Why your group needs a Big Parade

It's mid-September. Back in Portland, Oregon, fresh off my thrilling parade weekend with Jorge Alabe's Samba Rio.

That parade was so much fun!

VamoLa's parades in Seattle always used to be a blast, too. Solstice, Gay Pride, and then Halloween. Okay, sometimes it was rather traumatic (I broke my nose while prepping for my first VamoLa parade... long story short, I whacked myself in the face, as hard as I could, with a 2x4, and then I bled all over the freshly painted parade float. This is how I introduced myself to all my brand-new drummer friends. It seemed like a good idea at the time) Okay, so there were ups and downs, but parades have definitely been among my most vivid life experiences.

After that cheery story, you may be wondering why on earth my Portland groups don't usually do any parades. Well, actually, one of my groups is now gearing up for a rare parade (yay!), but even that group hardly ever parades, and my other groups never do parades at all. In one case parades have been outright vetoed by the surdo players, which, honestly, sorta pisses me off. (more on that below.) There just seems to be this grumpy attitude in Portland about the whole concept of parades. Not just from leaders - from everybody! Portland's usually such a cool, rockin' place, too. What gives??

I do understand the challenges involved in putting a parade together. The logistics for organizing a parade are hideous, and definitely are emotionally scarring if any one person tries to do it all alone. If the work is delegated among many people, it all becomes even more hideous and even more emotionally scarring. The costume discussions alone usually require a couple of United Nations mediators. But in my opinion, every Brazilian samba/samba-reggae/maracatu group NEEDS a big annual parade. With a costume! Otherwise.... without a Big Parade, the group isn't really Brazilian, isn't really doing samba (or samba-reggae, or maracatu), doesn't really have the ineffable feel of it all. Because samba (or samba-reggae, or maracatu) is much more than a music; it's a culture, and a huge part of samba culture is that it is parade music. In Brazil, every samba bloco and samba escola's activities, all year long, are all aimed at the Big Parade. All their classes and recruitment are oriented toward the Big Parade. Even their stage gigs are perceived by the group, and advertised to the public, as "rehearsals" for the upcoming Big Parade. A Big Parade also provides an excellent entry point for new people, and an excellent focus for an annual recruiting cycle. It's a great recruiting tool - "If you work really hard, and master this small, manageable set of material, you can do the Big Parade with us!" Plus, the shared adversity and trauma of a parade really bonds a group together, you know?

What's more, samba itself evolved as a parade music. The bateria is arranged the way it is for parades; the straps are slung they way they are, the caixa is held where it is, for parades. The rhythm itself has evolved for parades. After participating in five Rio Carnavals, I'm convinced that the very reason that Brazilian samba has such as solid ONE, TWO, ONE, TWO (rather than, for example, the much more highly syncopated bass lines found in most Cuban music) is because the surdos must provide a very clear beat for a long string of paraders, who are all trying to sing along with the band, and many of whom are pretty far away. The second & first surdos can never deviate from their ONE, TWO, ONE, TWO for more than a couple measures, and then only in a few short breaks that only occur rarely; if they got any more syncopated than that, the far ends of the parade would fall apart. (I've seen it happen, when escolas experimented with a syncopated break that was too long - the entire parade falters, people who are far away get completely off the beat, and the whole parade can fragment beyond repair.)

This music evolved for parading. So I feel you will never really "get" the spirit of samba unless you do an annual Big Parade.

Most disturbing to me is that many of my fellow Portland musicians actually don't like parading. I really don't get this. Especially, dancers and surdo players don't like parades. Perhaps they've been scarred by the painfuly too-fast walking pace of many American parades, as I mentioned in a previous post. But there's an easy fix to that; just walk slow, and then pretend you can't hear the parade organizers who try to harass you to speed up. You can just say to them: "WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? GREAT PARADE, ISN'T IT? WOO-HOOOO!" (More seriously, do some clear negotiations with parade organizers early on - explain the issue well in advance, preferably months in advance, and warn them that your group CANNOT, physically CANNOT, walk faster than, say, 2 mph or whatever it is. Explain it in terms of how much more fun it is for the audience if they get to really enjoy each group's performance, rather than just blinking in the dust as the groups sprint past at top speed. And then put your top permissable mph in your contract.)

Perhaps some dancers don't know they can scale back their dancing; do less of the fast samba step, have some simple, ground-covering moves that are easy and pretty and let them catch their breath. Honestly, they could just strut around and show off their costumes and not dance at all; that's what Rio passistas do for maybe 90% of their parading time. They only really samba on every other chorus.

I admit that I'm a lot more patient with dancers who don't want to parade than with surdo players who don't want to parade. I admit, in fact, that I get rather annoyed by surdo players who don't want to parade. (I get especially annoyed by the following: "I'm a surdo player and I won't parade. No, I don't know how to play any other instrument, and I don't want to play any other instrument, so even if you're willing to parade on surdo in my place, you can't! You have to stay on caixa! Cause I can't play caixa! And I don't want to learn!" arrrrgh) Okay. Here is the deal. YOU ARE NOT A REAL SURDO PLAYER UNLESS YOU PARADE. Hate to be harsh but that's really what I believe. I walk the walk on this - I've done many two- and three-mile parades myself, uphill, playing a 24" first surdo, so there! I'm not saying it was easy. I had to train for a month beforehand, lifting weights, doing situps, falling off horses and breaking my cell phone (long story), and walking a mile around in Seattle's Woodland Park with my surdo twice a week with my friend Yonca, banging our drums. Yeah, we got quite a lot of strange looks. But (a) I lost a lot of weight! hey! (b) it was fun, (c) it helps you develop the confidence and ballsiness and the borderline-insanity that makes you psychologically able to drum and leap around in public like an insane person, despite many peculiar looks from passersby, so this sort of parade training is all part of developing your understanding of the Spirit of Samba and improving your stage presence. I also now know, in retrospect, that we maybe should have cleared this plan in advance with the elephant keepers at the Woodland Park Zoo, because the elephants turn out to be very, very, highly, interested in nearby low deep rumbling sounds. But, the point is, we trained for it, and we DID it. We rocked those parades, Yonca and me! Honestly, only then did I become a real surdo player.

There is nothing like a parade on surdo; you are king of the universe. In Rio it is an incredible honor to be allowed to play surdo in a parade. If someone in Rio asked you to do the Big Parade on surdo in their group, my god, you would fall all over yourself saying yes, and you would train like hell for it, and play your little heart out, and even if you dropped dead on the parade route from cardiac arrest and dehydration and hand blisters and elbow tendonitis and shin bruises and slipped disks and second-degree sunburns, you'd die happy. If you're a real surdo player you just gotta have that gonads-to-the-wall, do-or-die, HELL YEAH attitude.

So you can imagine my delight when the Lions started tentatively floating the possibility of doing the Rose Parade in Portland next spring. OH PLEASE. I'd fly back from Boston just to do it with them! On a 26" surdo if they want! Uphill both ways!