The big show, part 2: The HAF report

The rest of the big show, after my Lost Caixa Panic (see previous post), went very well and was generally fabulously fun. This was really a tremendous event. Featuring magnificent (mind-boggling! life-changing!) dancing by Rodson and our dancers, amazing singing and directing and solos (also mind-boggling! life-changing! etc.) from Jorge and our guest singers. A brilliant evening that is what I live for, etc. etc. There's only so many superlatives that I can use - you know the kind of thing I mean.

However, my error count was pretty high. There are Minor Fuckups, Audible Fuckups, and then there are the Highly Audible Fuckups. The most important number, my Highly-Audible-Fuckups (HAF) count, was at something like 8 by the end of the show, and that is what I would like to focus on in today's post. Proper HAF Protocol states that it's important to have a good story and a string of incomprehensible excuses for each Highly Audible Fuckup. Here, let me demonstrate with the following case studies:

Case study 1. The 6/8.
The HAF: I stall briefly during the timbal entrance groove exactly when Brian happens to hit a pause in his solo. Since we are the only two timbals playing, the result is a peculiar brief hitch in the otherwise flashy entrance solo.

Excuse: Wild timbals bucked me off! This was actually kind of entertaining. Brian's timbal was in a stand and we were standing on the (well-sprung) wooden dance floor, and he was playing so hard the timbal was bouncing an inch or so off the floor with each hit! It actually started bouncing away from him. Runaway timbal! (Now I know why most timbal stands have a crossbar at the bottom that you lean on with your foot.) It kept running toward ME for some reason, like a big, excitable golden retriever. Over and over it came zooming over to me and crashed right into my drum - crashing hard, and knocking my timbal right out from under my hands.

Secondary excuse: This was all so exciting that somewhere in here, I hurt my finger. (note: injury claims always make good HAF excuses.)

Show note: Actually the rest of the 6/8 went great. And I did manage to finally play the break correctly! And the dancers were ON FIRE. This is one of my favorite Lions dances, a breathtaking orixa choreography. Danced with an aggressive, ferocious fire that wowed the crowd, as always.


Case study 2. The Afro-samba.
The HAF's (two of them):
HAF #1. I fail to enter. As I am the only timbal, this is sort of obvious.
The Excuse: The caixas sort of started on their own without being counted in, and Mehmet (leading) decided to go with it. A good decision on his part, but since we'd sort of faded into the groove gradually, I ended up completely turned around and couldn't find the 1. Yikes, how embarrassing. Thank god Mehmet started stepping and I got hold of the 1 again off his feet. At this point I really didn't have any idea what to do since I'd missed my original entrance long ago, but I finally thought "Oh, whatever" and just started playing timbal in some random place.

Afro-samba HAF #2. Later, I completely fail to do my sestuplet rolls. (at which Mehmet gives me an Eloquent Look.)
The Excuse: I totally did not hear the surdo roll! I didn't even realize the break was over! Oh, and, one of my fingers was hurting, I swear. I waz injured! My finger hurt and my foot was sore and I could barely keep standing! Somebody in the crowd distracted me. Also, the tempo was weird. (note: bonus point for multiple excuses)

Show comment: Our amazing guest dancer Rodson did a fantastic dance solo for this, and afterwards he jumped down into the audience, and the whole crowd, and I mean the WHOLE crowd, started following his dance moves. He started leading them all around, and people were really doing it, hundreds of people all really doing the actual dance moves. Portlanders dancing! That alone shows you that Rodson is a genius. It was spectacular. And what a stunning talent Rodson is. (or as Brian memorably, if bafflingly, put it: "He's jacked, he's ripped, he is the package!")


Case study 3. The Rio samba.
The HAF: In the middle of a very prominent break, I play VERY LOUDLY in the WRONG spot, ALL BY MYSELF, THREE times. Top that!

The Excuse: Okaaaay this takes some background explanation. So, there is a very flashy intro thing that the Lions play sometimes to enter a samba. Well, Jorge Alabe, our godlike guest mestre, does a cool, longer version of that same break. Where our version enters samba, Jorge's version continues on with more break stuff for a few more bars. I'd learned the new version from him at some point, and so had a few others in the group, but most people didn't know it.

