Thursday, October 7, 2010

Post-parade party

We wrapped up the parade at about noon, and then a chattering horde of Samba Rio dancers and drummers all headed back to Eric's place for an afternoon barbecue. We ate, we drank, we played pagode, we danced, we ate more, we played more, we sang, we gossiped, we chatted... three, four, five, six hours! - past sunset. The parade itself had been about two hours total, and as is proper, the post-parade party looked to go at least six times longer than the actual parade.

As the sky was darkening, the backyard fell into shadow and it started to get a bit chilly. Time for the party to end? NO! Time to move up onto the deck in the last rays of the sun with a diehard core of partiers and get into a full-on analysis of every tiny Brazil Camp's daily schedule of classes, and how we wish THIS class didn't conflict with THAT class, and how we really need TWO advanced bateria classes because one is just not enough, and two weeks of maracatu and two weeks of samba-reggae too. So we spent maybe an hour drawing up a new schedule that would be IDEAL, IDEAL I tell you, for drummers (because, really, who cares about dancers and guitarists and those other strange people who do not drum?).

Brazil Camp schedule conquered, we assessed the much-rumored possibility of a move to the Mendocino camp site. The Bay Area people are worried about this because it increases their driving time to camp. The wimps. I tell you. WIMPS. Here the Portland and Seattle drummers are doing two-day, and sometimes three-day, odysseys of thirteen and sixteen-plus hours, the Vancouver BC folks even further, while the Bay Area drummers are scared that their bitty little, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, two-hour drive might become a two-and-a-half-hour drive. My goodness! They might have to stop once for a snack! Oh, the poor things, I've got a tear in my eye just thinking about it.

Anyway, the mention of Mendocino awoke a thundering herd of vivid Mendocino music camp memories for both me and Derek. Derek's been there for Lark-In-The-Morning; and I've been there for Baratsag Hungarian camp, the Balkan Camp, and also Middle Eastern Camp. A sudden memory shot into my head of learning tapan at Balkan camp, and dumbek at Middle Eastern; my first ever exposure to percussion! - immediately chased by a stunningly vivid memory of the Hungarian boot dancers showing up a night early at the last Balkan party and launching into a legenyes in the middle of the Bulgarian pravo, and then another memory of Joe Graziosi pushing an entire line of maybe thirty zonaradikos dancers across the floor, backwards, all by himself, at a dead run.... oh yeah baby....

[OK, I am typing this in a coffeehouse in Portland and exactly when I wrote that sentence about memories from Balkan camp, suddenly a fiddle outside starts playing a Bulgarian dance tune, a racenica. There is a girl out there with a fiddle playing a racenica. What the hell are the chances??]

Anyway, while I was lost in this flood of memories, Derek was describing the entire layout of Mendocino in minute detail to everybody else, with impressive accuracy, practically drawing us a scale-model blueprint of every building. We mapped out where every class could go, and settled on a spot for Bola's drum shop, because of course, it just won't work unless there is a good spot for Bola's drum shop.

There! All camp problems solved! Then another hour or so for the requisite discussion of All The Things That Are Wrong With My Group (And With Every Other Group In The World), and Why Can't We Recruit More New People, and How Can We Start Beginners, and Should We Have A Smaller, Super-Cool Group Within The Main Group, and Things I Don't Like About My Group's Last Parade Costume, and I Also Don't Like Our T-Shirt, and a nice selection of Worst Gig Ever stories, and etc. and etc. ... ... by this time the sun had really finished the setting and it was dark. So was it time for the party to end?

Of course not! It was time to go inside and pull out the congas and play candomble songs!

An hour later our candomble singer finally had to leave. It was 8pm; we'd been playing music pretty much nonstop for twelve hours. Was the party over yet?

OF COURSE NOT! We still had drums here, for crissake! It was time for the diehards-of-the-diehards - the die-hardests - to play samba-de-roda! For another hour!

(This included a rapid and utterly fruitless attempt to quickly teach me, in about 1 minute, about four different and rather complicated conga patterns for samba-de-roda. "Um, actually, so, the truth is, I don't play conga, like, AT ALL, and I don't even have the slightest first clue about samba-de-roda anyway" I explained, which elicited the interesting comment, "Oh, I just assumed because you were a third-surdo player that you'd know samba-de-roda on conga." I was quickly shifted to bell - which, actually, kept me plenty busy and entertained. It was quite the zen trance experience to keep playing that bell cleanly through all the fascinating conga things that were going on.)

Finally the last samba-de-roda players had left, the evening was over... oh, what a fantastic day, and what a fantastic bunch of people. This is how life should BE. This is what it's All About.

Hit the sack, then up early the next morning to grab the BART to the Oakland airport, and hop on the JetBlue plane. Wishing I didn't have to leave - but Portland is great too, and had a busy music week coming up with a mysterious and long-rumored Lions group meeting. But whatever goes on in Portland, I've got an invite to come back to San Francisco for the famous Mission District Day of the Dead parade with Derek's maracatu group. OH YEAH.

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