London School of Samba

I visited the London School of Samba on Sunday. They've got kind of a clever weekly schedule, which is a "workshop" on Sunday that is open to beginners and where everybody can try new instruments; and then a closed, invitation-only rehearsal on Thursday. I didn't realize the way this schedule worked and am a little bummed that I'll have to miss the Thursday rehearsal, which sounds pretty cool. (I'd already arranged to go to Paraiso that night, and unfortunately my visit is so short that I've only got 1 Thursday.)

But I did get to see the Sunday workshop, and that was pretty cool too. I was intrigued by this sort of solution to the perpetual problem of how to get beginners started, and how to be inclusive to the community, while also protecting the standards of the performing group. They were very emphatic about "This is a workshop, where you try a drum you don't normally play. This is not the rehearsal. The rehearsal is Thursday." And the rehearsal is "invitation-only." Seems like an idea that VamoLa could try.

It all reminded me of VamoLa, except about THREE times bigger - and they kept telling me that it was unusually small because they'd just done a huge parade earlier that day. Apparently they have about 80 people for the Notting Hill Carnaval! They also run 2 dance classes right before - beginner and advanced, run simultaneously. Many of the beginner dancers stay and try the drumming too. Tonight's workshop was about: Eight tamborim. Four bell. Seven or so chocalho. Four repique, about five caixa, about 8 surdo. This is "small"?? Pretty amazing to me to see an open-community workshop that can muster that kind of numbers on a supposedly thin night a few hours after a parade. Later the bell leader told me that she's had up to 17 brand-new bell players show up at once.

A couple notable things that I want to file away for future reference:
- constant training up of 4 repique players. A large part of the rehearsal was simply rotating the simplest repique call among the 4 players, one of whom was so new I don't think he'd ever played repique before. Yet he was put right in the rotation anyway for learning the call. Seems like a good idea to take the mystique out of it & start people training on repique right from the very beginning.
- director is not playing repique. Separation of directing job from repique-playing job. This is the Rio system. (I really think the Lions ought to try this)
- some really beautiful bell patterns going on. I spotted them doing the maculele pattern earlier, then a pretty little partido alto variation.

I just played caixa the whole time. LSS uses Mocidade as their basic, so, I felt right at home. I accidentally stole somebody else's private caixa halfway through rehearsal (someone had walked off with mine, and another one was sitting right nearby, so I thought someone had accidentally taken mine and left theirs; so I started using that one.... but no, it was someone else's...oops...)

I also had the dubious pleasure of standing next to a third-surdo player who I think is the single most oblivious person I've ever met about physically crashing into people with his drum! I've played in lots of escolas and there is definitely a certain jostling for space, but generally people respect your space if you stand your ground. And especially if you let them get thrashed by your sticks if they are foolish enough to crowd you within range of your stick ends. Especially as a woman, you learn to hold your ground against the guys.

But this guy, I don't know what it was, but I saw him bash into people at least 10 times. Including tripping backwards over his own drum twice, and later mangling his own strap clip and then completely destroying it! He kept spinning around, his mallet hand flying around wildly and brushing my head on the 200mph upswing, and once he ripped my legs pretty badly with the lugs on his drum when he whipped it around unexpectedly. The other players had instinctively cleared away a bit till he was surrounded by a little radius of empty space. But my Mocidade reflexes kicked in and so I stood my ground, stayed standing where I'd been standing all along, turned to shield my legs with my caixa, let him get whacked hard a few hundred times my stick ends (I hadn't moved at all - he just moved within range of my sticks and I just kept playing) and finally jabbed him right in the back with a straight stick. Just holding my ground, is all, it's what I learned in Mocidade! He turned out to be Brazilian - of course!!! But even most Brazilians aren't like that. Funny guy!

The cool thing was, he could really play! I kind of wanted to grab a third surdo and trade stuff with him, 'cause he had some cool stuff. But I decided I was content just to stand there with my stolen caixa and whack him with my stick ends.

London School of Samba. They all piled over to a pub afterwards and I chatted with some of the players for a couple more hours. I also made the discovery that some of the LSS players had been reading my Rio blog last year, which was really cool to find out. (It's always sort of startling to find out that people have been reading it - since I really only write it for myself - but it's really nice too.)

I was sort of tormented to have to turn down a special invitation to the Thursday rehearsal. Next year!

I was sorry when everybody finally had to go home to work the next day. I had a great time with them.

A few nights later I had a really interesting talk with one of the long-time LSS players and learned a bit more about their system and their annual cycle. More on that later.