Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Carnaval 2010 here I come!!!

Job crisis suddenly resolved as quickly as it happened - four days after asking my chair for letters of reference (i.e. betraying the fact that I was job-hunting elsewhere) my boss had a meeting with the dean about the hiring freeze, and magically pulled a big, fluffy rabbit out of the hat for me. Here's my schedule now:

- Guaranteed job for spring semester 2009.
- Then four months off. Brazil for two of those months. It'll be off-season there - I'm hoping to hook up with some escolas when they are starting their first-ever rehearsals for 2010, and play with the Olodum guy I've always wanted to play with, and hook up connections for a Fulbright scholarship in Brazil, and start a collaboration with the sea turtle people in the northeast, and visit the jaguar project again, and and and....

Then the big fluffy rabbit:
- Guaranteed job for fall semester 2010 (!)
- SPRING SEMESTER OFF 2010!!!! That means I have DECEMBER TO JULY FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
- Then back to work fall 2011 - with potentially a long-term job.

So I am GOING BACK TO BRAZIL for the 2010 Carnaval season. AT LAST.

All year I have had this aching sense that I'm just Not Done with Brazil yet, that I need at least another half-year there.

And this time I'm going to stay a long time afterwards: March, April, May, June... . Hopefully, maybe, if I'm incredibly lucky, with a Fulbright. I'll definitely be applying. (not the grad-student kind of Fulbright - there's another kind of Fulbright that is for university professors & postdocs, sort of a professor-exchange-program, where you go and teach in a foreign university. That's what I'm applying for.)

Sea turtles. Jaguars. Tamarins. Imperio. Mocidade. Sao Clemente. Banga.

Now I just have to figure out how to work Bloco X into all this....

... and damn, I HAVE to start saving my money.

Spear through the heart

I've been staying on caixa recently with the Lions - trying to give it another push to try to make that slippery caixa repertoire stick in my head and get that swing better, better, BETTER.... (by "better" I hope it is clear that I mean "less sucky"). I really want to improve at it. Plus, oddly enough, I've been needed on caixa recently, because there have been several rehearsals recently when the main caixa Lions have been out of town. There's nothing like the threat of being sole caixa player to put the fear of god into you. The same thing's been happening in Axe Dide, where I'm regularly the only caixa player for fast Rio samba. So I've been chugging at it.

The groove's been getting marginally better. I'm in one of those stages now where Im thinking "Wow, I'm really improving! My swing is GREAT now!" - which I KNOW, from the past five years, means that I am about to discover that I still really suck in some unperceived but truly terrible way, and that my swing is completely horrible in some way that I can't quite hear yet, and that the next time I play in front of Fred of Monobloco, or in front of Jorge Alabe, they'll get that little smile and little head shake that means "oh, she's got it wrong in that way that gringos always get it wrong - how funny that they all do that same mistake".

Sigh. Anyway, I'm focusing now on our big Halloween gig on Friday. So there I was on caixa at Lions rehearsal on Sunday. People were chatting, I was just noodling around, quietly practicing some little chatter fragments super-slow and super-quiet, off in my own world. Off on my own. Then suddenly -

A caixa EXPLODED into a Viradouro groove RIGHT NEXT TO ME with a volume that almost flattened me against the wall. Brian Davis. Brian had decided it was time to start Viradouro, and he'd gotten a caixa on and walked straight up to me without me even noticing (I'd been staring down at my drum in my little lost mental world), till he was about 2 inches away, and he had launched into a blistering, impossibly beautiful, swinging Viradouro groove that was at least three times louder as I can play at my very loudest. It was just Brian, all on his own, just solo'ing, calling all the other caixas to join him. It was completely electrifying. It felt like - it felt like the Tokyo Bullet Train had just blasted through the room. It felt like a white-hot supernova had ignited right next to me. It felt like a spear right through the heart. It felt like the moment when a huge wave catches your board and you suddenly start to fly.

I could not possibly do anything other than just join in and play along (at 1/3 of his volume).

