Brazil Log Weeks 10-11: May 2-May 12, 2007

It’s the middle of May and I just have 2 weeks left here, so I’m in a kind of limbo, trying to still be in the glorious present while my mind is gently being tugged back to the life I’m about to resume in Providence. I’m not sad, except in those particular moments when I look around me and suddenly realize that this will soon be gone. It happens especially at band practice, but also just walking by the water in Urca on a sunny afternoon. The problem with this wonderful world I have created is that it is not my life, and so it will end. I always knew that, but it doesn’t make it easier. My friends here realize that I’ll soon be gone so their hugs are longer and they keep coming up with more things for us to do — impossible numbers of things. But I realize it’s a gesture and appreciate the fact that they will miss me too. The trick is to be happy these next two weeks and appreciate what is here now.

May 2 was a Wednesday, so this log starts with my lesson with Joel. It’s an important one where I suddenly “get” a point he’s been making about left-hand technique, and also get a chance to make a point about the difference between his ornaments and Baroque ornaments. He’s working on a mvt. of the Vivaldi 2-mando concerto that he’s about to record with Hamilton. He asks me about one of the ornaments, and he’s doing it in a historically incorrect way so it sounds awkward, I show him how it’s supposed to be and he starts to correct my trill technique, but I stick to my guns & get him to do it my way. We’ll see if I’ve convinced him when the recording comes out. I’ve changed my strings to the Brazilian Roxiol, and my instrument sounds noticeably louder and brighter. It’s also much easier to do the pull-offs with the unwound A string. When Taxipaulo arrives back to pick me up he comes in with a piece of music he’s written down from an old recording, and Joel grabs his guitar so we can play it. I hand Paulo my camera and he gets this marvelous pic that I will treasure always.

Thursday I go to Centro to meet Paulo Sa for his bandolim class. Afterwards I find my way over to Circo Voador to get tickets for Friday’s concert by Tom Ze. Brinsley & Alex (minha filha y o namorado d’ela) are arriving Friday morning early, and we’re planning to meet Nate’s friend Lizza there. For those of you who don’t know, Tom Ze is one of the founding fathers of tropicalismo and, at 70, is a vehement nationalist and still rocking plenty hard, as we were about to see. Tickets in hand (I got mine for half price with my student ID — is Brasil a great country or what!), I return to the Carioca metro station to meet my friend Sergio for coffee and a musical chat.

Friday morning very early TaxiPaulo picks me up to drive to the airport. B&A arrive looking gringo-pale but cheery, and we have a hilarious if long drive back to Urca speaking portu-glish in the mess of morning rush hour traffic. I’ve got them booked in a room at the Urca hostel — just around 2 corners from me. They nap, visit my place, and we take a bus to Copacabana & walk about, activating Alex’s phone on the way, until the sun sets. Then it’s back to Urca & we eat at the Garota before heading out to the concert.

We get to CircoV at 11:00, but, as Lizza predicted, noone arrives until midnight. We are amused though by a warm-up band performing on the roof with a lead girl screamer. Lizza arrives with many friends so I get to have some interesting chats with members of the 20-something ex-pat scene, including one guy who does internet work for clients in England and Australia, and just decided to move to Rio because he could, and didn’t tell his clients for months. Tom Ze arrives on stage dressed like a record-player, an LP on his stomach and his right arm as the needle-arm. He has a drummer, two back-up singers, and two musicians who play various instruments including, for a couple of pieces, two bandolims. Many of the songs have no words, only noises, and he improvises a lot, giving the audience rhythmic chants to repeat. He’s a no-holds-barred performer — ripping most of his clothes off at one point — and an ardent nationalist. After one song he goes on an anti-US tirade that has me hoping noone will speak to me in English. The concert isn’t over until around 3:00 AM, and we stroll for awhile on the nearby streets as Alex is interested in checking out the immense street crowd and huge numbers of surrounding clubs, but finally we grab a cab for home.

