Batucaxé calls down the storm gods

I have to write a little bit about Batucaxe before too much more time slips by. So, what happened was, I flew to Tucson last week on my magic JetBlue ticket to visit a dear dear dear dear dear friend from my college days. One of those life-long friends who is at the very core of your heart. Her name's Susan.

When we were college roommates, neither of us knew the first thing about Brazil - or at least I didn't - my conception of Brazil was about as accurate as shown in this map (this is the famous "map of Europe as seen by Americans"):



(Later Susan & I went to Europe together - my first trip to Europe - that was when I discovered that there some little countries in between France and Germany, which right there makes me vastly more knowledgeable than 99% of Americans. Anyway.) So, the point is, neither Susan nor I had been the least bit into Brazil when we'd known each other in the long-ago past. Fast-forward to 2010 - guess what, Susan now turns out to have joined a Brazilian drum-and-dance group! Obviously there's some kind of parallel evolution going on here. Anyway, so last week when we saw each other for the first time in something like 8 years, in between all the laughing and hugs and rounds of brownie-baking, she says, hey, you want to come see a couple of rehearsals of this amazing Brazilian dance group that I've joined? Of course I said HELL YEAH. But I had no idea what kind of group it might be. When people invite you to see their local group, you never quite know if it's going to turn out to be a fluff group or a heavy-duty group, you know? Nothing against the fluff groups, they're lots of fun too; they've all got their place in the cosmos. But you just never know what kind of thing it's going to be. Will it be a fluff group, or a heavy-duty group?

So anyway, the group she'd joined turned out to be Batucaxé.

I have to back up here and set the stage. So, the last couple years that I've been going to Brazil Camp, I'm always totally exhausted by the time the samba-reggae class rolls around. It's always the last class of the day, and I typically am tired and overwhelmed, and brain is overflowing, and tamborim patterns are leaking out of my ears, and simply cannot take in any new drum patterns at that point in the day. But the last couple years, there have been these two amazing guys in the timbal class. Really awesome players who always remembered all the breaks, always playing about ten times stronger than anybody else, and, best of all, super friendly and helpful. I quickly discovered that the best place to stand, if you're in the timbal section at camp, is right next to these two guys, or better still right between them, because they're the kind of super-friendly guys who will try to play extra-clearly next to you if they notice that you've haven't quite got the pattern yet. Kind of coaxing you along with big friendly looks and then giving you a great big encouraging smile when you do finally get it. I remember last year feeling especially grateful to the two of them. I was sort of vaguely thinking that one was named Cliff Something and the other fellow was named, in my mind anyway, Guy-With-The-Cool-Hat.

You can guess what's coming - I'm lying around at the Batucaxe rehearsal when who should walk in? Cliff Something (Berrien) and Guy with the Cool Hat! (who turns out to have another name entirely - Kenya Masala.) I jumped up in total shock - oh my god! It's Cliff and Guy with the Cool Hat! The two timbal gods from camp! I couldn't get over it. And it turns out Cliff is the overall director of Batucaxe, and Kenya is one of the sub-directors. I'm sure they must have told me at some point at camp that they were from Tucson, but I'd just never put it all together and realized that THAT'S the group that Susan was dancing with.

Next a really cool surdo guy who I remember from camp, Alfie, also turns up, and a several other familiar CBC faces (one of whom says when she sees me "Oh my god! It's the Dudu Chick!" - guess I've acquired my own weird CBC moniker) Such a pleasure, and such a surprise, to find so many familiar friendly faces.

