The best parade of my life

I've played dozens of street samba parades in a dozen cities. Including Carnaval in Rio. But the best musical experience of my life, easily, hands down, was last night in Portland, Oregon.

This election had come to seem the single most important thing on the entire planet to me. Sure, I've cared about other elections, but not quite like this. The last 8 years have been so nightmarish that I, like many, had despaired that my country would ever seem "mine" again. That it could ever do the right thing again. This was seeming like our last chance.

So yeah, I'm an Obamamaniac. I've been volunteering for Obama (volunteering a pathetically small amount of time, but I offered what time I could) and donating (four times; and I've never donated to a candidate before). I've been flipping between hope and resignation and hope and desperate anxiety and hope and... for months. It's been exhausting! Near the end, Obama still had a lead, but the lead was small - less than the percentage of undecided voters. And it was so hard to trust the polls. Bradley effect! New voters! Cell phone people! Early voting! - several major wild cards, any of which could have invalidated all of the polling data. I just couldn't figure out if Obama was really ahead or not. It just seemed so unlikely that he could possibly win.

Tuesday. Hard at work at my job, I had CNN's website tucked on the bottom of my screen, and kept checking it every few minutes in a pathological state of high anxiety. I was desperately eager to see which states' results had come in, but terrified that it would be Bad News. Finally the first two states came in: Vermont for Obama, Kentucky for McCain. CNN dutifully tallied up the electoral votes:

Obama 3, McCain 8.

MCCAIN IS LEADING! OH NO!!! I was crushed (totally illogically, since both those results were expected).

Student meetings took up the rest of my afternoon. I was tormented by being unable to talk about it with anybody - I teach at a conservative school, so a lot of the students are McCain supporters, so I kept my mouth completely shut and was going completely crazy as a result. On tenterhooks all the rest of the afternoon, I finally escaped from work, zipped home and turned on CNN, just as they called Pennsylvania for Obama.

Pennsylvania!

A battleground!

PENNSYLVANIA! A CRUCIAL battleground. They've been duking it out in Pennsylvania.

Obama won a battleground state!

I thought: Hey - He won Pennsylvania by about the same amount as the polls predicted. Could the polls be right?

A half hour later: CNN called Ohio for Obama.

Ohio and Pennsylvania. Two states that were supposedly so full of white racists that they were never going to vote for a black guy.

The polls were right.

I thought, oh my god... It's really going to happen. It is going to happen in my lifetime: we are going to elect a black President. And, we are going to elect an INTELLECTUAL president, a SMART president, a COLLEGE PROFESSOR president (yay!), a president who tries to LEARN about the issues, a president who DOESN'T automatically go with his first gut reaction. Plus, a president who respects SCIENCE, an ENVIRONMENTALIST, a guy who is AGAINST THE WAR.... Holy s***.

The best part about voting for this black president was that that wasn't why I was voting for him. Which is the way it should be, right?

I called my parents (who turned out to be on the 4-hour drive back from Maine, a battleground where they'd been working for the Obama campaign all day. Driving back to Massachusettes, the solidly Obama state where they live.) They'd been listening to the news on the radio, and were so excited about Ohio and Pennsylvania that they were just trying not to drive off the road. My mom said Maine had gone for Obama too. We were all elated, and unbelieving, and excited. We were sure he was going to win now.

But it ain't over till it's over....and meanwhile, I was late for a critical Gatas rehearsal! Hopped in my car and charged to southeast Portland. But I took a little detour to drive past the central ballot drop-off site for the city.

Oregon's the only state in the US that votes entirely by mail. That means everybody got their ballots in the mail two weeks ago, and we don't have any polling places at all. But what we do have, I discovered, is a huge building where people can drop off their ballots at the last minute. I didn't realize what a big deal it was (nor how many people wait till the last minute, jeez folks, you've had your ballots two weeks already). There were dozens of special "BALLOT DROP-OFF" boxes all around a city block, lit with huge floodlights, traffic carefully steered around them, huge flashing signs saying BALLOT DROP-OFF LEFT LANE, THRU TRAFFIC RIGHT LANE, cops all over. And a huge line of people waiting their turn to walk in the building to drop off their ballots by hand. It was exciting! And festive! Watching that huge line of people and all the bright lights and all the cars streaming past the drop-off boxes. It was 7:30pm. Just half an hour left till the Oregon polls closed, and with them the other major Pacific Time Zone states, Washington and Oregon. These people that I was watching, in that line, holding their precious ballots, were casting almost the very last votes. (sorry, Hawaii & Alaska, but we all know how you're going to vote anyway! )

It was almost over.