Soooooo, on Monday sectional (attended by only part of the band) Jorge demonstrated the new version, and Brian had said, very wisely: You know what, let's NOT do that on Saturday because most of the band won't know it. Jorge said: of course, of course, I won't do it on Saturday, I wasn't planning to, I was just showing it to you just for fun. Everybody agreed it was very cool and that we would learn it later.

Immediately I got a feeling. I thought: Jorge's going to call this break on Saturday. In the heat of the moment, coming out of a repique solo or something, he's going to call this break and he's going to do the new version. I don't know why, but I was just certain. (Sometimes I have the Sight that way. It's a sixth sense: I see dead breaks.)

Saturday rolls around. Show time. Jorge's doing a FANTASTIC repique solo, and ... in the heat of the moment, coming out of the repique solo... he starts to call that break.... and I thought, silently, "nooooooooooooooooo"

It's a long break, about 11 bars, and the whole time, I felt like I was on a little raft floating on a peaceful river (a river that is 11 bars long) toward Niagara Falls (bar 12).

The break went floating beautifully by, perfect in every way, the little raft floated down the river, and then...

... at the place where everybody was expecting a certain repique call, there occurred, a DIFFERENT repique call.

Over the falls!

An electric shock shot through the group. The whole bateria fell dead silent.

I hit what I thought was the right thing, what seemed like the right thing, and it was just me, just little ol' me and my li'l ol' 3rd surdo, cute as can be, cute as buttons and ALL ON OUR OWN. I was so wired at this point, second-guessing and triple-guessing myself about what the old version was and what the new version was - "the old version would have done THAT, but the new version does THIS. Right? Right? Right? OR AM I WRONG?" I honestly don't know if I did the right thing or completely the wrong thing. All I know for sure is, it sounded an awful lot like a Highly Audible Fuckup.

Near the end, some other people joined in with me and we arrived at a muted, slightly confused consensus of an ending, but at least we did manage to all stop at the same time. Jorge nimbly called us into a samba and we all stormed out of the gate together with much relief.

There, I hope these case studies have illuminated for you how to reflect upon your own personal portfolio of HAFs. We've all done them, and it's part of the game. The point is: Get a good story out of it!

In the end, the thing we'd been most worried about, the new Salguerio intro, went perfectly. The whole Salgueiro samba was a joy and a marvel to be a part of. It is my new favorite samba.

So despite all my HAFs, a brilliant night with too many great moments to describe... I haven't even talked about the beautiful baiao start (and the caixas brilliantly pulling off their baiao drumline showpiece out of thin air!), Rodson's samba dance solo, the new afro macumba.... the sound the crowd made when our dancers appeared.... Randy's hand cues silhouetted against the lights... The heat, the sweat dripping down my legs... My arms burning with exhaustion, but wait, this would be a perfect spot to do one more roll! .... The whole crowd dancing.... The lifesize lion head (where did that come from?), lit with its very own spotlight, staring regally down at us from the stage.

At the end of it, I was dead, dead, dead tired. Timbal and third all evening, and a caixa panic to start it all off; that'll wear you out! I went out for dinner & drinks with a bunch of friends, and was so tired I could barely talk. I got home at 3am and went to bed totally exhausted and very happy. Come to think of it, it was pretty much a real Rio evening all around.

YES YES YES I'm going back!

I interrupt this story of the big Lions show to tell you all that I have bought my ticket to Rio!

Leaving Boston on Christmas Day. Arriving in Rio the next morning.
Returning to the U.S. on March 15th. (Returning to Boston. It is not clear where I'll be living after that. I might not return to the West Coast - depends on how my job search & grants go.)

Oh, there's nothing like that feeling when you click "Purchase" and you know you have actually bought your ticket to Brazil! Then it's real, then you know for SURE that you are going back. It's such a celebratory moment.

Among the Lions, you just have to tell people "I bought my ticket!" and they reply "CONGRATULATIONS!" and give you a huge hug. Because they know what it means.

Coincidentally, the moment I was clicking "Purchase", I got an email... from Rio. From a friend I haven't heard from for maybe 8 months. She was writing to ask: Where are you? Are you in Rio, are you in the States, are you coming back? I wrote back immediately to tell her of my ticket, and she wrote back immediately and invited me to come stay in her place in Laranjeiras for a little while. Sometimes things are just meant to happen.

