Monday in Portland

Monday in Portland. Worked hard all day - learned all about human respiration today - spirometers, pneumotachs and how to do asthma tests - just in time to teach a three-hour lab on it, nick of time! Then a 1.5-hour lecture about endangered cats.
It's such a crazy mind flip for me on Mondays to jump from my biology classes to Lions rehearsal. My head is still buzzing with pieces from lecture. Today my head is full of Sand Cat and Bay Cat and Black-footed Cat, the plight of the Clouded Leopard, the three extinct tigers and the five endangered ones... the certain looming extinction of half the world's great carnivores... as I'm zooming from the university down I-5 to rehearsal, where I fly in already late and having missed half of rehearsal. Find a parking spot, thinking "only 35 Amur leopards left in the wild! Thirty-five! Hopeless!" Hear the bateria already playing, in a sealed basement room a block away. Put my earplugs in BEFORE going into the basement. Ah! They're in Break 7! Charge in the door, pick up my segunda and off we go.

Break 7 finishes, samba calls out and they call "Six-eight! Six-eight and then Samba-Reggae!" I look around and, oh no, I'm the only timbal player and the 6/8 starts with a long timbal solo. Well, hell, do or die. This happened a couple weeks ago and I was mortified then, and so I've been practicing; time to see if the practice paid off.

Jump right into it and - YEAH - the practice paid off. Steadier and surer, slappier slaps, tonier tones, steadier tempo. And that wasn't even all that much practice, either. Rewarding to feel it improving. I'm still not great, but now I'm solid, and that's half the battle.

I'm still not loud enough though - Brian has to jump ship from repinique and join me on timbal so that the bell can hear me. But I don't feel too bad about that since it's just me on one lonely timbal against 6 caixas, 6 surdos, and a rack of tamborims, and the bell player is clear across the room. But it makes me EXTRA DETERMINED to play AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE. I know I can't play as loud as a guy with twice the arm muscle - that's just physics - but - how loud COULD I play, really? If I really try? I briefly, momentarily consider that I have a bruise on the palm of my left hand that I'm trying not to aggravate, but then HELL WITH IT and starting whapping AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE on and on and on in a FAST six-eight, a ROCKING six-eight. LOUDER! LOUDER! LOUDER! KEEP IT CLEAN! KEEP IT BRIGHT! KEEP IT LOCKED! Then I find a way to make it EVEN LOUDER! More momentum! More arm! Floppier hand! WHAPPIER!

... and I'm wearing out fast, oh wow, this is an athletic workout and no joke, and I am PANTING.

I'm shocked at how hard I'm panting. Now, remember I was just assessing respiratory physiology earlier today, right down to measuring vital capacity of the lungs before and after exercise. So I just happen to know that the rate I'm puffing now is nearly full vital capacity, as deep and fast as if I were biking at 70% of maximum heart rate.

How is it possible to get such a workout using only your arms? On a measly little hand drum? How can that be equal to biking? I'm not even dancing! I'm standing still!

I finish the 6/8 completely out of breath, my arms shaking, and freshly inspired for a new research project that, in fact, I was just proposing earlier today to a fellow biologist: The Exercise Physiology of Drumming. I want to bring drummers into the lab and measure their oxygen consumption. I want to study drumming AS A PHYSICAL SPORT, as muscle and endurance training.

I'm breathless and happy. No, I wasn't loud enough, but it was reasonably clean and steady and I've got some great research ideas.

Samba-reggae next, I'm solo timbal on this and it goes pretty well too. Nothing fancy at all - in fact I don't think I did a single variation - I just wanted to get the groove to groove.

Vou Festejar. Pauline & I sing our little hearts out! Trying to be audible, just the two of us hollering against an entire bateria, so Brian can count out where to call the breaks. Damn, it's so fun to just belt that baby out. I love that song. And extra fun to sing it with Pauline since it reminds both of us so much of our time in Brazil.

What a weird rehearsal. I'm not a timbal player, and I'm not a singer, but I was soloing on both the last couple days with the whole pride of Lions all watching. Hung in there, did my bit, as best I could. Felt useful. Felt really good actually. At 9pm sharp rehearsal finally ended, but everybody went into Full Chat Mode, enough to go get a whole nother round of beer from the beer fridge. So I hung around a long time just chit-chatting and it was all so friendly, and so nice, to just be hanging out with my friends, that I got positively sentimental about it during an especially touching conversation about old electrical wiring. They're all going "Remember the really old kind with two wires with the braided insulation? And those little porcelain insulators?" and I'm thinking "I LOVE you guys!" Ah, Lions... you're my family, really, you really are.