Saturday is choro-school, and I find myself once again heading off to my 9:00 class with too little sleep. I’m a bit late for rep class, and as I come in one of the cavaquinho players asks if I can play lead on the tune they are doing, as none of the other soloists has arrived. I reply that I don’t know it but I can read anything — so the music is plopped in front of me and I am playing. These are mostly non-readers, so my sight-reading ability stuns them. Paulo Sa said he heard from one of his students that there was a woman at choro-school who could read really well, and he said — yes, I know that woman. I, on the other hand, am amazed by the players who know dozens or hundreds of tunes by heart. After rep class we discover that the building where the bandolim classes usually meet is under construction, so we and some of the other classes are meeting outside. It’s very picturesque, if tough to play sitting on slightly rickety benches. I took a pic of the Bandolim 1 class as it was breaking up. After my two bandolim classes I give Pedro my CDs, and I also give them to Marcilio later at Bandao. It’s time to come out a little from under my cover as just a student.

Brinsley and Alex arrive on cue at 12:30 to film & take pics of Bandao. Ronaldo is visiting that day, so I lend him my mandolin to sit in for a tune. Brinsley snapped a pic of me with Ronaldo & Marcilio in the bandolim section just before. During the noon-hour break B&A and I go to lunch at the lovely kilo-restaurant overlooking Praia Vermelha with Pablo from the regional. It’s nice having a time in the middle of school to relax and chat. The plan is to have B&A take pics later of the regional, now officially named “Agua no Feijao”. Alas, when we return, not all the group has appeared for the photo shoot, but B&A say they will return at the end of practice to see if we’re all there then. And as we start to play the rest of the group does finally arrive.

This week we get Luciana for crit, who talks to our rhythm section about learning standard choro chord patterns and section transpositions. She writes some chord progressions on the board in groups and bounces from one group to the next and back. I dutifully copy them down, vowing to get Paulo Sa to explain what they all mean. Harmony here is confusing for me, due to the fixed-do system and portugues, because chords have names like Si-Bmoll-sech, that don’t readily translate into chord forms on the fly. Ah, well, everything will become clear in it’s turn. The photo shoot is fun, but it’s getting dark & it’s impossible to get the boys to stop playing & laughing & sit still, so the pics are fun but often blurry.

After choro school I walk home with Brinsley & Alex and I’m determined to show them something besides choro school in their first full day in Rio. There looks like there’s a pretty good early show at Rio Scenarium, so we eat shrimp at a local Urca dive and catch a cab there. I really want them to see this bar — rated as one of the Top-10 in the world by the London Guardian. They are suitably amazed, and I am amazed too because, unlike the last time I was there, every knick-knack-filled room is crammed full of people — it’s Saturday and there is not a seat to be had. I’m exhausted, but it’s fun to hang out and I want them to experience it all, and the bands are good, and my favorite gafieri-dancing couple is there, and the view from the balcony out into the street is cool, so we stay up too late yet again.

Sunday is a day to do only-on-Sunday things — go to the fruit&veggie market in Urca — and then try all the produce — go to the beach at Ipanema just to start the gringos tanning & then to the hippie feria at Praca General Osorio for shopping. Alex leaves us shopping & goes back to the beach to take pics of sunset, but then calls to tell us that there’s a protest parade by the beach so we meet him there and check it out. As we are deciding to head back to Urca, boys jump off a bus yelling, and we realize that mostly everyone is glued to TVs behind their fair stalls. It’s the Botofogo/Flamengo futbol game to determine the Rio champion. All the way home on the bus we hear cheers erupting from bars, as the score is tird or one team goes ahead. By time we get home Flamengo has won a close game and the red&black stripes are dancing in the streets.

