GRANDE RIO

[Translated from O Dia]

GRANDE RIO DOES A LUXURIOUS PARADE, BUT HAS PROBLEMS WITH COMISSAO DE FRENTE

Grande Rio, the second escola in Grupo Especial to parade at Sapucai this Sunday night, made an homage to France with the theme: "Voila, Caxias! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternit´forever". The escola displayed a beautiful set of floats and costumes.

One of the great moments of the presentation was the passing of the 5th float, which represented "Moulin Rouge." The carry had impeccable illumination with 36 dancers making beautiful choreographies.

Mestre Odilon's bateria thrilled the crowd with his paradinhas. The star Paola Oliveira, at the front of the bateria, interacted well with the drummers, in spite of not showing very much samba dance.

In spite of the visual impact, the escola already had problems at the beginning of the parade. One of the members of the comissão de frente, which represented the reign of Luiz XIV, had difficulties in moving and fell during the presentation in front of the first judges' booth. This caused a certain tension for the LIESA president, Jorge Castanheira, who had to assist the dancer.

There were other problems in the opening float, with problems in the illumination system; it went out as it passed in front of setor 5.

As is customary, many artists participated in the parade of the tricolor escola, among them Zeca Pagodinho, Susana Vieira, Fernanda Lima, Beth Lago e Cristiane Torloni.

[...]
The honorary president of the escola, Antonio Jader Soares, had to be attended by the paramedics. The rumor was that he had twisted his foot. Asked whether he would parade, he made a positive signal and limited himself to saying "it's a lot of work."

IMPERIO SERRANO news report

Well, here in Portland we've had the first of our 2 insane Carnaval parties - this first one being a private party that both Tudo Beleza and the Lions were hired to play for. You know, the usual backyard party with 2 hooded people on black horses at the entrance, 2 samba baterais and 8 girls in sequinned bikinis, a dozen or so contortionists, jugglers and fire dancers ( Zak said: "Fire dancers - that's standard for Portland, right?" ) a 12-foot wide bar with 3 bartenders, an enormous marble cauldron full of eerie blue flames that accidentally set one guest's king's robe on fire, an enormous parade behind 2 chefs carrying a roasted pig, and of course the solemn sacrificial burning of a straw god placed placed on a gigantic floating black cross that was floating around in the heated swimming pool.

It's good to know there are still some rich people in the world.

Meanwhile, in Rio - Carnaval has arrived. I'm so frustrated that not only can I not be there, I can't even take enough time off work tonight to go over to Christina's place to watch the O Globo broadcast. But in my little scrap of time of fifteen free minutes, right now, while dinner is cooking, I can check O Dia's escola-by-escola news updates from their websites. Translations of the first 3 articles follow.


IMPERIO SERRANO (fingers crossed!) -

The first escola to parade this Sunday, Império Serrano entered the Avenida with one major factor in their favor: the samba-enredo. A reprisal from 1976 called "The Legend of the Mermaids and the Mysteries of the Sea", the theme of this escola from Madureira thrilled the grandstands.

"Even if I won the lottery I wouldn't feel so happy. To see my samba brought back and to parade with the escola again is the greatest emotion in the world" said Vicente Mattos, 70 years old, the only one of the composers of this samba who is still living.

The comissão de frente (dance group) was one of the high points of the parade. Four of the 15 members arrived on motorized "patinetes" (?), representing seahorses.

The solo debut of carnaval designer Márcia Laje went very well, and the escola succeeded in telling it story clearly, with floats that made sense.

The singer Maria Ria was one of the attractions. She paraded with the escola for the 3rd consecutive year, at the side of singer Arlindo Cruz. Arlindo took charge of the bateria warm-up, which used his song "Meu lugar."

Império Serrano's parade began around 9:20, with 7 floats and 3,800 paraders. "It's the best samba this year. We have a great chance of being among the champions, but much will depend on the group harmony" said the singer Nego. Nego was with Império between 2004 and 2007, though last year he sang with Viradouro.

The queen of the bateria, Quitéria Chagas, cried a little before entering in the Avenida. Her costume, golden with 50 real emeralds, has to be "leiloada" (?) after Caranval. The queen said that she didn't know the exact value of the costume.

