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.