"Happiness not real unless shared" - Chris McCandless (Into The Wild)

One week to PSU

The PSU Carnaval show is this Saturday night and the heat is on! 3 long rehearsals today - it's all I did all day.

Axe Dide: After humiliating myself by arriving late for rehearsal (when I'd sworn I'd be on time... but then lost my car keys!!). Luckily it didn't matter since I'm not playing the first several pieces, and in fact nobody said a word about it, but still, I felt terrible. ANYway, this is the first time I've seen Axe Dide in full force with all their usual musicians - healed from their appendicitis, back in town from Mexico and Jamaica and wherever, everybody there, and My. God. Impressive as hell. 3 skilled atabaques, full rack of surdos, 2 or 3 extra people zipping around being brilliant on bell, chocalho, caixa, whatever is needed. Casually whipping through all the candomble stuff, Cuban stuff, and tossing in a red-hot Rio samba and earthy samba-reggae, funky hiphop orixa rap, some real capoeira even. I'm just the pokey little puppy trying to help out a bit on caixa and pandeiro, but they don't need me at all. They are SO blazing. And the DANCERS, my god, they are on fire. This group is hot.

Lions: Luckily I wasn't late to Lions, since they follow Axe Dide in the same space. Lions have got their game on too - lots of old hands have turned up again, two new good caixas have joined (real drummers, even! A kit drummer and a drumline snare guy). But oddly we're short on surdos again - our rock-solid segunda player, Melanie, has switched to dance. That leaves us short by one segunda, so I volunteered.
Segunda gets overlooked; people think it's dull. But segunda has to be solid. The difference between a band with a not-great segunda vs. a great segunda.... (what's funny is, people won't even realize why the band's changed. They'll all be saying "Wow, the band sounds so much tighter today! Everyone's playing so well and all the breaks are working! I wonder why?").
So, segunda ok, it's what the band needs. But then... in rehearsal today I spotted so many long-gone players who reappeared and played... third, or timbal, or tamborim, or whatever flashy fun improv thing they wanted. I found myself getting really steamed that I was having to play segunda when, HEY, I'm really a third-surdo player, *I'M* the third-surdo player, that's MY drum you're playing, that's MY third surdo!! I worked myself into a good snit over it before I remembered that I'd VOLUNTEERED for segunda. Oh, yeah.
And then it turned out to be kind of fun. It's a major brain flip to play the cut on segunda, for one thing.
Oddest moment of the rehearsal was when everyone got into a big kerfuffle about where the big BOOMS fit in the song "Vou Festejar", which we're working up for Saturday. I seemed to be the only one who knew FOR SURE how the clave fit into the song - this being one of my Top Five Sambas Every Gringo Sambista Should Know By Heart - so I waded in to say emphatically "No, this song does NOT flip clave. The "vo" is on the TWO. The "ce" is the THREE." No one was really convinced, so I sang it, from the beginning, to demonstrate, and I was right (I'm not always right, but I do know this particular song) and next thing I know they'd asked me to sing, the entire band listening to me sing Vou Festejar, solo, at the top of my lungs, over and over and over, BELTING it out, over and over, everybody counting on their fingers, so they could all count it out ten million times and figure out where the breaks fit in. Funny. I'm not a singer at all but... hey... that Brazilian spirit of "what the hell, who cares if you're a singer or not, just belt it out!" took over.

BAQUE LIVRE: The ad-hoc maracatu group rounded out the evening. Two hours solid of beautiful maracatu. Only a couple people in the group really know maracatu, but all the others are solid samba musicans (mostly Lions) and they're picking it up fast. Even that classic tricky call (the one that starts with the triplet-y caixa call) was coming into focus pretty quick today.
I was on middle alfaia today, me & Derek trading off the top virada part. It's been a long time since I really got to pound on an alfaia. Tremendous fun. When you get going on alfaia, the left arms starts to get into this whipping motion, and then your shoulder gets into it - you can sort of THROW your shoulder, THROW your entire ribcage almost, throw it down to the left side, and use the momentum to accelerate your whole left arm. It's so cool....
Derek had a beautiful set of variations worked out for us, which we set to 3 songs, and - oh man, I think it's going to be really cool on Saturday.

