Monster Saturday

OOOOOooooooOOOOO
what a day! Today gave me my life back.

1. Early afternoon, Led a half-hour caixa lesson for the new girls' group Samba Gata. I'd been feeling like an idiot on caixa (see previous post) but I got in 3 good practice sessions since then, and, hallelujah, it's BETTER! A lot better, even! Practice Makes Better. And I was able to help some of the new caixa players get started.

2. Mid afternoon, Baiao workshop with Emiliano of Bat Makumba, for the Samba Gata girls. This was our first ever rehearsal, actually, and Pauline decided to kick it off with a workshop from a really awesome teacher. BRILLIANT idea, Emiliano was fantastic and inspiring and we all got totally jazzed.

3. Early evening, My first rehearsal with Axe Dide, a fantastic orixa/samba dance troupe in Portland run by the phenomenal Donna Oefinger. I absolutely love this group and have always wished I could play with them, but there is the tiny little snag that I actually don't know the first damn thing about orixa rhythms. Orixa stuff is a quantum-physics type of music, in its combination of bewildering mathematical complexity with mind-expanding cosmic religiosity. Billions of subatomic particles whirling around at near-lightspeed, and yet it is all One. Orixa stuff is totally intimidating to me. Not to mention that if you get it wrong, you could potentially piss off an ancient African war god or two.
BUT I heard last month that Axe Dide was starting to do Rio-style samba too, and I thought Hey! That I know!
So I asked if they might maybe perhaps be able to use another samba drummer. And Donna said yes!
So, there I was with Axe Dide, feeling all shy and new. I'd thought they'd only use me for the samba, but they were tossing me into every single thing!!! There's nothing quite like the terror of being flung into a complex polyrhythmic piece that you've never even heard before - so you have NO idea what it's supposed to sound like - and somebody's telling you "Here, just do this" (demonstrating some weirdly syncopated, half-swung thing full of precise little flams and trills) "But a little more triplet-y, and it'll be about twice as fast, and don't get distracted by the soloist. And you're the only one on this part and it's a key part, so don't stop. Oh, by the way, that surdo stand tips over a lot, can you just brace it with your left hip? And put your foot against that bendy part? Perfect. Don't move. OK, here we go!"
I hung in there pretty well on most of it, or at least some of it, but it will be a race to see if I can get it FOR REAL by their upcoming March 1st gig. So the next two weeks are going to be do or die. I'm worried but I'm also totally excited to be playing for them. All their other musicians are frighteningly brilliant. I just hope I can be of some service.

The second that rehearsal ended, I flung on my white Lions outfit in the Axe Dide bathroom. Raced to NW Portland for:

9pm-1am - Lions gig opening for the amazing Brazilian funk band from SF, Bat Makumba!

This was a ROCKING evening.

I was on caixa. I even had the pleasing experience of being argued over by the surdo & caixa heads, just before the gig started ("We REALLY need Kathleen on surdo" "But we REALLY need her on caixa more than you need her on surdo") Caixa won. Go figger, I thought I'd sucked last time, but it turns out they don't care if I miss half the breaks as long as I can be steady on the groove. And the caixa felt WAY better. Again, yay for practice!

All the Lions were piled up eagerly in the tiny wings. It's been a while since we had a really fun club gig and we had a full band, everybody just itching to play. Just before we went on, Brian said "Breathe, take a deep breath, remember, RELAX, play SLOW, play QUIET..."

Yeah, right, we managed to stay slow and quiet for about the first two seconds. Then... ZOOM.

It's actually been a problem for the Lions - we seem to get a case of Nervous Surdos or something, and the tempo really takes off sometimes. It's damn fun though - or it WAS fun till we hit Mangueira and I realized I was doomed, dooooooomed! I like to play the double-right Mangueira caixa pattern, which I'm usually pretty crisp and swinging at, but it's the harder version that wears your forearm out pretty fast and. Uh-oh... my arm started to fry out badly - I pushed through it - it fried out more - my whole forearm aching and burning and cramping up - I thought, I am NOT going to quit this pattern, I CAN play the double-right at superfast tempo, I CAN. I think I can, I think I can, I KNOW I can, I KNOW I can.... yeehawwww.... YEAH, PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY!

And then suddenly: Nope, I can't any more.

Drumming is such a muscle workout sometimes; people have no idea. It's a sport. My forearm was wasted. I could barely hold the stick.

But then I shifted to timbal (hand drum) for our next piece our 6/8. Perfect! - because it doesn't matter on timbal if your forearm muscles are wasted, because you can just throw your hands at the drum like floppy mittens. WHAP WHAP WHAP, like your hands are just loose wet dishtowels whipping around on the ends of your arms. I thought "I wonder if my hands are hurting? I can't tell. I can't feel anything." but I was so excited by the sounds of the ringing slaps, and the thrill of being in a blistering fast timbal section with Brian, David and Jen, that I just decided to play harder. WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP!

"I wonder if my hands are still attached to my arms?"

Back to caixa. Back to timbal. Back to caixa.

During the last piece I was suddenly so exhausted I could suddenly barely stand.

After the gig... flopped out backstage... listening to Bat Makumba's wonderful music, too tired to dance. (they are brilliant; Brazilian runk - with stretches of seriously danceable samba, reggae, lots of high-energy baiao, some great salsa, and the occasional spookily accurate cover of some James Brown funk or 80's arena rock. Somehow all coming together.). Lions wandering around all over. A set of six of us stretched out on some sagging, comfy green couches. I'd been playing for almost eleven hours in three different groups, two of them brand-new for me, and even taught my first drum lesson in months. WIPED OUT.

