My Olodum

Olodum had a Sunday rehearsal last night, & me and my new friend Hans (a Portland capoeira player that I just ran into here) caught the whole show. The Sunday rehearsals are the "real" Olodum rehearsal where the whole bloco is there, and they´re really going through all their different grooves. Sooooo much fun. I took a bazillion notes and re-verified many aspects of Olodum´s style, including:

- they´ve got at least 8 completely different levadas (patterns, pieces, grooves). Several varieties of samba-reggae, reggae and merengue, plus a really cool, sexy afoxe that I am dying to show to Samba Gata.

- samba-reggae does SO have a swing!! This is something I´ve argued about with other Americans, so I spent quite a while listening to the rep´s and caixa´s to re-calibrate my ear for what was happening. It definitely definitely definitely has a swing. In fact it´s a pretty strong swing. One of the merengues seemed to be played pretty straight, but the samba-reggae has a swing. (VINDICATED! YEAH!)

- I. Love. Olodum.
I´ve always dug them but it is starting to turn into that really strong, from-the-heart affection. Like I feel for Banga, and for Imperio. Where it just makes me so happy to see them and it is like seeing old friends again.

Watching them horsing around, teaching each other, dancing, laughing - it´s so clearly a family. You can see all the personalities, all the relationships, the way they´re all greeting each other and teasing each other; you can see all the friendships, and the occasional little feud, but mostly the warm-heartedness. Laughing when somebody drops a mallet, tossing little candies to each other, arguing when somebody messes up a break. It reminded me of the Lions Sunday rehearsal. Everybody just getting together on a Sunday to play through their stuff and have a good time. People who´ve clearly known each other for years and just dig hanging out and playing together.

I´ve seen them enough times now that I´ve started recognizing all their faces. It´s always sort of an interesting moment when you´ve seen a group enough years in a row that what once seemed like a monolithic entity starts to resolve into real people who keep reapparing, year after year. You start to notice, oh, there´s the thin caixa player who can do the backbends - I first saw him in the street 3 years ago, didn´t I? There´s the first-surdo guy who showed me that cool dance move, when was that, two years ago. There´s that wonderful 4th surdo player who never stops laughing, I´ve seen him every single time, he has such great energy. There´s the caixa girl! and, oh my god, they´ve put her in the absolute key position, she´s playing the 3 miked surdos, she must be an assistant leader or something by now!

And that´s when "Olodum" changes in your heart from "that famous band from Brazil" to a bunch of real people who seem like old friends.

To my shock, a couple players even recognized me too.