tiny shops that each only sold one thing. Electrical connectors.. or biscuits...or, sponges! At last we'd found the sponge store!!!! It was infinitesimal shop that sold all sponges, and only sponges, apparently supplying the entire city of Plovdiv with all of its sponge needs. Many of my memories of Lima, Peru, are of similar exciting adventures like the The Day We Needed A Button, or the Day We At Last Found The Correct Electrical Adaptor. Recently in Salvador I experienced a Quest For A Small Kitchen Table (that quest lasted three full days!)

Sometimes you feel like King Arthur heading out after the Holy Grail... but you soon make so many funny mistakes that you realize you're in the Monty Python version of the story. ("Go away or I shall taunt you a second time!") These are often my favorite memories of travelling - wandering the little street markets, the back alleys, inspecting all the little shops, getting completely lost, getting found, getting lost, and then... finally... magically finding the item you've been searching for.

Anyway, today in Rio I set out with 4 quests: (1) Buy a computer headset, i.e. earphones & microphone, so that I can use Skype on my computer (this is part of a longer two-week Quest to attempt to re-gain access to my university email account, a process so complicated it is not worth explaining here) (2) Buy some more Brazilian movies to practice my Portuguese, (3) Look for a toaster, (4) - I knew this would be the hardest - look for a cheap roll-up foam mattress. So I spent the afternoon of Rio wandering through my favorite section of the city, the endless warren of shops in the back alleys of the Uruguaiana neighborhood. A lot of these streets are closed to traffic, and are lined overhead with festive colorful banners. The effect is of wandering endlessly through a colorful world full of strange little shops.

I was walking past the VERY FIRST STALL when I realized it was a stall specializing in ... headphones! Including computer headphones with microphones! Can you believe it! Bought one. Quest 1, completed.

I started wandering... past... an entire store selling only tiny, intricate, lovely baskets of wicker; a store completely full of chickens; another of live canaries; a store full of huge bins of all kinds of nuts and dried beans of all types (also including two food items representing the Brazilian's Portuguese heritage: a vast bin of European chestnuts and huge stacks of dried Atlantic cod. Both of which Brazilians love, and both of which are not remotely native to Brazil.) Another store completely full of silly hats. Another with millions of teeny-tiny cupcake wrappers in all possible colors. Shop after shop after shop with pretty little tops and dresses, sandals, watches, brooms, furniture...

Ooo! I'd been looking at the shops so intently that I had realized the middle of the street was a solid row of guys selling pirated dvd's! The pirated-dvd sellers have large racks lined with blurry xerox pictures of the films that they have available. The dvd guys are extremely attentive, leaping at you as soon as you pause infinitesimally in your strolling, especially if you glance for a millisecond at a dvd. "Can I help you? Anything in particular you're looking for? Children's movies? Action? Don't look at that rack, that's, that's all for guys. Perhaps you'd like a new movie? Avatar? 2012?" They had a pirated version of Avatar available literally the day after it came out in the theaters - unbelievable.

I asked the first fellow for "filmes nacionais" - national films, meaning, Brazilian films. This always sort of takes them by surprise, since most movies sold are American movies. But they're always pleased at the inverse concept of an American who's interested in Brazilian movies. He'd only got two, but he pulled them out to show me, then went sprinting off (literally sprinting) down the block, calling out "Wait! Wait right here!" Five minutes later he came running back with a freshly-burned pirated copy of "Tropa de Elite" (Elite Troop), the famous recent Brazilian movie about the military police in the favelas of Rio. (my friend Olivia was assistant director on this movie!). I've seen the American version but don't own my own copy, and I'd like to have it, so - I buy Tropa de Elite. I also picked up a documentary on favelas, and "Lula," the fictionalized account of the childhood of the man who is now president of Brazil. 3 movies for 20 reais! (about 13 bucks.) Fechado! (It's a deal!)

I wandered a long way, took one too many turns and got promptly lost. Eventually I came out into the costume-accessories street, where people buy all the raw materials to make those crazy passista outfits and other Carnaval costumes. Rio's Carnaval supports a huge year-long economy of rhinestone, bead and feather vendors, not to mention the costume designers and float builders who are actually putting all the stuff together. Do the math - there are 12 escolas just in Grupo Especial, each with about 4000 paraders, each wearing an elaborately gorgeous costume - that's 48,000 costumes just for Grupo Especial! And there are 5 other groups of escolas, each with 10-12 escolas, each with thousands of paraders. The other escolas have fewer than 4000 paraders apiece, sure, but I'll bet it all adds up to at least 200,000 costumes total. All used on 1 weekend and all immediately discarded afterwards. So... it's a serious economic force. There are whole factories that specialize in mass-producing the wire frames for the enormous headdresses and backpieces, making the shoes, stamping out the plastic molds of crowns, wings, breastplates, props, and the other structural elements. There's a huge shop that just sells colored feathers - acres and acres of feathers of all styles, lengths and colors. Several more stores sell glittery spools of rhinestones and beads of every possible color and size, vast racks of thousands of different kinds of rhinestones and baubles. A dozen stores in a row that all sell bolts of glittering metallic fabrics. And enough feather-boa stores to supply a feather boa to every man, woman and child in the city.