"To parade with this revived samba is like entering a completely full Maracana soccer stadium to root for Flamengo. I'm so thrilled" she said.

The president of the escola, Humberto Soares, calculated the cost of this Carnaval at 3.3 million reais. "The [economic] crisis tripped is up, but it's necessary to use some creativity," he commented.
[skipping a paragraph with too many words I don't know]
"I believe that we'll stay in Grupo Especial; we're doing well and in 2010 we'll be in the fight for the title," he said. Soares has recently brought famous artists like Maria Rita to the Avenida.

There was a tense moment when Dona Olegária, a member of the Velha Guarda ["old guard", one of the elderly members of the escola], had to be suspended and carried to the highest part of the last car. [Sometimes they have to use cranes to get people onto the floats] There was a difficulty in the "remocão" (?), as well as the fact that it involved an elderly person. But at the end, she succeeded in climbing up and the parade continued normally.

Retro Lions!

A local TV arts show did a piece on the Lions many years ago. (I can't remember what year, but long before I was in the band. Long before I'd ever heard samba, actually. I was still playing Hungarian 3-string bass in Seattle). They've just re-posted it on their website. It's a great piece:

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/240-Lions-of-Batucada

You can see some people that I mention frequently:
the "Andy" who was leading that parade - that's the Andy who's now the leader of the smashingly successful punk/vaudeville/marching band March Fourth, and also the same Andy who plays with Axe Dide. Great guy.
Derek - that's the Derek who's now got a great maracatu group.
Brian - this is of course the Brian who I am constantly mentioning.
Derek & Brian (in addition to founding the Lions & playing in Pink Martini) are part of the regular staff at California Brazil Camp.
The dancer in the white tanktop who goes zipping past the camera: that's Donna, director of Axe Dide.
The Brazilian dancer who is interviewed: that's Shayla (she is a really stunning dancer)
The girl w/the short hair on chocalho: oh my gosh that's Pauline! with short hair!!! super cute!

Samba vs Ballroom SMACKDOWN!

I haven't written in a while because I've had another couple of those IMPOSSIBLY BUSY weeks. I don't know if my life really is that much busier than other people's, but it always seems very difficult to convey to my friends what I mean by "busy". I try to explain by saying "I don't get any time off" and they seem to think I mean "I can't take a vacation day when I want to" but what I actually mean is "I don't get any time off". What I mean is, every day I get up at 8am and start working, and I stop working at 1am. Yes, of course that includes Saturdays and Sundays; why would it not include Saturdays and Sundays?

Or should I have said it like this: "I'm teaching three brand-new courses again and a fourth that needs a lot of revamping and have 120 exams to grade, and 34 research students working on the elephants at the zoo, because, you know how most professors here have maybe 2 research students, and they get research support, but I don't get any research support because I'm just temporary, so I thought it would be a good idea if I had 34 research students; and the sea turtle grant is due this week and the 2 elephant papers and the 4 sun-bear papers all need revision in the next two weeks, and my side job working for a publishing company is also due this week, and then there's the 4 bands. Excuse me, I have to go stay up all night memorizing the entire life cycles of all the phyla of mosses, ferns, horsetails and the ginkgo tree for a lecture tomorrow. No, I'm not a botanist, why do you ask?"

Maybe that would get it across better.

THIS week, however, was the Axe Dide show. So I worked seventeen-hour days (instead of my usual sixteen-hour days) for the previous 3 weeks, and tabled the Gatas temporarily, to bank enough time to carve out the necessary hours for Axe Dide rehearsal time, practice time, and the actual show.

I do so love Axe Dide; it's the group that pushes me the most. It's the only group that regularly pulls out completely new genres that I've never heard of. (Because they do candomble and Cuban.) "Now we're doing rumba! Now comparsa! What the hell is comparsa? No idea! I'll just follow along! Now it's something else! Now I'm playing conga! Now I'm banging on the side of the conga with a stick and I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just copying Mehmet! Now Mehmet had to leave and suddenly it's just me and it's apparently some kind of intensely important part that I'm playing. Now they're all looking at me funny!" Like that.

