Canta Viradouro!

Once is never enough, is it?

If you’ve been following the story, you’ll know that it was my ultimate dream to play tamborim in the bateria (drum corps) of a samba school in Rio de Janeiro’s Sambódromo for Carnaval. I can honestly say at the time I didn’t even care if it was the last thing I ever did in life, I could well have died happy at the end of that parade!

As it turns out, marching just once down the Marquês de Sapucaí with the bateria of Acadêmicos da Rocinha in 2011 proved to be much like taking just one hit of a too-powerful narcotic … it cannot be done without considerable suffering and withdrawal.  I warn you folks, if you ever try this, you’ll never be able to stop.

And so this is how, on March 1 2014, I found myself in the midst of the thunderous, pulsating Bateria Furacao Vermelho e Branco of Viradouro ready to unleash its fury down the passarela.

A great clip of the bateria of Viradouro during the 2014 parade, with the spectacularly gorgeous Raissa Machado, rainha da bateria (drum queen).

My history with Viradouro surprisingly goes back even farther than my history with Rocinha. The following photo was taken in 2010, when my good friends Rafael and Marcone introduced me to their favorite samba school. Since then I’ve always loved Viradouro; located in Barreto, between Niteroi and São Gonçalo, it has a laid-back almost rural feel to it and is very cheerful and welcoming.

Case in point: they let the silly gringa jam with the bateria into the wee hours that Saturday night!

However relaxed they may be during their Saturday night parties though, they have a top-notch bateria and really run a tight ship to keep it that way when it comes to rehearsing for the big show.

Viradouro is one of the classic traditional samba schools of Rio de Janeiro and has a long history of greatness; for much of its existence, Viradouro has paraded alongside the most revered schools such as Mangueira, Salgueiro and Portela, the mighty mainstays of the “Grupo Especial” (Special Group; the samba schools are all part of a league very much akin to a professional sports league, and has several divisions. The two main divisions who get to strut their stuff in the famous Sambódromo are the top ‘Special Group’ and the ‘A-Series’, the 2nd contenders). Despite having fallen to the A-Series in 2009, Viradouro still carries the unshakable sparkle and spirit of a Special Group group school, and their bateria remains a force to be reckoned with.

You can see yours truly at 0:34 – 0:54

Somebody once told me that Viradouro has the highest proportion of women in any bateria. That particular Saturday night in 2010 I remember being completely blown away by this little lady beating the living daylights out of her tamborim beside me; her technique was flawless and the sound was so powerful, she almost made it sound like a repinique … I remember thinking ‘how can such a monstrous sound come from such a tiny girl, and how the heck am I ever going to get that good?’. The women of Viradouro’s bateria may look sweet, but they are fierce, and they are some of the most badass drummers in Rio. It was nothing short of a great honour to join their ranks.

 

And so once more I set off down the Sapucaí to blazing floodlights, furiously waving flags and elated cheers, the great rumble of the surdos pounding in my belly; this time the crowd was chanting ‘Viradouro Campeã!’ (‘Viradouro, Champion’!), and a joyous premonition it was … Viradouro’s magnificent parade went on to win the championship of the A-Series and next year will return to march in the Special Group once again.

It was an indescribable joy to be part of the roaring machine that carried Viradouro to victory!
See for yourself:

(click photo to see full gallery)

Orgulho de ser Niterói
Reluz no rio, o meu tesouro
De braços abertos, olhai por nós
Canta Viradouro!

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Go Ahead, Rain on My Parade

(from March 18, 2011)

It’s becoming evident to me how the more involved one becomes in living something, the less time one has to sit back and write about said something … my apologies, my fellow groove-nuts, for the near 2-month hiatus!!

In my defense, I do have several good reasons (excuses) for this, the most important being that I MADE IT!!! (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this ) After a relentless period of several weeks of very intense rehearsals, I was finally accepted to parade in the Sambódromo with Rocinha! A mission 12 years in the making has been accomplished!!!

JR made it too!! Let’s hear it for the gringos!!

Many of my supportive friends and family (bless them) have been saying they always believed I would succeed, etc. and I appreciate this sentiment very much … however, there certainly was reason to doubt, all the way up until the last minute!! I’ve mentioned this before – like my predecessor and inspiration Negin always warned, you never really know you’ve made the cut until they hand you your fantasia (costume).

In addition to the costume, the tamborim players all get swanky new skins too! Yay samba swag!

As I had previously explained, the world of samba schools in Rio is on par with professional futebol. I am not kidding (I think this is the only place on earth where music and sports are on equal footing … amazing, really!). So, as you can imagine, all of the ball-busting cut-throat machismo that exists in sports is also very present in the bateria.

