Maracatu and practice

Went to Jorge Martins' maracatu workshop. I knew the first half of the material already (a bunch of classic Estrela Brilhante songs, breaks and entrances that I know cold). Soon enough Jorge started folding it all into a big cool arrangement that sequed into a timbal-cued afoxe/funk and then ended up in mangue-beat. Very nice stuff.

Two things that kind of amused me about the workshop: First, the fact that the people most experienced on alfaia were not playing alfaia - because the beginners had grabbed them all! There is something about alfaia where people get this lust for it, and they HAVE to play it or they will be miserable. But eventually you pop out the other side, once you've basically mastered it, and then, you still love it but you don't have to play it every single damn second. You can let someone else play it and go play caixa or bell and truly enjoy the caixa or bell. It's like you're IN love with alfaia at first, but then you get into a more mature relationship with it, where you enjoy its company but aren't obsessed by it any more.

The second funny thing was how Jorge would start speaking in English, but he'd hit a word he didn't know, drift into Portuguese, and since Derek and me and Pat and Jake and Pauline and Scott and Brian and lots of others all speak Portuguese, we'd just all kind of drift into it too. Unaware that we had shifted languages. Scott would forget to translate, since so many of us fala. Till one of the other people in class would say meekly "What are you saying?"

Afterwards everyone headed to pagode; but I headed home. The pagode was probably great, but I
really
really
really
need some time to practice. I need LESS time playing with other people and fucking up and thinking "Damn, I really need to practice" and MORE time actually doing the practicing.

So I went home, and for the first time in literally months, FINALLY got some practice time. Just a little. I ran through the Brenda funk:

rlrl Rlrl rlrl RlrL rlrl Rlrl rlRl rLrl

... trying to take it down super-slow and iron out the tiny little glitch I've always fought coming out of a left accent. Then the non-double-right Mangueira:

RllR llRl RllR lZzL

(which for me is harder than the double-right)

Then the double-right, but SWUNG, dammit, swung hard:
RrlR lrRl RrlR lZzL

and a few other patterns, and then, holy mackerel, dragged out the poor little orphaned ignored pandeiro and did an infinitesimal amount of playing; just a little buzz work, a tiny bit of samba, a little puzzling over frevo. Just to feel it again. It's been so long. Felt good. Felt like I was finally on the right track again. I did not miss the pagode. This is what I need to be doing. Tomorrow, repinique.