Anyway - Axe Dide had their fantastic show on Friday. Friday the 13th, and sure enough, Friday the 13th is not a good night for a show, because the club had double-booked us with a ballroom dance event. We won the smackdown, but the ballroom dancers got in free and OH MY GOD, they were VICIOUS on the dance floor! My advice would be, never try to do a samba dance show with 25 pissed-off ballroom dancers who want the stage. You cannot keep those people off the stage. Honestly, I have never before seen a dance show in which a dancer was center stage doing a SOLO, for god's sake, and a pair of ballroom dancers suddenly whirls out onto the floor to literally try to steal the stage! Jans tried to stop them but the girl twirled past him like some kind of spitfire tornado - those spins they can do, she had some kind of centripetal momentum going on that seemed to turn her into a kind of twirling medieval war machine with spikes coming out from all the sides. Jans, who is six-foot-something and fairly impressive physically, had to pretty much body-block her with all his weight to get her off the floor. Even then she kept doing little twirls on the side and inching her way back out. Jesus. That sort of thing was happening all night long. Luckily the Axe Dide dancers have learned a lot of ancient African war dances.

even so it was a fantastic show. Some of the moments in my memory...
- sinking into the rumba and having it MAKE SENSE and float along. Sure it was a little messy and there seemed to suddenly be 2 extra people in the band, but still, the rumba MADE SENSE for the first time.

- playing caixa with Angela. She has got SUCH a swing. (Plus I just really dig that the two snare drummers in this band are both girls.)

- Not to mention Stacey holding down primerio & segundo surdo like the rock of Gibralter. She's got her surdos both on stands, mounted side by side and tied together with a rope around the side. So, Axe Dide usually just needs 2 surdo players - Stacey covering both the 2 big ones, and somebody else on a third. And this isn't a trivial part; Stacey is the heart of the groove.

There are so many surdo players who I wish I could order to stop playing, put down their surdos and just come stand in front of Stacey's two drums and just LISTEN TO HER for a half hour. And then play like that, ok? Just be Stacey.

- Discovering that not one but TWO of my guy friends are really great to dance with: Ned and Kirin! Two! Oooo, there is nothing like a guy who can actually lead.

- So, it's gotten late. It's past midnight. It's the Rio samba. We've been playing for long enough that it's turned into a crazy dance party, and it's gotten to the stage where everybody's starting to swap drums around. Angela puts her caixa down, goes searching for a chocalho (note: please recall Angela & I are the only two caixas), miscellaneous Lions from the crowd are clambering into the band to play surdo and tamborim, Jesse is developing a new fancy rhythmic idea and has darted away to teach a new part to somebody, Andy and his repinique have disappeared entirely, Jans is crawling on the floor looking for a stray nut that fell off the tamborim tree; and, while they're all switching around and clambering around, QUITE A LONG STRETCH OF TIME GOES BY when it's JUST STACEY AND ME actually PLAYING THE SAMBA. Stacey chugging fearlessly at the surdos and I'm slamming on caixa (Viradouro) at FULL speed. The whole rest of the band is chatting to each other: "No, you can use my strap! Go ahead! No, no, you lead the tamborim desenho! Oh, that's a nice one but I was thinking we could do the one with the triplets. No, it's my pleasure, use my baqueta! Just a sec, let me find this one nut on the floor" on and on like that....

... and I'm standing there thinking "YOU HAVE EFFIN' ABANDONED ME AND THROWN ME TO THE WOLVES!" which I would shout out loud if I weren't convinced that trying to talk would make me screw up, because it is JUST ME ON CAIXA. Because this is the kind of situation that always used to make me completely panic. All alone and exposed and the groove depending just on me.

But this time something is different.

It's not scary.

It's fun.

In these situations before, I used to always eventually screw up. But I've been playing solo caixa a lot recently, and this time there seems to be not the slightest possibility that I could screw up. There is a solidity and reliability. It seems ... secure. It seems like my hands have become their own motor. I just pushed the "Go" button and they just .... Go.

I don't have to THINK about my hands the way I used to. They just are doing it on their own.

The whole crowd is dancing.