Folklife report

Next, the mad dash up to Seattle Thursday morning to drop off my cat before my Brazil trip. A three hour road trip of MEOW, MEOW, MEOW, WHOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHH (that is the sound of my cat learning how to open the back window at 80 miles an hour by leaning all her weight on the window button while we were tearing north on I-5. No, she did not fall out, but it about gave me a heart attack - I swear I jumped a foot off the seat when I heard that "whooshhhhh". Ten minutes later, she did it again - I think she liked it!)

We both reached Seattle alive, and it happened to be the start of the long Folklife Festival weekend - Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon - Seattle's gigantic 4-day FREE festival. Dozens of music stages, every imaginable sort of ethnic music and dance - Irish music, Peruvian scissor-dancers, sea shanties, classical Indian dance, enormous numbers of bluegrass jams, traditional hula performances, zydeco, swing, blues, hiphop, etc. etc. etc. It turned into a typical Folklife weekend of being pulled into unexpected performances - first, I got pulled up to play bell in an afoxe led by the wonderful drummer Juliana Linares in a rhythm workshop - I just was walking past this big tent and next thing I know, I am inside the tent playing afoxe bell for about 100 djembes. (we actually got a really good groove going. Ju is great that way - drum circles actually work, when she's leading.) Then ended up in a samba parade. Then a full stage show with guess who, my old group VamoLa. VamoLa did a FANTASTIC show! Honestly, I was amazed how much fun it was to play with them again. They've got a great new crop of dancers who can really move (and all looking extremely killer in a full set of glitter bikinis) and some fantastic new pieces (I am very much digging the rumba-reggae and the maracatu!), and a whole set of groovin' drummers that I'd never met before. I really loved being part of it again.

The funniest part for me was screwing up the 6/8-reggae entrance because I totally forgot the caixas don't do clave any more there - they play Mocidade instead. I came charging in with the clave, suddenly realized I was clashing with everybody else because they were playing Mocidade, thought in annoyance "Who changed it to Mocidade?" and then slowly rememberd.... "oh yeah... that was ME who changed it to Mocidade." Hey, it was a while ago...

The spookiest part was playing tamborim for the desenho in Mangueira. Because I did not realize that that tamborim desenho was anywhere in my memory at all - because I never played tamborim in VamoLa. But apparently some little neuron had been paying attention all along, and had stored the whole thing away pitch-perfect.

And then there was suddenly being pulled on-stage (a BIG stage) demo'ing the Cotton-Eyed Joe and the Texas Two-Step in a "Couple Dances of the World" symposium. Yes, just me, and Jerry of course, always my partner in crime for strange Folklife adventures. We have a mutual history of agreeing stupidly to last-minute, poorly-rehearsed Folklife demonstrations ("Could you just play a bit of Hungarian fiddle and bass for a little dance thing...?" ".... a bit of gypsy chochek?" "....a little bit of Bulgarian clarinet?" "...maybe some bagpipe?"...."...bring your dumbek and guitar for just a bit of a jam?") that in retrospect it is very clear we should NOT have agreed to do. We get sucked into it only because of the lure of the Participant's Button, which gives you cheap beer, free coffee and free bread, access to the most beautiful fiddle jam at the whole event, and a safe place to leave all your instruments. Anyway - even though I already had a button from VamoLa, Jerry offered me a SECOND BUTTON (value = zero) and somehow he convinced me that I could demo both dances. He also convinced me that nobody would come to see it. Well, HUNDREDS of people came to see it, and though I do know the Texas Two-Step, I do NOT know the Cotton-Eyed Joe, not even a little bit. Jerry showed me the Cotton-Eyed Joe beforehand, a whole two times (backstage, while the waltz demo couple were onstage, so I was learning the Cotton-Eyed Joe to a waltz), and, of course, once we get on stage, first of all, it turns out the Cotton-Eyed Joe is not at all a waltz. Second, it turns out the Cotton-Eyed Joe dance crosses the music. I should have expected that - lots of country dances cross the music - like, an 8-count dance with 10-count music, which I think the Cotton-Eyed Joe was doing, but I'm not even sure, I got so confused, and kept being convinced it was time to go forward it when it was really time to stomp and kick and go backward. I felt like a complete idiot but managed to fudge most stuff, and Jerry stomped loud enough, and we were laughing enough, that hardly anyone noticed. I was told afterwards that we looked "really cute", whatever that means. Hopefully it means something different than "complete idiot", at least.