So, here's the thing, I'd just found out two days earlier that I'd probably lost my job at Univ. Portland - due to a brand-new hiring freeze - due to the economic collapse. Suddenly I was thinking I'd only be in Portland till April, and then moving on with my life. I'd spent all weekend looking at job ads: in Scotland, in the Middle East, in Brazil (of course), in London (but I couldn't find any good ones), in Trinidad... even in Nevada (actually that one looked really fun: a tiny experimental college with only 26 students on a cattle ranch in the middle of the desert. And horses!) I'd gotten sort of resigned to the concept that I might be leaving Portland. And it was starting to seem sort of exciting. Aberdeen, Scotland, studying seabird ecology! Trinidad, marine biology! South Carolina, sea turtles! A Nevada cattle ranch, with horses! I was starting to think, time to blow this town, this UP hiring freeze is a sign, it's time to move on.

But with Brian playing at me like that, I thought: I don't want to leave this town. I don't want to leave this band, and I don't want to leave these people. I'm not done here. Six more months in Portland isn't nearly enough time. The Lions are something truly valuable; and I need to find a way to ride this wave for a while longer.

How to be a gata

I always wondered if a girls' drum group would really be any different from a guys' drum group. Well, here are a few scenes from the Gatas:

- Our fearless leader Angela gives us a huge cue with such an extravagant arm wave that one of her rings goes flying of her hand, hits the wall and rolls under a desk. We have to stop the samba because half the band has scurried across the room to look for the ring.

- We finally get playing again when suddenly one of our surdo players slightly grazes one finger on a lug. There is a tiny speck of blood. We all go "Awwwwwww!" and stop playing and cluster around to look. Somebody goes running for a band-aid. Somehow I don't think there'd have been as much sympathy in a guys' group...

- We finally get playing again when a glint on another surdo player's hand catches my eye. Oh my god! It's her brand-new wedding ring! I hadn't seen it yet. I lean in for a closer look and next thing I know, the entire band is clustered around oohing and aahing over her gorgeous ring, and yes, we've stopped the samba again. Again, not something I have seen happen in other surdo sections.

- we're all chatting when suddenly, during a lull in the conversation, one person's sentence happens to ring out really loudly, and the sentence is "Yup, those are some big titties." Which then starts us on at least a 10-minute conversation on big boobs vs. small boobs, times we've accidentally been caught staring at other women's boobs, how annoying it is to jog if you have big boobs, whether or not it's true that women in Costa Rica have really big boobs, whether or not they're real or fake, where the best place is in the Americas for good cheap boob jobs (Colombia, apparently), a prompt show of hands to the question "Who else here has small tits?", mutual agreement from the small-titted women that it's better to have small tits because you can wear tank tops with no bras "and not feel obscene", and a short speech about the Itty Bitty Titty Committee (ooh, can I join?)

- Chocolate at rehearsals.

- Hot pink outfits.

- Everybody can dance.

- well, plus, we are just cuter, what can I say?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

A caixa report from Germany

Had a free day today and spent about 6 hours working on caixa. A couple hours of drills in my tiny bathroom, and then worked through the ENTIRE Lions repertoire... I've gotten so pissed at myself again recently for always having to rely on John, Sue and Pauline to get me through the breaks. "Viradouro now, Kathleen!" "It's PRESS bossa, Kathleen!" "That call always goes into Mocidade, Kathleen!" duhhh. I'm constantly spacing pieces of the repertoire. heard 3 of them are away this weekend at Xuxa's wedding and I realized, ulp, I better finally get my act together for tomorrow's rehearsal. If I can't go to Xuxa's wedding, :( :( :( at least maybe I can improve my samba playing. :)

So time for a little caixa geekage:

One of my little secret addictions recently has been the completely pointless word-finding game Scramble, on Facebook. And sometimes when I'm whiling away my life on Scramble at 3am, one of the European sambistas - who are well into their afternoon coffee break at work at that time - will start up a live chat. A couple days ago, Maluco da Caixa suddeny popped up in a little chat window - one of great German caixa players I met in Bloco X.

He'd sent me a note a couple weeks ago asking what I knew about Imperio Serrano's caixa style (my answer: not much) because Atila, the mestre of Imperio Serrano, was coming for a workshop.

(pause to go green with envy yet again over how many mestres they get over there...!! I mean, IMPERIO SERRANO, good god, and they get Jonas from Mocidade a couple time a year, and Esteves of Estacio, and piles of Mangueira directors, and all of Monobloco, and ... sniff... )

Anyway, Imperio Serrano is very dear to my heart - it's the only escola I've paraded with, and it's got such a great underdog vibe of being the poor, honest, hard-working, no-drug-money escola, AND, on top of all that, it regularly wins Best Bateria. A lot of escolas like to say they always get perfect scores of 10 during Carnaval, but usually they really get, oh, one ten and three 9.9's. But Imperio Serrano really DOES always get scores of 10, from every single judge, year after year. Virtually no other bateria can match their record.

