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....