So. Batucaxé. First off. These cats are ORGANIZED. Awesome rehearsal hall with good dance floor and mirrors. (In an industrial area so they can often go outside and do sectionals, outside in the street, without having to worry about noise-ordinance issues.) Roomy side closets for drum storage, packed completely full of some insane number of surdos (looked like at least 10?), plus caixas, plus repiques. The drums all match. Stands for the caixas. Huge plastic crates neatly labeled "STRAPS, STICKS, MALLETS " "BELLS" "CHOCALHOS" and chock full of exactly what their labels said (wow.... what a concept... the labels were correct). Big bin of earplugs free for the taking. Four full racks of... steel pans! - and just for one song, Aquarela do Brasil. (I don't mean four steel pans; I mean four RACKS of steel pans) Twelve samba dancers! Insanely cool choreography! Twenty-five drummers! A full line of timbals! Four dun-dun dancers, with their own drums! A full set of actual alfaias! A podium for the director to stand up on so everybody could see him! Assistant directors! Smooth hand-over of control! Efficient use of rehearsal time! Drummers paying attention! (wow... how do they do that?) A surdo director (this was Alfie) who was cuing the newer surdo players through everything (thus sparing the overall director from having to spend all his time doing surdo-cuing). A full sound system - big blue-light Mackies and microphones and all. Singers who could actually sing! Songs. MELODY. People leaping! Dancing! Shouting! Singing!

Batucaxé started playing, and a huge roll of thunder burst through the sky. The drums came pounding in on an awesome West African rhythm, and a low throaty growl started to rumble through the entire building - was it an echo from the drums? No, it wasn't just the drums. Something else was going on. The growl got louder and louder and louder, becoming a roar, a throaty, rumbling, huge-voiced roar. Were there lions outside, or a herd of elephants maybe? Perhaps a herd of dinosaurs was attacking the building? Lights started flickering on and off. Batucaxé kept on playing. I ran outside and found that the building was being pummeled by a thick, heavy barrage of pea-sized hailstones (this in Tucson, Arizona, where temps had been running 100F.) I ran back inside, excitedly showing a handful of icy hailstones to the surdo players; and Batucaxé kept on playing, with the massive growls of thunder and the drumming roar of the hail, and the flickering lights, and the cracks and flashes of lightning from outside. I thought, this probably happens every time Batucaxé plays; because they were playing with enough wild energy, and groove, and drive, and heart, and swing, to call down the honest-to-goodness storm gods.

So here's the deal on Batucaxé: They are not a fluff group. They are a Heavy-Duty Group.

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Now the geeky drum notes. A couple of things that really caught my eye. Well, the organization, definitely - especially, the place to store the surdos and the presence of a good sound system really got me thinking. (Lions have been kind of hampered by the lack of storage space and the fact that we shift between two different rehearsal places - our Sunday place and our Monday place - so we're always hauling surdos all over Portland, so, nobody ever wants to drag a sound system too.)

Second. Huge diversity in repertoire. West African, a 6/8 thingy, Timbalada pieces, samba-reggae, afrosamba, a genuine maracatu (with alfaias), Rio-style samba, and a bunch of other stuff too. Samba was only a small part of their repertoire; most of the rep was a huge variety of other kinds of rhythms. It gave their repertoire a lot of texture and different flavors.

Third. Songs! Melody! Batucaxé has singers. Now the cool thing is, it was just a singer - a good singer- and the drums. No cavaquinho (though apparently they do often have one, just not at this particular rehearsal, but Cliff confirmed that they will often do tunes with just singer + drums.) The point is, a cavaquinho is great if you have one, but you shouldn't let lack of a cavaquinho prevent you from ever doing any songs. If you have a really good singer, then singer + drums is very, very, very effective at holding audience interest, much more than just drums alone. Even if it's just one Olodum song, or one Timbalada song (Toque de Timbaleiro is a perfect example of this kind of thing, and in fact Batucaxé sings that). Or, say, one piece that you start with a bitty little singy intro - like, for example, Cliff singing a cool little chant, and the whole bateria singing it back, then a massive and eardrum-destroying BOOM, and the bateria enters. Creative stuff like that, putting in a bit o' singing here & there, is so effective at texturing your sound and holding audience interest.

Fourth. I just really dug that they do Aquarela do Brasil on steel pans. So pretty! Then the bateria comes in; very cool. I've always had a soft spot for that song. I know it's an oldie but boy is it a goodie. Samba de exaltação. That one really made me dance.