Later when we were sneaking past security to try to sneak my caixa backstage at the gigantic Balkan dance party - and you have not Balkan dance till you've seen 500 people smashing at full tilt into each other in Croatian circle dances and Bulgarian pravos spinning completely out of control, my god, it was a massive Balkan mosh pit out there! The annual Sunday night Balkan party in Seattle has got to be one of the biggest pravo circles in the world. Anyway, the security guy came running up to us as we were sneaking backstage with the caixa, and we thought "Busted!" but what he said was "Hey, didn't you demo the Cotton-Eyed Joe? How does that dance go again?" He was totally serious. Damnedest thing.

I went to bed, and dreamed I was in Rio rehearsing with Bangalafumenga. Rodrigo Maranhao was yelling at me, trying to yell the surdo pattern across all the noise of all the other drummers, but I couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. It was so realistic I woke up and thought for a moment I was in Rio; but no, I was in Seattle; and I was hopping in my car to drive to Portand, to go directly to a Lions barbecue, which reminded me eerily of a very similar barbecue at Rob's old place in London with Verde Vai; I just wish all my friends in all these separate worlds could all meet each other, somehow someday somewhere; and day after tomorrow I go to Salvador, Brazil.

PSU Carnaval

Too many things are happening too fast for me to keep up with this blog, as the last ten days before my Salvador trip go shooting by.

First, the mondo 5-band Brazilian Carnaval show last Friday and the blitz of rehearsals preceding it, then the show itself; the blazing thrill of being in Samba Gata at just the show where they really hit their stride, the frighteningly good Axe Dide show (despite the fact that I am pretty sure the band missed EVERY break in the new Avania piece. We missed the start, we missed the first break, we missed the second break, we missed the third break, and we missed the end. But Donna's brilliant choreography had everyone so floored that they didn't notice); then the massively powerful samba of the Lions. Being in the middle of the Lions always gives me a lot of energy, but after the two other high-power, brilliant sets with the two other bands, I was literally shaking with exhaustion by halfway through our Lions set. My hands started trembling, I started getting spacey, couldn't seem to hear anything very well and was having terrific trouble concentrating on Randy's hand cues. (Not a good thing since I was the only 3rd surdo for a lot of the show.) Got through it though. What a tremendous evening. I wanted to sleep for a week afterwards.

Then on Sunday, the interesting experience of being the only timbal player at a Lions rehearsal where they seemed to spend an excessive amount of time going over timbal breaks, timbal solos, timbal intros... timbal timbal timbal.... MORE TIMBAL.... and it was just me!!! But this time, the pleasure of realizing it was fine, I could do it, of feeling like I was actually sort of useful on timbal. Not just dead weight anymore.

On Wednesday, the growing thrill of getting deeper and deeper into choro with Rio con Brio. I coaxed them into some fast pieces on Wednesday, and have been paying for it ever since with a burning ache throughout my left hand. My left fingers will barely bend in the mornings, ever since that Wed rehearsal. If I don't watch out, this will become Pandeiro Overuse Injury #14. It is a dangerous little instrument. It's hard to hold back, though - it's so fun to play it again and the Rio con Brio guys have been so welcoming, and so fun, and are such awesome musicians, and have this extremely tantalizing habit of saying things like "Brian Rice used to do this cool pandeiro thing somewhere in this piece.. can't quite remember what it was..." that make me just BURN with ambition to find an equally cool pandeiro thing to do somewhere. So fun to be on pandeiro again.

