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.....