Heavy Duty Swing

OK - had such a bizarre week this week that now that I've finished the Jorge workshops and got a little more perspective on everything, I'm rewriting all the entries. This week was one of the most intense I have had in a long time: a worrying situation at work with the sudden discovery that a colleague has cancer, the accompanying scramble to cover her classes, and a HUGE mental scramble too regarding the way it is making me rethink my own life choices. I wrote about it at huge length before but have now decided to pull back and re-focus this blog just on the music. Short version: I really, really hope she will be ok; and it's been a great reality check in terms of What Really Matters In Life, Anyway?

It has made me suddenly realize what a great life I have right now. And it made me VERY glad that I did cut loose and go to Brazil when I did. You shouldn't put off all your dreams forever. Especially the foolish ones.

This was all weirdly juxtaposed with Jorge Alabe's long-awaited visit to Portland. Which I knew would give me a serious reality check on those very same foolish musical dreams. So quite a week for rethinking life plans.

The reason Jorge was here was, Brian had had the brilliant idea of having the Lions fund a five-day visit by Jorge, including: FREE private lessons for any Lion (with Brian accompanying on surdo, no less, dream conditions for a private lesson!); FREE public workshop on Thursday open to all; an intensive Lions-only rehearsal late Friday night; plus 4 dance classes by Ana Laidley from LA.

I'd signed up for 2 privates with Jorge, but had, of course, zero time to practice beforehand because of the crisis at work. Literally hadn't had a repique on in weeks, and could barely concentrate going into the lesson; I was actually incredibly nervous and kind of thought Jorge might kick me out and tell me to quit drumming.

But: oh man! it was so wonderful! My first session ended up overlapping with Blake and we ended up rolling in a magnificently swinging samba together for over an hour; the second lesson, Thursday, morphed into Brian joining me on his own repique as we both tried to pick Jorge's brain about some beautiful calls he uses. It was huge for me to find out I could keep up with Blake on caixa, and even to some extent Brian on repique, in a Jorge lesson. Such a huge relief to find out I can still play even though I haven't had any time to practice in the last couple months! Blake & Brian are master players, and Jorge is basically a god. But I could keep up! By the end Jorge was pretty happy with our swing, & I was able to pick up on all his sticking right away. No no no, I'm not an expert repique or caixa player by any means, don't have remotely his grace and lightness of feel, but I feel so much more confident now. (and, ps, it turns out those exercises Derek showed me a few months back have really helped. Even though I haven't had much time practice since then, really just once a week, it's really helped - and it is the precisely the reason I could pick up all the sticking immediately.)

So Jorge did NOT kick me out. Instead I felt like I was back where I belonged.

Thursday night - Big free open workshop. It was massive - there must have been 60 people or so, and even a crowd of onlookers. For a weeknight workshop from 9-11pm! Whole groups had driven in from all over. (Lesson learned: Host a free workshop by a master and you will pull the whole community together for miles around.) It was like camp: INTENSE, LOUD, WILD. A bit messy but the energy was so powerful that you kind of forgive the mistakes. I was charging on such high-energy adrenalin throughout that I was shaking with fatigue afterwards.

Friday - had to work from 7am- 9pm at work again (I've been putting in 14 hr days nonstop for a few weeks, weekends included). Today was the day that I had to make up time at work for daring to take 2 hrs off on Wed night & 4 on Thurs night for playing. Completely exhausted from the whole week, mentally, emotionally, physically. I got to rehearsal very late at 9:30pm, the last player to arrive, skipped dinner to get there, stumbled in very conspicuously late, strapped on a 3rd surdo - and this time I could barely function. Just too tired and drained and worried about my friend at work. I kept missing the most perfectly simple basic calls and entries. Jorge would give a hand sign and I'd be staring right at him and literally wouldn't see the sign. I heard people behind me commenting when I missed THREE third-surdo entries right in a row! But I just couldn't think straight, wasn't sure where or how Jorge wanted us to enter, kept choking.

But finally it started to click. All of a sudden I could hear how he wanted me to enter and I charged at every entry perfectly after that - the second he'd raise his hand with those 3 fingers up ("Third surdo, start playing") WHAM I was right on it. I guess the blood finally started flowing to my brain again.... And he showed us a brilliant long desenho that made me very happy (see tech notes below)... and it all started to flow. We played till 11:30pm. Exhausted and starving at the end but it was very good.

Derek was close behind me for most of the rehearsal - he was doing all the repique calls.

Now, there's something about not being able to see the repique player. The bateria is storming along, you don't quite know where the repique player is, but up in front the mestre (Jorge) signals you out, the bateria crashes to a halt, dead quiet, and there's just that ONE repique player, somewhere behind you, all alone, ripping off a call. It's just a certain kind of clatter, really; but it is such a beautiful thing. That little call is so meaningful to me now; when I can't see who it is, in that little moment I hear all the repique players of the past who I have worked with; all of them; all my leaders and friends and teachers. Tom, Bruno, Jonas, Dudu, Randy, Brian, Derek, all of them, people I have trusted and loved. So it is something that reaches right into me. That one clear silver voice right behind you.