Ronaldo told me on Saturday that he’s playing at the Arabe Quiosque this evening & we’ve decided to go. Our cab driver on the way over is very chatty and shows us pics of his cute kids on his cell phone. Ronaldo is playing with 7-string & drums, and the drummer, Marcio Bahia, recognizes Alex from Rio Scenarium the night before — it was his band playing the late show that we stayed to see. Ronaldo is tired — he was at Maracana for the game and is a Botofogo fan — but plays well, and we have a good Arabic dinner & an interesting time talking to all the musicians — the 7-string’s wife is from Seekonk — another addition to the “small world” book. Marcio is playing with Daniela Spielman on Friday and encourages us to check it out. Just before we leave Ronaldo brings his son Tiberio, also a bandolimist, over to introduce him to us. He’s been playing at another quiosque and will be playing at Semente — a club in Lapa — tomorrow with the brilliant guitarist Ze Paulo Becker, and we say we’ll try to go.

Monday is a beautiful day, so we decide to go up Pao de Acucar — one of the must-see places on my list for Rio. A cell phone commercial is being filmed on the Morro (the intermediate peak) and it’s amusing to watch and try to figure out what the plot is, as the actors calmly dump the bees out of their orange soda between takes. There’s a lot more construction going on on the Morro as well, apparently they’re building a big restaurant and performance space. The view is still spectacular, and we see some monkeys and a big lizard. I take a pic of both sides of Urca — the point, where I live, and the part on the other side of the beach, where Brins & Alex are staying, that also holds my internet, grocery store, and my walk into the world every day. We linger — it’s a beautiful day for it — and take pics on the water back in Urca as well, including one of a house on the water that’s for sale, that gave me an Under-the-Tuscan-Sun moment.

I need to practice for my lesson so B&A go off for their own adventures & we meet up later to go to Semente. I can’t find an address for it, but have Roberto’s description of sort-of where it is, and his memory that it’s a natural food restaurant as well, so we decide to eat there too. Our cab driver patiently tours us around “just inside the arches” asking & we finally find someone who says we just have to back up 2 blocks & it’s on the corner. And he does and it is. The menu just has sanduiches & a mixed platter that I suggest we order. Bad idea — it’s a mountain of cheese with cheese dips. We should just have re-ordered, but the band is starting to set up and we’ve had a capirina, so we make the best of it. But in retrospect, when we all get sick in the next couple of days, we blame it on this first day without a decent dinner.

The show is incredibly late for a Monday, starting about 11:30, but musically it’s very interesting, as these guys mix choro with rtock, not jazz, so the improv style seems more familiar to me. The rest of the band includes the young 6-string player from Trapiche (Tiberio says he’s the son of a famous choro clarinetist) and Hamilton’s harmonica player who wails for a couple of extended tunes. The first set ends at half-past midnight. I talk to Tiberio, who says his dad is comings but he went to the jam at Bip Bip first, but we’re so tired that we have to go pile in a cab & go home to bed.

Tuesday is beautiful and hot & Roberto says we should go to the beach, but Brinsley has planned a walking tour of churches and museums for us, so we go ahead as planned. We start at the Mosteiro de Sao Bento on a hill overlooking Centro. (note the pic of the rooftop soccerfield — only in Rio) We continue on to the Ingreja da Candelaria with its beautiful dome that I have admired so many times stuck in traffic on the way back from Joel’s or the airport. We go to the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, and the Central Cultural dos Correios, where we see some interesting art shows — especially one on ceramica and graphics, but no pics allowed. We walk by some cool street art, have lunch, walk down some recommended shopping streets but don’t shop, and end up at a church that is supposed to be the most beautiful restored Baroque church in Rio, but is a urine-drenched repository of sleeping street people. Oops — wrong Sao Franciso church we discover later. We walk over to find the bondinho stop to Sta Teresa and, after a bit of a wait, take off on that fabled little cable car across the top of the Arcos do Lapa and up to beautiful StaT.

We walk around a little, but it’s getting dark so we stop in the Bar do Minero, as recommended by Nate, for a gengibre cachacha. Then we have a wonderful fish dinner at a restaurant where I had eaten before — taking no chances on a bad dinner tonight. We catch a cab home, change, and we’re off to the session at Trapiche, where we meet Romulo and a German friend of his, and hear a super session. TaxiPaulo arrives at midnight from his rehearsal to drive us & the German guy home.