They're best known for their quad-bells, but I personally am spellbound by their third surdos.

Aw, I would have given my eyeteeth to go to a Mestre Atila workshop.

So anyway the report from Maluco da Caixa was:

The first thing he said:
"Forget what you saw in Odilon's book". (ha ha!)

The second thing he said:
"so it turns out Atila is not a caixa player."

On further questioning it turns out that what Atila really loves is... take a wild guess.... quad bell and third surdo! But of course. No wonder the bateria especially shines at those.

But it sounds like Atila can indeed play caixa, even if maybe it's not his most-beloved instrument. At least, he can play it well enough to demonstrate subtle differences in feel between the identical patterns of Imperio and Mangueira.

What's that, you say? The identical patterns of Imperio and MANGUEIRA? Isn't Mangueira supposed to be unique? I dunno... the more escolas I see, the more it seems like there's a continuum from the Viradouro/Salgueiro family through to the Mangueira/Ilha/Imperio family. Only Mocidade really stands out as unique.

For Mangueira the consensus seems to be
X..X ..X. X..X .Zz. "simple" mangueira
XX.X .XX. XX.X .Zz. "harder" mangueira with double rights.
XX.X X.X. XX.X .Zz. alternate double-right version reported by Maluco da Caixa
X.XX .XX. X.XX .Zz. Ilha. (via Fred of Monobloco - I never got to see Ilha myself.) Fred said: Same kind of idea as Mangueira, but the FEEL is different - lighter, ringier, closer to the rim.

so here is Imperio Serrano (via Atila, via Maluco da Caixa)
X..X ..X. X..X .Zz. Imperio

... Identical to Mangueira. Apparently Atila said that yes, Imperio and Mangueira have the same caixa pattern, but ( you know what's coming) the FEEL is different. Atila then played the pattern two ways, Imperio-style and Mangueira-style, to demonstrate the difference, and... some people could hear it immediately, some never could. Hmmmm.

All the little comments he was dropping about all the workshops they get made me just want to up and move to Europe! (Especially now that the dollar is doing better!) So from there we got into a long discussion about, just exactly how difficult is it to learn German, anyway? :)

And then I went into my tiny bathroom and worked on swinging RrlR till my hands fell off. :)

*********
A P.S. on the Mangueira patterns, since people always wonder about this. Jorge Alabe once told me the double-right was the "original" Mangueira pattern, back when they played slower. Fred Castilho of Monobloco said the same - and Fred demanded we learn the double-right pattern since we played at a slower, historical-type tempo of 135. VamoLa used to always play this version too, with the double rights. I'm told the Lions historically have bounced back & forth between both the patterns, trying to figure out which is "right", but then realized they're both right. I remember a Lions rehearsal where we were listening over and over to field recordings of Mangueira, and it became clear that keeping a STRONG swing going through the whole thing is what's critical, not whether or not you're doing the double rights. Americans (including me) generally have trouble swinging through double-rights. Got to keep the swing going.

One of my strongest memories from playing with Monobloco was the couple of nights that a swarm of Mangueira caixa players joined us and (amazingly) ended up in a little circle right around me. (just because I was lucky enough to be the caixa standing nearest the repique player, and they all wanted to be next to the repique player). They were swinging it like hell, swinging HARD, almost lurching it, especially the RrlR at the front.

Then when I finally got my one and only chance to sit in the middle of the Mangueira bateria itself, I saw at least 4 different patterns going on, including both the above, and also including plain chatter.

Finally, Brian (of the Lions) says he's heard Mangueira has switched all caixa players back to the double-right pattern as of this year - i.e. after their huge bateria-director battle after Carnaval 2008 when the president temporarily (?) took over control of the bateria from the mestre.

whew, enough caixa, I'm going to bed.

Farmyard drummer

This came around to the Lions from Brian Davis this week. Brian, I can't thank you enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ThSi1wbqU&feature=email

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

2.2 reais to the dollar!