It only lasts for two seconds but it is like seeing a single star in the night: so beautiful, and it pulls you right to it; you can't look away.

The call carries you right back in and the entire bateria charges in again.

A couple times Derek did something that I am not quite sure what it was, but whatever it was, it was such a beautiful call it almost made me cry.

Then Saturday it all came together. I'd been invited to play for Ana's special dance classes. I hadn't realized but it turned out to be just a little group of players: Brian, Derek, Jorge, Mehmet, Jesse, John, Dan and me. (subsets of those for the 2 classes) Jeez, that includes some of the best professional drummers on the West Coast. yow, such an honor to be in that mix! Dan & I anchored it on surdo most of the time. Soooo sweet. Jorge threw a bunch of stuff at us - but we managed to pull it off - SO fun, SUCH a pleasure, to play in that little group. And we were having fun, laughing, happy, Jorge throwing random things at us, rolling his eyes if we blew it, smiling with pleasure if we got it right.

Ana, our brilliant guest samba teacher, said afterwards "Can't you all move to LA?" She says there is no samba band in LA as good as our little thrown-together totally-unrehearsed bunch of people here in Portland today.

And Jorge told me to bring my pandeiro and play at the pagode party tonight.

So I was very happy. Very glad I took this strange musical journey; and also glad that I am where I am right now. Whatever happens in the future, right now I am where I want to be: where I can play with the very best players, and feel like I am adding something, and be a part of something really beautiful.


******
Tech notes:

Jorge's top tips for the Lions were all about our basic samba. He didn't show us any vocab of breaks; he wanted to work on the samba itself. His main points were:


1. Caixas have been accenting their ride (the Viradouro ride) too stiffly (especially the "and" after 3). Whole thing should be softer, lighter, more even, more like chatter. Jorge also plays that ride always em cima and doesn't do the double-left hits (where we do double-lefts, he hits just the first left and leaves a gap where the 2nd left would have been)


2. Third surdo. We've been playing our default like this:
---- X-X- ---- XX-X
...and Jorge pointed out that this does not match the Viradouro caixa ride, and if we're going to use Viradouro as our caixa ride we should use the Viradouro third surdo.

He'd shown the Thursday group this pattern:
---- X--X ---- XX-X

But when he had the Lions third surdos in private, he instead demonstrated:
---- X-XX ---- XX-X
...you had to hear it, it had such a light controlled bounce to it, and both halves were so triplet-y that you could barely hear the difference between the X-XX and the XX-X, but there WAS a difference and it gave a little kick to it. It also trailed off in volume, the 2 and 4 most prominent and the other hits trailing off like a natural series of mallet bounces, but controlled.

And then he got us doing this loop:
---- X-XX ---- XX-X basic
---- X-XX --X- XX-X short fill
---- X-XX ---- XX-X basic
---- X-XX --X- --X- long fill
--X- --X- --X- XX-X rest of the long fill
---- ---- XX-X -X-X "short"
---- ---- XX-X -X-X "short"
---- ---- XX-X -X-X "long"
-X-X -X-X -X-X -X-X the rest of the "long"
--X- --X- --X- XX-X closing phrase

ok, that's actually pretty straightforward, a really classic architecture for a third-surdo desenho. Basic with a couple fills of offbeats, and then what I call a "short-short-long" and a closing phrase. But what made it SOOOOO beautiful was
- the way he drove the swing throughout; this I cannot describe, you had to hear it;
- the kick of the triplet beginning to the short-short-long's;
- and the powerful closing phrase. The thirds would come out of the short-short-long and jump on those clear simple offbeats like a pack of wolves, and it would about shake the walls down.

So -it was Jeremy & Dan & me on third together and OH MAN, such fun to play with them. We got the phrase locked. We weren't sure where to start it exactly (normally it would fit into a song, but we have no cavaquinho player, so, no song), but one of us would get that long offbeat phrase going and the other two would recognize it and hop on board, and off we'd go.



3. The very first thing Jorge said to the Lions was: You need a "part 2". He's talking about the part in the 2nd half of a samba-enredo song when the bateria suddenly quiets down. He meant: dynamics! Don't play at top volume all the time; take it down tnow and then; leave something in reserve so you can ramp up the volume again later and really give it a kick. Have a specific hand sign that means "cut, and then come back in quieter" and do that regularly. And don't just creep up and down in volume; have two specific levels. Cut, and come in quieter. Cut again, and come in top volume.

He also insisted we add in a "third and caixa" section - 1's and 2's stop playing and just the thirds and caixas keep going. (caixas play right through; 3rd's hit the cut briefly to help the primeiros stop, then join right back in.) We already do this in our Viradouro piece but it's not really a component of our regular samba. Jorge was recommending, make it something htat you return to regularly. Have a hand sign that means "cut and then thirds and caixas keep going, everybody else stop".

- end technical notes -
Now I am going to a pagode party and play pandeiro. Tomorrow: Back to work, nose to the grindstone for 2 very heavy weeks.