The Wildcat Caixas of Bloco X

I'm getting overwhelmed w/the backlog of stuff I haven't written about! Well, my hand is better (5 days off email, netting songbirds on the high Oregon desert, was just the ticket). Meanwhile I've been slaving overtime, running an accelerated summer school course of human physiology for nursing students that has just been killing me. Human phys is a heavy-duty course at the best of times, but a 3x-accelerated summer course is, well, three times faster. Plus I'm running another job trying to edit 6 chapters in a major college bio text.

Overall: SLAMMED. Sick with stress and worry. I've had days where I've just been crying with frustration because I can't play any music and have to work nonstop, all the time, every minute, every evening. I have to work while I eat, eat while I drive, work while I bike, eat while I sleep, shower while I work - it's all blurring together -

But... these two jobs are how I am paying for that Europe trip. So it is worth it.

The only really ironic thing about it is that this summer school job conflicted with Bloco X's mega party at the European Cup in Vienna. It is still causing me some serious heartache that I couldn't go to that.

But I am lucky that I got to go to Europe at all and go to the Bloco X rehearsal in May. I am very grateful. Especially with the US currency in its precipitous nosedive, the economy crashing, the airlines collapsing, the fall of Rome upon us. To be able to fly halfway around the world and have friends take me in... (thank you so much, Yonca, Ameena, Rob, Charlotte)....

Bloco X is floating now on a little cloud in my memory, an idyllic and mysterious time that took place in another dimension. I have some trouble now remembering the exact sequence of events. But here are some of the images:

- The big introductions Thursday night (coincidentally it was may 1, my birthday!). Frank went through every country that was represented at Bloco X - something like 104 players from 14 countries. He'd say "Welcome to our friends from... Finland!" and all the Finns would all wave and everybody would cheer. And he introduced the contingents from Germany, and England, and France, and Poland, and Spain, and Scotland.... At the very very end, after everybody else had been introduced, he said "And last of all, we have a very special guest who has come all the way from the United States!" - that was me. Holy smokes. They gave me an OVATION. I waved. They kept clapping and cheering. I waved again. It went on and on and on. I took a little bow. I got embarrassed. I blushed.

I was truly amazed and really touched to get that kind of welcome.

Then Frank said "And it's her birthday!" and there was a whole nother ovation, and they all sang Happy Birthday to me. Later the Scottish band Sambayabamba gave me a copy of their cd for a present, and somebody bought me a beer, and somebody bought me another beer, and I felt so happy and lucky to be there.

later...

- feeling really overwhelmed by the terrifyingly beautiful swinging caixa players. Bloco X has a silky mesmerizing swing that is slightly different from the way the Lions play. They just ROCKET along, little caixa cheetahs. I was struggling to match the swing and tempo. Plus they almost all play em cima (holding the caixa up on their arm), so I tried that and I felt like a TOTAL KLUTZ... And some of them have been playing for only a YEAR, it's just not FAIR, it's not FAIR!

Partway through Friday I became absolutely convinced I was playing really horribly. Then became convinced I was playing LIKE SHIT. Then became convinced that as the ambassador for North America I was letting down my entire continent. I got into a little mental nest of self-doubt that kept me solidly snared for the next 48 hours.

But eventually I decided, well, what the hell, this is how I will learn to play better, just PLAY dammit, and I started playing out again.

later...

- Standing in the back row just soaking up the swing and suddenly a caixa player joins in behind me. RIPPING and powerful. It is so loud and amazing that I actually jump. I turn, unconsciously expecting to see a guy, with that kind of volume. But no, it's one of Verde Vai's drop-dead-gorgeous samba goddesses. Bethan. She is playing like a goddam Alaskan wildcat. Her sticks are just a wild blur, her swing PERFECT and amazing, her power unbelievable. She's scowling in concentration at her drum. There appear to be little lightning bolts shooting off of her. (I don't know what it is about the London groups, but they seem to have all these supermodels who just completely rip on caixa and tamborim).

Bethan instantly becomes graven in my memory as the Alaskan Wildcat of Caixa.

- 6am at Bloco X and a small group of players is still at it. In a foggy stupor I watch the band and fuzzily notice something is very different from what I'm used to seeing. what is it, what is it? OH - All the caixa players are dancing, but none of the other players are! (The exact opposite of what I'm used to in the US, where we suffer from Stoic Caixa Player Syndrome.) But here in Bloco X, at 6am in this deep dark forest in northern Germany, there's 3 crazed looking guys who bounce UP on every beat, UP, UP, UP. They're not playing em cima for once, and they're sort of straddled over the drums, curled over them.

I cannot BELIEVE how fast they are playing. I cannot believe the height and spread of the blur of their sticks. They're at the center of a sphere of whirling stick blur that looks about 3 feet in diameter. I become convince that their hands are not under their conscious control.

Are these players really human?

But the band hits a cut, and miraculously the caixa palyers actually stop playing for a second. The sticks briefly become visible as solid entities. Their magical blurred hands suddenly pause and reveal themselves as ordinary human hands. Then BOOM off they go again into hyperspace - the sticks and hands literally disappear again into the whirling glowing air.

I'm totally humbled by the Bloco X caixas.

(PS I never caught most of the bouncing blurred caixa players' names, but one I now know is Matze da Caixa).

Two months later I am playing in an Axe Dide show in Seattle, Washington, and I accidentally end up on caixa alone in an impromptu fast samba during a stage show. (with Axe Dide! yipes!) Andy is on repinique, Jesse on 3rd surdo - these are excellent pros, scary good - and they're both FLYING. And I'm the only caixa. And we're speeding up. Jesse goes sailing into an unbelievable string of pure swinglets. A dangerous flicker of "uh oh, can I pull this off?" shoots through me. But then I suddenly remember Bethan, and I feel the Spirit of the Alaskan Wildcat enter into me and I start PLAYING. Out of the corner of my eye I see a couple of the players shoot me surprised looks, including another great player (Doug) who straps on another caixa. He starts matching me.

We get so into it that when we finally stop, he roars at me:

"ARRRRRRR!", Doug says, shaking his caixa in the air ferociously.

"ARRRRRRRR!" I roar back, shaking my caixa in the air too. Yeah, baby, wildcats.