Well, in the middle of the total economic collapse, the meltdown of the modern world, the Apocalypse and the End of Days, there's one lovely ray of sunshine for American samba addicts: the Brazilian real has been hit so hard by the economic chaos that the dollar has actually shot up against it:



See, it's bounced back from its appalling historic low of 1.5 reais to the dollar, all the way back up to 2.2! That's just where it was when I did my first big Brazilian trip three years ago!

And check out the dollar against the euro:




And the British pound:



Brazil and Bloco X, here I come!* Assuming the entire world doesn't go up in flames next week.

* the only minor problem being that the airfare will cost probably $8000 by next summer. Well, I've always wanted to do the overland trip to Brazil anyway. Via burro through Mexico, layovers in Costa Rica and Peru...

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Twenty-Six Tiny Little Bands

Today was the Portland Marathon. I didn't know about the Portland Marathon, but it turns out that Portland in early October has the absolute perfect weather for a marathon (a cool drizzle, in case you didn't know). But what I REALLY didn't know about the Portland Marathon is that the organizers have apparently decided that what marathoners really need to keep going, more than anything else, is a regular sequence of tiny little bands sprinkled every mile along the marathon route. They must have hired about, well, about 26 little bands. Each band parked under a tiny white awning, every couple of miles along the marathon route. It's a pretty cool idea. Picture it - there are you are jogging along, jogging, jogging, jogging, through the rain, past the deep green Oregon trees, and hey! A marimba ensemble! Jog past them, jog, jog, jog, hey! A bluegrass band! Jog past, jog, jog, jog, look! A flute player with a friend holding an umbrella over her head! etc. Until finally, hey! A tiny samba band!

The tiny samba band was Jake, Jesse, Angela and me, apparently the only 4 samba musicians in town foolish enough to agree to a Sunday morning gig. It had really seemed like a good idea until the alarm went off at 7am. At 7am it seemed like a truly horrible idea. I actually thought "Maybe they won't notice if I don't show up" - ok, that might work in a 25-person ensemble, but NOT in a 4-person band. (This was the morning after Saturday's electrifying maracatu gig, you see, plus I'd had to miss a great opportunity to jam on some more late-night maracatu at a Jujuba show).

My hard-working cat, who has the job of waking me up in the morning after the alarm has gone off, had to bat my on the nose at least 100 times over the next 15 minutes before I finally dragged myself out of bed. She tried every variation she could think of: claws out (bad reaction to that one), claws in (better reaction), on the nose, on the eyelid, on the cheek, on the chin, left paw, right paw, quiet, different tones of meow; tireless worker that she is. Till finally I hauled out of bed and staggered to the gig. Past all the hordes of jogging people and all the 25 other tiny little bands.

So the cool thing about this gig was - no one audience member hears you for more than 30 seconds. So it basically means you can just jam on whatever you want! And the Jake/Jesse/Angela combo turned out to be a perfect jam group. We're not all actually in the same band - it's one of those situations where Jake and Jesse are in a band together, and Jesse and I are in a band together, and Angela and I are in yet another band together. (I guess the last link is that Jake and Angela need to start up another band.) That sort of thing is really excellent for a jam group, 'cause any pair of people can toss ideas at each other from their shared group, remind each other of little things, and then the other people can pick up on it.

It became so free-wheeling. Now it's a samba! Now it's a six-eight! Now it's a New Orleans second line groove! Now just try and guess what it is! So much fun.

The images that stick with me:
- There'd been a poor dog whose owner had stupidly left it tied to one of the tent stakes of the little tent that we were parked under. Poor thing! For most of our set he looked completely miserable. He pulled away from us as far as he could, well out into the rain, even dragging the tent stake a little ways out with him. What was that owner THINKING, leaving his dog alone with a samba band? Doesn't that legally qualify as cruelty to animals?

And then Jake started playing the cuica: Up came the dog's head. Up came the ears. Every note Jake played on the cuica and the dog would do another facial expression. SQUEAK, tilt head to the right; BWOOP, prick left ear; SQUEAK, prick right ear; WOOP, tilt head to the left; SQUEAK, prick both ears. Jake turned to face him and just played to the dog for a long time. I wish I'd had a video! Best cuica reaction I've ever seen.