How to make Kathleen lose her temper

It's been a tremendous week - Jorge Alabe came up for a whole week, doing a huge series of workshops and advanced sectionals with the Lions, and then a set of dance classes (with the amazing Rodson teaching samba-reggae dances). Last night, the culmination of it all, a gigantic Brazilian dance party hosted by the Lions. Orixa dance, capoeira, a huge samba-reggae set, a fantastic forro set by Z'bumba and then a gigantic Rio samba set, culminating in the Salgueiro '08 samba.

It was quite a night. I'll fill in the story of the rest of the show later, but this is the story of How to Make Kathleen Lose Her Temper. (method 1 of 2.)

We were supposed to bring the surdos extremely early for tuning, so I'd dutifully showed up two hours early with my third surdo. I found all the surdos and some caixas in a big cluster by the side of the stage, and of course nobody was tuning them. I realized I would have to wait to tune them till I could find Randy, who knew which of the middle-sized drums were supposed to be segundos. I set my surdo and caixa with the other surdos and caixas, and I put the bag that had my surdo tuners neatly on my surdo, ready for tuning. (You can see what's coming, right?).

Fast forward. 8:30pm, the time all Lions are supposed to be here, which means, of course, 1/3 of them are here. I'm hunting for Randy. At this point I get distracted by a new issue: It suddenly turns out we're changing the entrance of our big piece, the Salgueiro '08 samba-enredo. Why change it at the very last second, right before the show, with no rehearsing, you may ask? Well, radical last-minute changes are a proud Lions tradition, and we are not about to break that tradition tonight! (Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to play or die.)

It's actually a very small, simple change and we ought to be able to pull it off. It appears we are going to play a certain break in isolation. The concept is (hypothetically) easy to grasp:

(1) Be quiet
(2) Play break
(3) Be quiet

...but there ensues a long, elaborate discussion that I swear I have seen in a Marx Brothers movie, perhaps "Samba Soup" or "A Night at the Lions Show". Picture a tiny backstage room, maybe 6x12", crowded with over a dozen people all talking simultaneously and chiming in with "And then we stop?" "And then we go into samba right after the break?" "Do you mean we stop, like, we go into samba, or do you mean, we stop, like, we actually stop?" "When do we do the other little break?" "What do you mean we stop?", "Don't we do that other little break?" "I don't understand how we come in after the break." "Is that when we do the bird thing?" "When do we start again?" Our fearless leader is trying over and over again to explain: "No no no no no LISTEN TO ME EVERYBODY, JUST PLEASE LISTEN FOR ONE SECOND, we do the break and THEN WE STOP!" New people constantly streaming in with "Hiiii folks! What's going on?" and the whole discussion starting all over again.

It's all very entertaining, but suddenly I realize it's only ten minutes till show start! The surdo tuning issue flares up bright and burning in my mind, and I physically pull Randy and Mehmet out of the dressing room and up to the surdos. "The surdo tuners are right here," I start to say, and then I realize: The bag with the tuners is gone, and the bag with my caixa is gone. GONE.

Randy and Mehmet just dig up their own tuners and get to work. They're on it.

I forget about the surdos and now all I am thinking is: WHERE IS MY CAIXA?

I look around all the surdos. Look around all the timbals. I ask the backstage guy - have you seen a bag with a snare drum in it? He hasn't seen it, didn't move it. I go downstairs and ask everybody in all the dressing rooms. Anybody seen my caixa? Anybody seen a gray-and-blue bag with surdo tuners in it? Nobody's seen it. Back up the long hallway, back up the stairs.

Now I remember that in the caixa case is my outfit for the night, my Lions t-shirt and white skirt, and all my straps, sticks and mallets that I need to play timbal and third surdo, too.

Now I get worried, and now I start to tear the entire ballroom apart, floor by floor. I search around and under EVERY surdo. Search the whole ballroom main floor. Search the second floor. Go through everything on stage (audience watching curiously), comb through both wings. Ask both backstage guys again. One of them finds a nest of drum bags wedged into a corner. I tear all the bags out, open them all, check every one. Not there.

It's not with the drums, AND it's not with the drum bags, and that's just weird because those are the two logical places for someone to have put a drum in a bag. Up till this point I thought it had just been misplaced, and though I was getting progressively more po'd about it (because somebody's broken the basic rule of, never move an instrument to a different room without telling the owner; especially not at a big multi-band show like this, where it's generally difficult to get messages to everybody, and where it might belong to a totally different band.) Now for the first time I wonder if it might have been stolen.

