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."