Thursday in Portland: Maracatu

Nonstop. Something every night this week. Thursday night was the maracatu class. Raced downtown just in time, found a parking spot, lugged my alfaia in....

This was kind of a weird evening for me because I usually play the high alfaia, but we were short on marcacao so I played marcacao. (Marcacao alfaia just keeps chugging on the basic pattern - male in this case - while the other alfaias do variations). But actually it was really fun. Sink-into-the-groove time.

Something is not quite comfortable for me with alfaia this week. It feels like my left arm movement sometimes is stiff, and sometimes clicks into being very comfortable. Maybe I just need to get used to it again - I know I'm automatically positioning it way too much like a surdo, too low and too centered. I need to get the alfaia higher and way over on my left side, the way I used to play it. Back in the day when I used to play it a lot.

We never got to practice any of our material for Saturday, though. Dang. I'm still a bit worried about whether things will jell. We really need one more rehearsal... or two....