A fury starts to boil in my blood.

Back downstairs again, this time to bellow a desperate question to the whole band in the dressing room: "Has ANYBODY seen my bag??? My caixa?? Anywhere?" Everybody looks around. Nobody's seen it.

Back upstairs again, where I just wander around staring at all the same things I've already checked three times. Back downstairs where I walk the long hallways to the end. I look hopelessly under the coffee maker and the water jug, and on the tops of the cabinets. Not there.

It's time for the show to start. Everybody vacates the dressing rooms and heads upstairs. I'm left alone with just a couple of stray Lions who are grabbing water bottles for the show. It occurs to me that now that everybody is out of the way, I could maybe crawl under all the furniture.

Crawling under the furniture, at last I find it. Whoever had taken my caixa had put it:

Downstairs,
Down the longest hallway,
At the furthest back dressing room,
In the furthest back corner of that dressing room,
Under the table,
In the furthest back darkest corner under the table,
Covered with a jacket,
Shielded with other bags in front.

I rip it open. There's my caixa. And my show outfit.

It's thirty seconds till the show starts.

There is now a white-hot fury BLAZING through my whole body.

Someone innocently asks "Did you find it?" and I spin and roar:

"YES and I WILL FUCKING ***KILL*** ANYBODY WHO **EVER*** HIDES MY DRUM FROM ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!!!!"

Immediately I was ashamed of my outburst, but, Lions being Lions, they forgave me instantly and all were just concerned about me. I was actually shaking, I was so mad. Whoever moved my drum - what were they THINKING? Hiding a drum like that??? Tucking it as far away as possible where it would be nearly impossible to find??

I've been in hundreds of complex dance shows at this point in my life. Day-long, multi-band shows with hundreds of dancers and drummers, complicated choreographies, quick set changes, quick costume changes, tight schedules. You just don't fuck with people's stuff like that!!!! You DON'T MOVE that one bell that's in a funny place, that white petticoat mysteriously sitting in the wings, that bit of fiddle rosin in the dressing room, that little bag of safety pins, that little guitar pick sitting on the music stand. You never know when something's been put there for a reason! You just don't move shit, and if you have to move it, you slide it only a small distance so it's still within eyeshot of where it was, and if you have to move it further than that, you TELL everybody. If you moved Steve's Macedonian tambura and Steve isn't around, you picture in your mind whether or not Steve is going to be able to ever find it again, and if you think there's any chance that he won't, you goddam FIND STEVE, chase him down at the Starbucks a mile away if you have to, just to tell him "Steve, your tambura is now behind the big amp."

A half hour later I had almost gotten back to normal and was upstairs watching the capoeira group enter. I watched as they walked confidently over to the surdos and then... that look came on their faces, that puzzled searching look, and immediately I knew what had happened. Somebody'd moved the capoeira group's atabaque! And this time the whole audience was watching.

Luckily they had an entire group to search for it, and the atabaque was bigger and more obvious that my caixa, and hadn't gotten very far. The show was back on track in only about three minutes. But still! Jeez.

Don't! Move! Drums!

Jeez, I haven't lost my temper like that since I crossed the Fire Swamp. But that's another story.

The new lions are getting along great

I've been too busy to post anything for a while. Teaching again at UP and working hard on four or five research projects, trying to wrap everything up before my job ends in mid-December and I leave the country again.

One of my new research projects involves actual physical lions (at the zoo). Since my main samba band is also called the Lions, I've confused some friends recently when I've said things like:

"Well, the new lions have all been introduced to each other, and they're getting along great!"
or
"There's this one lion who's completely stressed out and has been threatening everybody. A big male. But we put him on Xanax and he's much mellower now."
or
"The lions won't move when they're supposed to, but we're thinking we might be able to train them."

(That last one definitely could have been the Lions of Batucada. Actually, I think the actual lions might be more trainable than the human ones....)

Most recently I said to a friend "The lions are all at the new exhibit at the zoo right now," and he replied "Did they all fit?" It really made me laugh, the image of all 50 Lions of Batucada, dancers and surdo players and all, milling around in on the little grassy hill in the zoo's Predators of Serengeti exhibit. The tamborim players would be playing in the pool, the feathered dancers basking on the rocks in the sun.... can't you just see it? As long as the actual physical lions weren't there too, it would be kind of fun! A whole different kind of wildlife exhibit.