Astonishingly, most of these costumes are discarded right after the parades - literally, at a huge pile of abandoned costumes that materializes at the end of the Sambodromo runway after the first few parades. A tip to anybody looking for a beautiful costumes: There are a few standardized glittery-bikini outfits that you can buy at a few shops (Casa Turuna), but if you want a really amazing and truly unique outfit, do what the Finns do: Get a garbage bag, stand at the end of the Sambodromo runway and scavenge through that amazing pile of costume pieces for all the raw materials your little heart desires! (The Finn's annual Helsinki Carnaval is famous for its astonishing costumes, and I was just recently told by a new Finnish friend that that is how they do it: A small army of Finnish sambistas comes every year and scavenges the costume discard pile, ships the best finds home, and then builds new outfits from scratch with the pieces. I'm hoping to join them this year.)

I could have spent forever in the costume stores. It's sort of overwhelming, actually - I think you need to already have a costume idea in mind to shop at those stores effectively. Otherwise you end up, or at least I end up, just sitting in a huge pile of rainbow-colored pheasant feathers and ostrich plumes, waving the feathers around with a vacant expression on your face and thinking "I bet I could make some kind of cool outfit with two dozen of these feathers... no, with THOSE feathers... no, wait, THOSE FEATHERS OVER THERE are EVEN BETTER FEATHERS..."

Got to get my wits back together. Quit it with the feathers - my bands hardly ever wear costumes anyway. (wahh.) Focus. Got to focus. Toaster and roll-up mattress. Get out of the feather store. FOCUS ON THE QUEST.

I wondered what the word for "toaster" might be. I knew that a "mangueira" is a tree that grows mangos (mangas), and a "laranjeira" is a tree that grows laranjas (oranges), and I knew that a piece of toast was a "torrada". So on the theory that a toaster sort of grows toast, I thought that a toaster might be a "torradeira". Wouldn't you know it, next thing I found was a cluster of appliance stores. I went in and - there was a sign for Torradeiras! Toasters! I'd found them! 35 reais for a nice little toaster. Ding, third quest completed.

Onward with the quest. Roll-up mattress, the hardest element of my quest, the Holy Grail. Would I succeed? Not immediately because I next got sidetracked by a street of bakeries! Oh dear. Actually I'd been passing bakeries all along - Brazilians have a terrific sweet tooth, and about every third store is a bakery - but suddenly they started all calling my name, if you know what I mean. Then came the happy and dangerous discovery that I live walking distance from a place with the most delicious teas-and-pastries, the "Casa Cave". I was helplessly sucked in for a cafe-com-leite, a delicious little fruit salad and a gigantic, incredibly good French pastry. Later I wandered into an interesting street that alternated bakeries with tiny gyms - I guess the idea was, you could have a pastry, go next door to a gym and work out till you'd burned it off, go on to the next bakery and have another pastry, move to the next gym and burn that one off, etc. Luckily since I'd just been to the Casa Cave I managed get past four bakeries in a row (Paradise Of Honey, Cookie Point, Chocolate Show, and House of Goodness) without disaster. Whew, close call.

It was 6pm. All the stores were closing. I'd been walking for hours, had done a big convoluted loop and was almost back where I'd started. It was starting to rain, big fat raindrops, people whipping out their umbrellas. Several dozen umbrella salesmen magically appeared out of nowhere. (where had they been hiding? Did the dvd guys suddenly toss away the dvds and pull out a hidden stash of umbrellas?) There was one last store that hadn't quite closed yet - I glanced inside and it was: A foam store. Okay, whatever.

WAIT WAIT WAIT, a FOAM store, as in, foam mattresses! I went in and found a huge shelf at the back full of... ROLL-UP FOAM MATTRESSES AND YOGA MATS! They even had vast rolls of yoga mat material that you can buy by the yard. Wow.

I didn't buy one yet - just wanted to price them out - but it sure felt good to just find them! I tottered home with my various purchases through a cooling rain. Anything you want, you can find in Uruguaina. And it's so fun there - the bustling, the thousands of people streaming all around, the chattering, the attentive salespeople... you get such a sense of how hard people are working, how entrepreneurial everybody is. There's a reason Brazil's economy is one of the few in the world that is booming right now, and it's all on display here at the Uruguaiana market.