- And then at least we were waiting for the very, very, very last marathoner. We could see her way in the distance, plodding along, all by herself, with two police cars slowly inching along behind her (the police cars were marking the official end of the marathon). So we played a whole special samba just for her, playing faster and faster and faster as she got closer and closer. When she finally reached us she put her arms over her head in a victory salute. We kept on playing till she disappeared round the corner.

And we staggered home. (or to Lions rehearsal, in my case.) What a fun gig. Hope to do it again next year. And what a fun bunch of people to play with. Hope to play with them again, soon.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Minnie the Moocher does Maracatu

Derek's maracatu group, Nacao Bate Livre ("Free Beat Nation", roughly), is swinging into gear. There's been a little corps of maracatu players here in Portland for a while, but mostly just assembling now and then, once or twice a year. But over the last month Derek seems to have decided to really kick it into gear. A "real" band, gigging actively, not just a once-a-year band. That means big awesome new repertoire, lots of late-night rehearsals, a bunch of gigs lined up, t-shirts (you know it's serious when the t-shirts appear!), little business cards, the email list, the works.

My first big mistake this week (well, about my 6th actually, but my first relating to the maracatu): Missing 2 of the the last 2 rehearsals. My second mistake: Forgetting my earplugs (even though I just bought 50) My third mistake: Thinking call was at 7pm, but no, call was at SIX-THIRTY pm, the SHOW was at 7pm.

So I'm casually checking email at 6:30 when I realize I'm LATE, LATE, LATE! GRAB the white pants (thank god I found them, thank god they still fit, it's been years....), GRAB the alfaia (thank god I tuned it earlier), FORGET the earplugs again, ZOOM to the car, CURSE myself for not having reviewed the Baladas 1, 2 and 3 or the mysterious new syncopated thingy, PRAY that John J will remember the Baladas, or that at least Derek will somehow visually cue me through it, and CHARGE down I-5.

Get there just in time. Tiny bar. Drizzling rain. Freezing cold. The band is huddling in a little patio in the back. All the girls are shivering. (The guys are fine, of course) Wow, I'm not late!!! Derek rounds us up and off we go.

This being a new band and all, I didn't quite know how it would go. For the record.... it went FANTASTIC. Derek has rounded up the craziest set of phenomenally talented people. His philosophy seems to be, if you are a brilliant musician, you WILL join our maracatu band, even if you weren't planning on it, and even if you've never heard of maracatu, and once you hear the alfaias it will just come to you, and we will MAKE whatever it is that you play become part of maracatu. Derek seems to know every good musician in town, and he's constantly pulling random people off of street corners who happen to be the world's expert on the theremin or something. "Hey! Come play theremin in our maracatu band!" - or whatever it is. And the thing is, Derek is the kind of guy who could actually pull this off. He has seriously put in his time on maracatu - he is no lightweight - plus he really understands the underlying relationships of quite a lot of other genres too - all the rhythmic nuances, all the historical background. He can see a way that they will fit together.

Anyway, so there we were with a set of West African drummers, a flute player, a tap-dancing saxophonist, and a full-on maracatu ensemble, and damn if it didn't work.

We started off with "Minnie the Moocher" played by the tap-dancing saxophone player who was also hollering the song through an old-fashioned bullhorn. OK, so maybe you were not thinking of a tap-dancing saxophone-based "Minnie the Moocher" as a maracatu song, were you? YOU WOULD BE WRONG. It turns out Minnie the Moocher *IS* MARACATU. You just didn't know it yet.

Derek stepped us into it gently at first, just marking downbeats, while the wonderful sax guy was singing.
BOOM bip bip bip
BOOM bip bip bip
real gentle, and then Derek whips off the caixa call and the alfaias came THUNDERING in, with the electrifying bells and the rockin' ganza taking off on an endless dancing groove. Immediately every single person who had been in the bar all piled outside to see us. The sax and the flute jamming along. Outrageous.

Just for the record the alfaias were doing this pattern that starts with a roll (I don't have a name for it):
RLRL R--R -L-R ---- R-L- R--R -L-R ----
(using my usual notation of, hits are shown in clumps of four 16th notes)
(maracatu's traditionally denoted with E's and D's, the Portuguese abbreviations for left and right, but never mind about that.)
... just such a cool pattern I thought I would write it down.

