Does anybody know how to play a samba?

In the midst of that Burning Man week of dragon cars and 1,001 Fire Dancers, two samba moments stood out.

Samba Moment #1. I was heading to a drum jam at Center Camp. Actually, I was a little late because I'd been distracted by the most terrifying free climb I've ever witnessed - a man was climbing UPSIDEDOWN, FIFTY FEET IN THE AIR, with NO NET AND NO HARNESS, along the OUTSIDE of the massive towering sculpture in Center Camp. This was witnessed, as far as I could tell, only by me and another girl who'd also happened to glance up. We both stood there transfixed, in mixed dread and amazement, for nearly twenty minutes, certain that he was going to fall and die and that we were going to have to run over and attempt CPR on him after he fell. But he climbed alllll the long way up, and then, thank goodness, alll the long way back down. (At first I'd thought he must be stoned or insane; or that possibly I was stoned or insane. But he turned out to be a professional climber, and I, of course, was just at Burning Man.)

Anyway, so I got to the drum jam a little late and it was already well under way. To my surprise it was really quite good; several skilled conga players and bass drummers, two solid bell players and quite good snare drummer who had his snare under control. The few djembe players that were present actually knew how to play djembe. (poor djembe, it's gotten such a bad reputation, because of the hippie drum circle guys who insist on abusing djembes whenever possible.)

So we played a variety of West African and then Cuban rhythms for a while. I joined in on chocalho for a while and manage to terrify several nearby people, then switched to a bell to try to spare people's eardrums a bit.

And then a marvelous dancer entered the circle. She was fantastic. She was incredible. She was gorgeous. She transfixed us all. Because everybody was watching her, she managed call us all out to a stop. An expectant silence fell over the whole drum circle, and she looked around the entire circle and said hopefully - with a slight Brazilian accent -

"Does anybody know how to play a samba?"

I was standing in the back with some kind of bell thingy in my hand. I thought someone would start playing a samba, but nobody did. All the conga players and djembe players looked at each other mutely.

She looked around again plaintively and said again

"Please! DOES ANYBODY KNOW HOW TO PLAY A SAMBA???"

Then I suddenly remembered that I had my pandeiro tucked between my feet - it was already out of its bag, ready to go. I dropped whatever I'd been holding, grabbed the pandeiro and launched in with a simple, fast samba. Nothing flashy, just a good groove, but the dancer girl SCREAMED in delight - then she saw that I even had a real pandeiro, and she screamed again, with a huge smile, and started samba'ing at top speed. She and I just blazed away fora few bars (and of course she turned out to be a killer awesome samba dancer). All the other drummers got the idea, and they all came charging in on their own drums, and we were doing a ROCKIN' samba. YAHHH!! and the dancer chick gave me dozens of thumbs-ups and big beaming smiles, and then she pulled me up front and center and made me dance too; and all the other girls that were standing around started dancing, and everybody started dancing. Even the inevitable (at Burning Man) Weird Old Naked Dude Wearing Nothing But A Dust Mask, he started dancing too, like crazy, and things were all flopping around like crazy, but I'll spare you any more details about that.