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:

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"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.