The swingin' bell-and-ganza section just kept on grooooooving, while the alfaias came in and out like enormous elephants having a very cool, very funky argument, and the caixa patterns buzzing around our heads like an insane flock of crows. The caixas started doing all kinds of crazy shit. Derek started calling each caixa in turn to do the funkiest rockingest solo they could possibly think of, one after the other, round and round and round. WHOA boy on those caixa solos. Hot. Passersby started running across the street (TOWARD us, mind you, not away from us). A huge pile of onlookers collected around. 'Cause the caixas guys were GOOD. Damn took my breath away.

This is the kind of night that makes me think ... why would I want to live anywhere else when there are players like this here in Portland? (which is especially ironic 'cause I'd just spent the first half of the day worrying over the fact that living in the Pacific Northwest is pretty isolated, musically. But the thing is, so what if it is isolated, if there's this quality of music happening? ) One more factor to add in to my Fall'08 life crisis about whether to move to Brazil, Europe, the East Coast, or just stay put.

Then - Balada Something! One of the ones I've spaced! And yes, of course John remembered it (he has a hell of a musical memory - whenever I've spaced something, I just look at John) and he jumped right in beautifully, and I copied him, *whew* (wipe brow in relief) and from there on Derek led us through everything with crystal-clear cues.

Hey, who needs rehearsals! Maybe I can miss ALL the rehearsals!

This is shaping up to be a fine band.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The earplug song

I bought earplugs!!!
Earplugs,
earplugs,
earplugs,
earplugs,
Worth ten times their weight in gold!
Can even take an em cima hold!
ARMORED!
READY FOR BATTLE!

Twenty pairs of EXTRA SOFT Hearo's.
Hearo's,
Hearo's,
Hearo's,
Hearo's,
Better than beer-o's!
Never more fear-o's!
ARMORED!
READY FOR BATTLE!

The know-it-more

OK ok, so I pissed a bunch of people off with this post! Aw, who knew that there were a bunch of people reading this blog - I thought it was mostly just my mom and dad, and my friend Katie; and Katie told me last month she'd stopped reading it.

I keep this log as my own journal (it helps me practice if I keep a journal of what I am practicing and how often). I post it only because if I write a private journal, it gets too depressing. Making it slightly public keeps it more focused and readable and upbeat. I sure don't mind if other people read it - otherwise I wouldn't post it, of course - but it always takes me by surprise if they do!

Anyway, this was the post with me going into my red-hot flaming Elitist Know-It-All Snob, trashing my local musicians for allegedly having a limited viewpoint on samba.

it doesn't matter in the least as far as the music goes. I mean - so what if you use different vocabulary for instruments, for breaks, whatever; so what if you don't know the precise historic origin of this or that break, or of the technique you're playing; so what if you stumble onto the same funk pattern that another group uses; or which escola a certain caixa hold came from. SO WHAT? As long as you PLAY well. As long as you SWING. As long as the pattern ROCKS.

So what if you have had only 1 teacher - especially if that teacher is the best in the world?

This music here is awesome. If it weren't, I wouldn't be in this city.

It's just disorienting for me, is all. Because I'm a scientist. I work in a field where everybody collaborates worldwide; where the philosophical mindset is to cast your net as widely as possible, seek out as many different teachers as possible, go into the field and do your own fieldwork, and in the end, TRUST YOUR DATA. I have to repeat it again, because it is the most fundamental thing about me: I'm a scientist. Science is a way of life. And I treat samba exactly like science, and for me that has to mean: Do your fieldwork and see for yourself.

As for whether I'm an elitist - that one made me laugh, because YES, I'm definitely an elitist! I should probably make myself a t-shirt that "ELITIST SNOB" in gigantic glow-in-the-dark letters, just so that people can be forewarned. I'm probably the original card-carrying elitist. I can't help it; it's my upbringing - remember I'm the East Coast kid, the kid who grew up playing on the Princeton campus, and a Bostonian for years after that! If you've ever heard of the brassy arrogant East Coast mentality, this is it. I don't have a very strong streak of it, but it does come out from time to time. And (maybe this is the most East Coast thing of all) I even like it! It helps push me to do my best; it helps make me strong.