I got to Samba Gata, ran inside. This was definitely one of the odder samba rehearsals of my life. We were all on tenterhooks. We had a radio blaring, tuned to the election coverage, and during every break in the samba we'd catch a snatch of words: "Now of course the West Coast- " "Virginia still too close to call-" "-Florida, Jim?" "Obama has just taken - " and whenever the snatch of words was just too tantalizing (What ABOUT Florida, Jim?) we'd never get back into the samba and would just stand there listening, drumsticks suspended in mid-air, listening for the next bit of news.

A few intermittent sambas later, it was 8pm. West Coast polls had closed.

We hit a break in the samba, and suddenly the radio was saying something, going on and on about how this was a historic day for the United States. Pauline's cell phone rang, and it was her mom (I think) saying "They just announced Obama won." I couldn't believe it. In fact, I WOULDN'T believe it, and kept pestering, "WHO announced it? It's just a projection. They can't know already." Half of us rushed upstairs to the tv, half stayed downstairs, then we all changed our minds and the ones upstairs went running downstairs, and the ones downstairs ran upstairs, everybody passing each other, confused and excited. The TV stations seemed to be saying Obama was way ahead. He seemed to have over 300 electoral votes all of a sudden. Was this for sure, or just a projection?? We tried to call friends and family. But Pauline's and my cell phones were both suddenly saying "No Service" and I realized everybody in Portland was probably calling everybody else at the same minute and all the cell towers were probably jammed. The rehearsal had completely disintegrated, drums were all over, people running up and down the stairs "I'm calling my mom - " "I'm calling Brian to see if we're going to parade if he wins-" "My phone's dead-" "Mine too!" "But what network said that? It's just a projection, right?" "Did anybody hear about Virginia?" "- North Carolina?" "- Florida?" "He has three hundred and something electoral votes. How many votes does it take to win?" "TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY!"

Coincidentally Pauline and I happened to end up in the basement at the same moment, just the two of us, nobody else, neither of us with any clear idea what we were doing. (or at least, I had no idea what I personally was doing, can't really speak for Pauline.) The floor was covered with dropped, forgotten drums and scattered drumsticks. The radio was still on, and we heard the announcer say:

"We have just received word that John McCain has just called Barack Obama to concede the election."

Pauline and I stared at each other open-mouthed for a moment. Hugged. Started to cry.

I suddenly had to sit down. We were both shaking.

I felt an overwhelming sense of righteousness, like something that had gone terribly wrong with the world was finally right.

I remember one or the other of us saying, in a confused muddle:

"I can't believe it."
"I never thought in my lifetime...I never thought it would happen."
"I'm shaking, look."
"A black president."
"I feel like 9/11 is finally over."
"Call Brian and see if we're going to play!"

... because, of course, there is NO BETTER WAY TO CELEBRATE THAN WITH A SAMBA PARADE! So sure enough, Brian had sent out a call to all Gatas and Lions to meet in downtown Portland for a guerrilla street parade. I charged there so fast, flying over the Morrison bridge honking my horn nonstop, that I was the first person there, and immediately I got into a frenzy realizing I was going to miss Obama's victory speech. I ran around like a madwoman. The streets were absolutely deserted. I was running right down the middle of Broadway, right in MIDDLE of the street, on the ritzy strip of fancy hotels, with my caixa, looking for a bar that had a TV. I got chased out of one hotel, flew into another, and ended up charging into the Hilton (with my parade gear on, my caixa in one hand and my sticks in the other, but they didn't bat an eye). I dashed into the bar and found an excited bunch of hotel guests all clustered around 3 huge tvs. Two Obama supporters, in town from Chicago on business, were sky-high about their home-town senator's good fortune. They were so pleased that I was apparently going to play a strange drum for Barack Obama that they pulled over another chair to their table, insisted that I sit down, bought me a huge gin-and-tonic, and within 5 minutes I was making grand and slurred proclamations about "Bamack Obamer" and wondering how exactly I'd gotten so drunk so quickly. We watched the speech, overwhelmed at the sight of our new, black First Family (!!!!). So proud of my country (for just about the first time in eight years... Can't BELIEVE it. CAN'T BELIEVE IT. Charged outside again and I heard ... DRUMS! The other Lions had arrived, and the Gatas too.

