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!!!!