In the happy tiny noisy bathroom

So one reason my finances are tight is that I'm paying through the nose for THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I'VE EVER LIVED IN MY LIFE, my friend Tamara's gorgeous little house. I met Tamara through the Lions - she just showed up one day, you know the type, just another brilliant classical musician with a degree in flute and piano and composition who is highly interested in ethnomusicology, writes most of the world music reviews for cdbaby.com, bashed up her arm rock climbing and took up surdo to help strengthen it, and decided to learn samba for kicks before going off on a 10-month musical research trip to Morocco. You know the type. (i.e. the awesome type.)

So she's off to Morocco, and I'm renting her amazing place. (with amazing piano, even). It's ALL MY OWN, JUST ME, and I can practice any time I want !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but to spare the neighbors as much as I can, I try to practice in the bathroom to help contain the noise.

My job is keeping me plenty busy right now - the baby elephant at the zoo, and my 26 students who are observing him, has put me over the top - but I am now able to squeeze in a tiny bit of practice every single day! Today's happy noisy bathroom routine, this afternoon just before I biked to school to tell the students all about the sex life of guinea pigs, was:

Five minutes' each of the "turning" instruments:
tamborim
frigideira
pandeiro

Ten minutes each of my "stick" instruments:
caixa
repinique

On caixa, I've been drilling myself to hell and back on the Lions' funk Brenda pattern. DETERMINED to get it as clean and perfect as possible. And drilling myself BRUTALLY on cleaning up the swing in every little quarter-note-motif of every little pattern that I do.

Five and ten minutes doesn't sound like very much. The funny thing is, every one of those instruments has improved by enormous leaps and bounds just in the week that I've been doing this.

Total economic meltdown

So what is a samba gypsy to do when her nation undergoes a complete economic collapse? It used to be that I could flit overseas fairly easily and be sure I could get a job when I came back. These days, I don't know! I already know I'm unlikely to be able to buy a house in the US like I'd hoped. I was hoping to save this year for a house, buy one next year, then rent it out whenever I went travelling... But since the Wall Street crisis, the credit markets are in a total freeze here in Oregon. No mortgages available to anyone, even someone with a perfect credit score and a hefty down payment. They shut down last week. Sure, it'll loosen up eventually, but interest rates will be brutal and I'd need a whopping down payment and proof of a secure job. The prices of gas and food have DOUBLED from a couple years ago, and have completely eliminated my ability to save for my next Brazil trip. And the dollar is worth HALF what it was in Brazil just five years ago. And the plane fares to Brazil are THREE TIMES as expensive. (TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS from Oregon, HOLY S***) I still am breaking even, but only breaking even, nothing more... and I had to make the sad decision to not go to Brazil this season. Skipping Carnaval for the first time in years.

Of course, as Pauline wisely reminded me: You don't have to go EVERY year. It will still be there next year. And I have the great pleasure of spending time with family instead. (In the Florida Keys, yet! woo-hoo! was that a brilliant idea or what!)

But it does make me worry about my long-range plans. The University of Portland has offered me a third year of teaching. Take it... or don't? I had originally planned to head back to Brazil that year. (Next year. The 2009-2010 academic year.) But things are iffy enough now, economically, that I truly wonder what would happen to me if I couldn't get work when I get back. Say I got sick...

The samba gypsy life is really the only life i want to lead, but of course it just doesn't pay the bills. I'm not without other resources, of course. I am very good at my job (biology professor, university level), it's a job that's in reasonable demand and is as recession-proof a job as you can get; I'm bright and highly educated; I have a good professional network to draw on; I'm pretty frugal in how I live. But however you cut it, university professors don't make much. Especially ones who keep avoiding tenure-track jobs because they want to keep traveling to Brazil every other year! In my cohort of grad school PhD buddies, I'm the ONLY one without a tenured job at a major university. It's by choice - I never applied to those jobs because I just didn't want to get trapped. (OK, and because I absolutely hate writing grants...) I was top of my field; but I left it and flitted away to go drum. It was a ridiculous gamble

I chose this path, and I'm eternally happy I did. But what is the best path now?

Nothing against Oregon. One of the beautiful places in the continent... I love my job, love my students, and I've got fantastic musicians here to play with and learn from. But..... There's no Carnaval. I miss the sun. I miss my friends.

I just miss it.

It is clearly time for me to do some serious research into the universities in Rio, Salvador, Sao Paulo and Curitiba, and REALLY pursue the sea turtle and tamarin research. (which would require writing grants, dammit...) Quit talking about it and do it. And time for me to learn how to teach biology in Portuguese.