My notes for practice this week:
Axe Dide, Gaga - bell. Make more triplety, stay close to Jesse and try to match his swing
Also run ijesha bell while listening to vasi, see how they fit against each other
Axe Dide, Rio samba - Work on Viradouro caixa, polish it up a bit
Axe Dide, 6/8 - Work on quick caixa flammy thing
Axe Dide, capoeira - Make DAMN sure I don't enter on pandeiro crossed with the berimbau, yikes!
Axe Dide, reggae - Review breaks
Lions, 6/8 & reggae - Practice timbal, makes slaps killer bright
Practice entering 6/8 timbal w/metronome, NAIL the tempo (something has been going wrong here!)
Lions, segunda - Warn Randy Monday that I need to review any breaks we'll be doing, for segunda
Lions, Mangueira - Practice Mangueira caixa, cement the swing. (it flickers in and out)
And practice those triplets at the end. They always take me by surprise when I'm on caixa.
Lions, Vou Festejar - New goal: See if I can sing the entire song while playing caixa.
Maracatu - Mostly I just need to play a bunch of alfaia solos. And tape up my hand.

My schedule for the week:
Monday: Lions rehearsal
Tuesday: Maracatu dress rehearsal with dancers
Wednesday: Axe Dide song reherasal
Thursday: Play for maracatu dance class
Friday: Axe Dide full show, 10pm
Friday later: First-Friday Pagode, till wee hours
Saturday morning: Play for samba dance class
Saturday evening:
1. Maracatu
2. Axe Dide
3. Lions
4. Batuque (Jeff Busch's group)

ok, here we go....

Bloco X!!!

I'm SO excited, I'm going to Bloco X this year!

Bloco X is the pan-European bloco that is reportedly the best samba experience in Europe. It's a bloco that seems to be primarily composed of the directors and leaders of all the other European blocos. It seems to be a seasonal bloco that re-assembles once per year with a big rehearsal weekend, then plays at various events in the summer, like the European Cup, and the World Cup whenever it's in Europe. Then disassembles again (I think).

But the rehearsal weekend itself is apparently the big event. Part party, part reunion. I hear things like: "The only event in the year that I would NEVER miss for all the world", "A giant refrigerated beer truck", "Try to picture a camp that has the organization of the Germans and the partying of the Brazilians". It is, indeed, organized by Germans, but SAMBISTA Germans, which is a cultural blend that I think I'll just have to see first-hand.

I am picturing sort of like a mini-CBC (California Brazil Camp). Like the CBC Advanced Bateria class just playing nonstop for three days. But with something like 15 nations represented, while at CBC we think that anybody from any US state outside of California is pretty exotic ("Hey look, it's the Wisconsin people! wow!").

This year, Bloco X is by invitation only. And I got an invitation!

But of course, with the US economy in its worst tailspin in my entire lifetime, this is not exactly the best month to be planning a trip to Europe. The poor little US dollar... it looks so tiny and shrunken now, next to those big, fat, shining euros, and I'd already spent just about all of my shrunken little dollars buying my apartment in Salvador. So over the last month I was getting pretty worried about money. But - yay for frequent flyer miles, found a FREE ticket from Oregon to London today. Then I found an airplane flight from London to Berlin for one penny. ONE PENNY (okay, plus 9.99 in taxes) - a crazy one-day sale on Ryan Air that I just stumbled into.

How lucky am I? Four great bands to play with here in Portland; four months' vacation off work coming up; a free ticket to London clear from the West Coast; and a ticket to Berlin for one penny, to play with Bloco X on my birthday.

A procura da batida perfeita

Way overdue on writing a post for this blog - and that's because, shades of my Balkan days: I'm in too many bands again. Four currently, 3 of which are playing in the same giant gig in two weeks' time and are all in a frenzy of preparation.

The bands are:
Lions of Batucada, always the finest samba in the US
Axe Dide, a magnificent candomble dance troupe. (I am brand new to this stuff)
Baque Livre, a maracatu group
Samba Gata, a new all-girls' samba group that I co-lead with 2 other leaders.

What's really changed is that I HAVE TIME AGAIN FOR MUSIC - because my university job has finally lightened up to a reasonable workload, this semester. Man alive, it wasn't even till partway through this semester that I finally caught up on the workload of last semester. I can't believe how luxurious the TIME feels. I have time to cook dinners, bake bread, plant flowers, go to movies, read books, ride my bike...(all of these literally for hte first time in six months). Talk to friends and housemates. Hang out after rehearsals. Even go skiing for four days in Utah.... even go on a day-long search for the eggs of the endangered spotted frog... dig out my riding boots and helmet.... but most luxurious, holy of holies, I HAVE TIME TO PRACTICE again.

I've felt so shitty about my playing over the past six months and I am so happy to be able to get to work on it again. I feel like I've got my life back. I'm working on caixa, repinique, timbal. I'll write more later about what I'm practicing, but the bottom line is: I'm in the hunt again. The hunt for the perfect beat: "A procura da batida perfeita." (In search of the perfect beat. There's a great Brazilian dance tune by that name, in fact...)