Wednesday is a cold and somewhat rainy day, and it’s my lesson with Joel, and so B&A go off on their own to shop and stroll about as the weather allows. Joel is really pleased with some of my variations on the choro and says that I’m playing from the heart now, not just copying Jacob’s or his ornaments — a big thrill for me to hear him say that. I’ve finally got a copy of the Pixinguinha waltz “Sensivel” that he wanted me to play, but it’s in a different key than he plays it, so I decide to just learn it by ear and have the music as a reminder during the week. It’s a great piece and I really enjoy absorbing his version.

I rendezvous with Brinsley & Alex after their equally successful day, and we head off to check out a couple of restaurants in Botofogo that Brinsley has found in a guide book. Alas, they are both out of business, so we go into a place that looks like it’s full of locals and have a decent dinner on the balcony & chat, but the main action is indoors on the TV where Flamengo — now the Rio champs, are playing another Brazilian team, Defensor, in the play-offs. It’s odd to see Cariocas in wool sweaters, but the weather has really taken a turn to cold and rainy. During the next week everyone is coughing, not just the gringos. And although we are breaking our perfect record for going out to hear music every night, we decide to just go home after the game ends around midnight.

Thursday AM B&A hit the local beach while I practice, and we rendezvous & take the metro to Carioca station, getting a juice & sanduiche for lunch. And will I ever have juice as good as Rio’s again? Every corner stand has fresh made-to-order juice for about $1 or $1.50 a glass. And so many kinds graviola, maracuja, goiaba, acai, not to mention manga, laranja-cenoura-beterreba (orange-carrot-beet), banana, and on and on. And then we go to the real best-Baroque church, which is appropriately gilded and ornate, walk about a bit, have a beer at the famous German restaurant with the Brazilian name (Luiz’?) and head out for the Edson Folk museum, one of my must-see sites in Rio.

It’s the 3rd time I’ve been there, but there is still more to take pictures of. And just as we are exiting, a band parades in for the opening of a temporary exhibition on festa e artesanato in Espirito Santo. A wonderful bit of serendipity. Friday is a beach day at the beautiful Praia Apoador, just at the corner between Copacabana and Ipanema. In the evening we go to hear Daniela Speilman play with a trio, including Marcio Bahia on drums and special guest singer Aurea Martins. I’ve included a picture by Alex of that event. After the concert we find a cool Arabic restaurant nearby and have a great meal. And Saturday is choro school again, and Brinsley & Alex’a last day. They pack & then come to UniRio to film Bandao again & to try to get a better pic of Agua No Feijao. Unfortunately flutist Paulo was missing, but as that is often the case we go ahead with the shoot anyway. Afterwards B&A&I have a last dinner at the Garota da Urca, and as we are eating TaxiPaulo drives by and, as it is nearly time to pick B&A up for the airport, he parks his cab & comes in & has a coke. So the last pic in this log is Paulo & Brinsley & Alex toasting Rio.

And now my log is caught up to mid-May. The end of this adventure will be written from Providence, as I’ll be there in just over a week, and I want to be here 100% for these last few days. I’ll miss this place and my life here incredibly. My time in Rio has been so much more than I ever imagined it could be. It’s as if a space opened up that just fit me, populated with friends and music and teachers and sunshine. And so these last days I will be sad to leave but so happy to have been.

This log’s sonnet is one I wrote earlier, but have been tinkering with lately. Enjoy! I’ll be seeing some of you very soon.

there is a fearlessness here buses push
through a slot much too small boys balance on
a garbage can and juggle just to con
a tip as taxis furiously rush
around them futbol is all offense no
defense a friend explains music too feels
dangerous racing ahead with its wheels
barely holding the track it wants to go
straight to the new but take the old along
as well so the whole family rides for free
and I stick out my thumb hitching to see
if somewhere inside there I’ll find a song
not my regular one but something more
uncharted I will run right through that door

Bjs.
m

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