I had planned to play caixa, but there was Renata (one of our fabulous dancers) incongruously lugging a third surdo. "Doesn't anybody want to play this third surdo?" she asked. I said, "STAY HERE" I said and sprinted full speed back to my car, ditched the caixa, grabbed the surdo mallets, sprinted (really flying now, right in the middle of the street again) back downhill to the parade, found Renata (thanks babe!), grabbed the surdo, did an extremely difficult sprint-with-surdo to catch up to the moving parade. puff puff puff. And I got there, and I started playing.

We just had a little tiny crowd with us - downtown Portland is actually pretty dead at night. But MAN that crowd was excited. Everybody was whooping and hollering. Brian & Randy led us down to Pioneer Square and then on, and on, and on, on a spur-of-the-moment parade all the way down Broadway, almost to Burnside.

And the crowd started growing. And growing. And GROWING. Everybody who heard us, in every building that we passed, came piling outside to join us. People were absolutely jubilant and they NEEDED a samba parade!

Brian, in front, looked back and his eyes widened. He'd just seen the extent of the crowd. We had hundreds and hundreds of people following us! We'd started with about twenty! People were spilling out into the streets and whooping and hollering, waving "President Obama" signs. I saw one sweet-looking dad with his tiny little daughter, each holding a big Obama sign. She saw me taking her picture and held the sign up so jubilantly and so high it completely covered her face, so I didn't quite get the picture I'd been aiming for, but somehow I love the picture anyway. (will post it later, blogspot isn't letting me post right now)

Streams of honking cars started cruising past us, full of shouting people leaning out of the windows. Honking the horns and high-fiving people and cheering for Obama.



Every now and then Brian would stop the bateria and we would hear that the crowd was doing a huge chant: O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! - and then we'd start in again and everybody would start dancing and cheering.

click here for a video from the Oregonian

a great shot from the Oregonian: (you can see Randy's repique stick in the lower L, and Pauline and Jay too!)


Over an hour later, we finally ended up back at Pioneer Square. A couple guys grabbed me a big hug - my two Chicago friends from the hotel! They'd heard the parade and tracked us down to join in!

Randy & Brian finally called us out. We did one last drumroll and I thought it was all over, and then I saw two women, right near the band, singing something. I couldn't quite hear what they were singing - then felt a chill as I recognized the Star-Spangled Banner, our national anthem.

You can probably guess that I haven't been feeling too patriotic for the last eight years, and the Star-Spangled Banner has not really been my favorite song. But suddenly I wanted nothing more than to sing the Star-Spangled Banner at the top of my lungs. The entire crowd began singing, the whole band, all the people, all ages, all races, everybody joined in, singing "The Star Spangled Banner" with all our hearts.

(click here for a youtube video by someone in the crowd)

Like I said... best samba parade of my life.

and then we went and played with March Fourth, which was amazing, and, then, later, I learned that "Yes we can!" does not apply when the question was "Can we play a samba when all the key players have gone home and when there are lots of drunk people bouncing off of us and it has started to rain?" and then lucky Brian got to hear me completely bite it on caixa when my forearms seized up from the fastest Mangueira I have EVER attempted to play in my life. And then my hands fell off. And then I went home and watched CNN for four hours and bandaged the blisters on my hands. And then I woke up the next day and thought I had dreamed it all, honestly, I thought I had dreamed it, and I still don't quite believe it right now.