The next morning, jumped in my car to go to Folklife. see next post....

Brazilian Podclass

Two weeks from today I'll be flying to Salvador. So I'm trying to get back in bikini shape (I've, uh, I've been working really hard... no time for exercise...and, uh, too busy for Donna's dance classses... uh.... and it just is part of Lions culture now to go out for a three-hour eating session of beer and onion rings after every two-hour rehearsal... it would be rude not to!). I'm also getting a bit worried about getting in shape for my potentially-grueling month of mountain fieldwork this July in the Grand Tetons. And I also need to sharpen up my Portuguese.

So this week I hit on the perfect training combination: a two-hour hike each day up the steep ridgeline of Portland's massive Forest Park, while listening to Brazilian Podclass on my iphone.

I've got to say... there is little to match the feeling of having finished all your teaching for the year, and having hours and hours and hours of magnificent, unbelievable FREE TIME stretching in front of you, and spending it hiking each day through a vast cathedral of mossy trees. Shafts of sunlight streaming through the trees all around you, ferns and flowers everywhere, warblers and towhees singing, fairy sprites flitting around, angelic choirs singing overhead (seems like it, anyway. Forest Park is that beautiful). And looking forward to a summer in one of the most fascinating cities of Brazil and the most beautiful mountains of the entire American West. While listening to Portuguese!

I just stumbled across the Brazilian Podclass podcast recently. It is at brazilianpodclass.com. Highly recommended. The teacher, Marina Gomes, is a Brazilian native who now lives in Canada, and has been teaching Portuguese for decades. She has a nice, clear Rio accent, and her podcasts are the perfect bite-size lessons to sharpen up your rusty (or nonexistent) Portuguese. You can pick episodes from any level - beginner, intermediate, advanced - and there are some video lessons as well.

The best thing is, the podcast downloads are free! (You can pay extra to get a printed transcript and worksheets.) There are well over 100 episodes available.

It's a simple format - she reads (clearly and slowly) a short text on the topic of the day, then spends a few minutes on some grammatical issue, and then she starts peppering you with English sentences that you have to translate into Portuguese.

I listened yesterday to an episode about Carnaval in Salvador. I particularly liked this bit:
"Translate into Portuguese: Timbalada is the best band and bloco in Bahia."
... a wee bit opinionated, are we? :)

I also learned to say such useful phrases as:
"There are little blocos just of people playing guitars, and blocos of men in drag."
"You must have a special t-shirt, called an abada, to get into the camarotes where the bathrooms are."
"Oh no! I left my wallet at home!"

Then came the deja-vu moment (in the next episode I tried, one on the Pantanal) when she suddenly asked me to translate "Maned wolf" into Portuguese. Maned wolf! An image leapt to my mind: the "fox on stilts", the huge, leggy, gorgeous, animal with the bright red coat and the black mane, and the black, black, long, long, LONG legs. Nobody's whose ever seen one can forget it. Or at least I can't:



Sudden flashback to the first ever time I visited Brazil - to deep in the interior of Goiania, assisting on a research project on the 3 large carnivores of the Brazilian savanna: puma, jaguar, and maned wolf. Now, what were they called in Portuguese.... um.... Onca-parda ("tan leopard"), onca-pintada ("painted leopard"), and....

LOBO-GUARA! Got it! Lobo-guara, wolf of the guara fruit. (It is the only wolf in the world that is mostly herbivorous - its primary diet is the guara fruit. Which is borne by a tree called the "lobeira", which of course, when you look at it, means "wolf tree". )

"Lobo-guara!" I said happily.
"Lobo-guara." confirmed Marina.