Snatches of random Lions conversation drifted past me like a dream...

" - yeah, we stayed at that tempo for about two seconds - "
" - What the hell happened in that reggae intro? There seemed to be all these extra measures all of a sudden?"
"- I could have sworn there was a signal for timbals to keep playing - "
"- So I discovered there are supposed to be FIVE hits there and not SIX, huh? Did you all like my little solo? Boy, certain leaders sure are fast with the evil looks if you just happen to take one little tiny solo - "
"- Here, smell this."
"AAA! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SMELL THIS? GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME?"
[massive shrieking as a player deliberately sprays beer all over someone with a stinky shirt, but the spraying beer gets out of control]
"BEER BOMB! BEER BOMB!"
"Was that really the last beer?"
"Well, they had 24 beers in the cooler for the band, which normally would be enough for a band, but, our band has 35 people, so- "
"Say no more. The Locusts of Batucada strike again."
"Does anyone know if this club is nonsmoking?" [ this last from a player seated RIGHT next to a HUGE sign that said "ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING" - he really hadn't seen it ] "Well, what I really meant was, would they notice if I smoked a joint?"
"- this huge mass of whirling hippies -"
"- I swear everybody was on mushrooms out there - "
"- I was just trying to grab one of his chest hairs."
"- Does anybody know how many representatives are in the US Congress?"
"- Does anybody know if samba de roda is 2-3 or 3-2?"
"-But at least he's better than Bush-"
"Well, that's a pretty damn low standard, wouldn't you say? Satan could be running and we'd all be saying, at least he's better than Bush."
"- whirling, stinking hippies, on shrooms! But they were like, frat boys, but also hippies, but sort of grunge."
"- What *I* think is, the only way we are going to get out of Iraq is to completely bomb the entire nation with Ecstasy tabs. Like, just drop bazillions of pounds of Ecstasy out of helicopters all over the entire country and then get the hell out in the next 24 hours."
"That is the ONLY good exit strategy I have ever heard."
"Excuse me, I totally needed to go to the bathroom at least forty minutes ago."

"- Kathleen, if you get any more horizontal on that couch, you're going to slither onto the floor."

We played one more short set with Bat Makumba right at the end of the evening. It was so sweet. This time the tempo was soft and swinging and beautiful and danceable. It was just right. Everybody was so happy.

Oh, THAT caixa pattern

... And back to my music life in Portland. I've been feeling very disconnected from my life here in Portland, till Carnaval ended, and now suddenly I'm ready to get playing again. I think part of my mind was still in Brazil. And, I was sick for weeks. And, I had to move apartments (I always underestimate how many weeks moving really takes). But also I'm still coming out of the tail end of my horrific work schedule last fall, which had me SO badly blasted I am still only now catching up. And one of the worst parts about it was, NO time to practice, NONE. I have had a very sickening sense of backsliding musically. It has been almost nauseating to me to feel my musicality fading. It bugs me when I am falling asleep at night, and thinking about my life; it bugs me a lot.

So, finally back in action this week! First time in months!!! First up, Lions.

The Lions are in a temporary reprieve from their leadership crisis of last year, Randy having reappeared to do most of the leading, and Brian back in town for a month too! Lions have a string of gigs this week, and last night's was one of those odd school shows, a multicultural fair with us playing in the gym...hordes of preteens running around in little packs, yikes... the basketball hoops right overhead. Many of us Lions were suddenly a bit shellshocked by memories of high-school gym ("I remember when that 3-point line seemed so far away, back then..." "Yeah, and I remember how when they used to hang me by my underwear from the basketball hoop every day, the hoop seemed so high, back then ....").

Anyway. The Lions did good, the dancers were lovely, but I played like SHIT. I was COMPLETELY DISGUSTED with myself. And this was after having been fairly disgusted w/myself already at Sun and Mon rehearsal. I was on caixa at first, which is not my usual instrument, and - my fault, I shouldn't have volunteered to be an alternate caixa player because I really don't know some of the breaks yet. I know it's ok to lay out of the breaks, I know I was useful anyway (I was the only caixa for the 4 surdos on the left side). But I still just felt so irritated with myself. Constantly glancing over at Sue to see whether we were still in Mocidade or Viradouro, or if they'd switched to the press roll or some goddam other bizarre pattern, oh, riiight, Mangueira version 3 with that funny buzz when we come of THAT break.... I can pick patterns up on the fly pretty fast, but I would rather know that they're coming!

For the second half, I was on timbal, and, well, on timbal, it's not that I've backslid, it's more like I never forward-slid in the first place!

But, NOW THAT I FINALLY HAVE SOME TIME, this week, for the first time in six months, I have time to practice. So I zipped home after the gig, locked myself in the basement and put in a good solid hour on timbal and two on caixa. It felt fabulous to break down the caixa patterns and really work on it again. And I was able to go to bed NOT fully pissed at myself, which was good.

And I've got plenty to practice for. Saturday will be a monster day - I'm supposed to lead a rehearsal of the new girl's group Samba Gata, and then go to my first rehearsal of Axe Dide, and from there straight to a big Lions gig that night opening for Bat Makumba. Time to WORK. If I want to not play like crap again, I have to WORK AT THIS. Work HARD.