Reedies and Timbal Tortoises

Sunday was the annual end-of-semester party at Reed College, where traditionally the Lions open and the punk-vaudeville marching band March Fourth closes. It was also commencement day at the University of Portland, where I am a biology faculty member. So really, by all rights I should have been at U Portland. I really should have. I intended to go. I was thinking about it. All my senior research students were graduating, and I really wanted to see them graduate. But, comparing the two head-to-head:

Format:
Univ. Portland: A Catholic mass; followed by long speeches
Reed: Naked girls oil-wrestling, and a mechanical bull; followed by the two rowdiest parade bands in the city
(PS - for those who don't know Reed - the naked girls weren't hired strippers. They were just students who
decided that they would prefer to be naked, on this beautiful spring day. Business as usual, at Reed.)

Food:
Univ. Portland: Communion wafers
Reed: Unlimited free beer. (and not just for the band - for all students of drinking age, too. jeez.) And Italian sausage.

Pay:
Univ. Portland: Pay to rent faculty regalia.
Reed: Get paid.

Activities for me:
Univ. Portland: Sit for three hours
Reed: Play third surdo and timbal! For an hour! With the Lions!

Time spent with those I care about:
Univ. Portland: 3 secs watching my students zip across the stage and disappear forever into the throng
Reed: Hours and hours drinking and playing with my friends

So at mid-day there I was winging my way down south to Reed. Sorry, UP, I love you and all, go Pilots, but, this was really no contest.

So it was a fantastic gig. We had a huge contingent of Lions - the free beer is always a big draw at this annual gig - I guess the naked girls don't hurt the cause either - and the rest of the semi-drunk, semi-naked Reedies were the best audience imaginable. The type of elated, leaping, half-drunk, party-crazy crowd where, as soon as you play your opening hits, they start screaming and all leap to their feet and come racing over to the band. The kind of crowd that samba was made for.

Man, those kids have a lot of energy! I don't think I could jump like a pogo stick for an hour straight like that. And after all that oil-wrestling and mechanical-bull-riding, too - those kids have stamina.

This was also the debut of two new samba-reggae pieces for the Lions (using the term "samba-reggae" very loosely to mean "anything with timbals"). They went pretty well! The dancers looked fantastic! It was a lot of fun! Except for one little thing! So, I was playing timbal, right? So, the group has plenty of great timbal players, but I'm starting to think we have kind of a Bermuda Triangle effect going on in the timbal section. The Bermuda Triangle effect is that, out of any 3 Lions timbal players, only one of them will remember any given timbal break. The other 2 timbal players just disappear, poof! They fell into the Bermuda Triangle. Meaning, they switch to another instrument just at the wrong moment, or put down their drum to get a drink of water at exactly the wrong second, or saunter away for a little rest at just the wrong moment, or, surprisingly often, just stand there like a deer in the headlights when a timbal break happens. Their internal compasses go crazy, they get disoriented and they fall right into the sea. I've seen it happen time and again. Bermuda Triangle.

You would think that a timbal player would take special pains to learn a timbal break, wouldn't you? Especially since, till a few weeks ago, we only had ONE timbal break and it was only ONE measure long. So you'd think a timbal player would make that a top priority, to review that one little measure, wouldn't you? You'd think that would be the one measure where we would be rock-solid, wouldn't you? You would be wrong! Like I said, Bermuda Triangle.

It would be funny if it didn't strand me so often in a clumsy solo. I'm just about the worst timbal player in the section, and that one-measure break rolls around and - ta-da! Kathleen solo! There's some kind of moral in here, the Tortoise and the Timbal - I'm surrounded by brilliant timbal hares, but they're always snoozing under a tree when the timbal break rolls around. And so I plod on past, Tortoise-like, and get my little solo all to myself. Take that, Hares.

Unfortunately, I play the solo at Tortoise tempo.

(At least it's making me work like hell on timbal now. It's my top practice priority these days.)

Luckily, the Reed kids didn't notice a thing and they just kept on jumping and screaming and dancing and clapping, right through the wobbly timbal bits. Manic little semi-naked pogo sticks, the lot of 'em. Love those Reedies.