At one point in the weeks leading up to the parade, I was informed that the mestre of the bateria himself was complaining that I wasn’t playing well enough, and several of the other section directors were giving Bruno flack for not running a tight enough ship with the tamborim section (and as I explained in this post, the tamborim part is among the most varied and difficult in the bateria). Fortunately, continuing on the sports parallel here, unlike the vast majority of samba school section directors, Bruno is much more like a zen martial arts master than a quarterback; he gently but firmly told them to get off his case and let him do his work. The result? Our bateria came through with flying colours. A perfect score, “Nota 10”, from all 5 judges. 50!!

I imagine many of you want to know what it was like, in the actual moment the dream was being realized, the big parade iteslf …

You can see me at around 0:45

To be honest, I think I felt more adrenaline, joy and euphoria during the ensaio tecnico (read all about it here, and see for yourelf in this video, an insider’s view of the bateria during the ensaio tecnico:

Probably the best video I’ve seen yet from this rehearsal, shot by Denilson, one of my fellow tamborim players

The official parade is the time to be completely focused on the task at hand … plus with carnaval starting so late this year, March 5 to be exact, you guessed it – it rained on my parade 😦 … it was a bit chilly and my feet were sloshing around in murky mucky water through the first half. We were programmed second-to-last, and of course as these things go, schedules slip, so by the time the blasting horn and fireworks sent us off on our journey down the Sapucaí, I was hungry and exhausted, as well as being nervous to begin with. So needless to say my arms weren’t cooperating as I wish they would have … but by that time I knew the desenhos well enough to just push through the physical barriers without worrying about what was going on musically …

Time takes on a whole other character during a samba parade … apparently it’s 80 minutes long, but you could have told me it was 5 minutes or 4 hours, and I’d have believed you either way.

As we marched toward the Praça da Apoteose at the end of the Sambódromo (the one presided over by Oscar Niemeyer’s famous arches), the sun had already started to rise … it seemed as though I was groggily waking up from a dream that had never really happened … it’s still all so surreal …

Did it feel differently than I had expected it to? Yes. Was I disappointed or let-down? No, not at all. It just felt more like a well-earned, hard-fought-for rite of passage than the thrill-ride I thought it would be.

Who Said the Triangle Was Boring?

(from January 22, 2011)

When many of us think of the triangle, we imagine a lonely, forgotten soul at the back of an orchestra, waiting and eternity for his big shining moment, that one little “ting” for the whole evening before fading back into oblivion.

Image courtesy of DailyClipArt.net

Not so in Brazil, my friends. Not even close.

This is Dani from Trio Remelexo (taken at Rio’s famous bohemian samba joint Rio Scenarium) … she belts out the Forró and rocks that triangle like nobody’s business:

As you can see, unlike the tamborim, the triangle is actually quite easy to play, and is the perfect little instrument to bring to a night at the pub: (too bad this guy’s beater technique is being obscured by beer bottles, but you get the idea 😉

So grab your party hat and your triangle and be joyful! Whoever said the triangle is boring has never been to Brazil …

On Your Marquês

(from January 12, 2011)

I had been back in Rio de Janeiro for a whopping total of 5 days when I found myself at the corner of Rua Benedicto Hipólito and Rua Marquês de Sapucaí, sporting my prized official Rocinha bateria shirt and warming up with 200 other drummers getting ready to run through our parade in front of THOUSANDS of people!! Life moves fast in Rio – go hard or go home, I say!

Let me give you a bit of background on this. If you’re from pretty much anywhere else in the world, even if music is a significant part of life in your culture, you would still be awe-struck by how huge a deal music is in Brazil. It is on par with professional sports. Brazilians go crazy for samba at the same level as they do for futebol (soccer).

There is a competition every October in which the composers associated with their particular samba schools write a song hoping it will become the official Samba Enredo for the season; the night the winning song is chosen is a momentous event (and of course a raucous party!). I have yet to witness this in person, but I can easily imagine it.

Following that week or so in October after all the official Enredos are chosen, they are then broadcast ad-nauseum on the radio non-stop until Carnaval time, so that everyone throughout the streets and hills can sing along en-masse to all of them … (for all you bashful Northern types, there is no such thing as “I can’t sing” or “I can’t dance” in Rio).

Everyone has their favourite samba school, just like they have their favourite futebol team (which is usually Flamengo, but that’s another topic for someone else’s blog) … so of course they also have the shirts and flags to show off their fanatical support, and it goes without saying that they know their school’s Samba Enredo like the back of their hand.

An “ensaio técnico” (technical rehearsal) is when the samba school runs through the whole parade in the official purpose-built samba parade stadium called the Sambódromo (which seats over 75 000 people). Ensaios happen every weekend night for about 2 months leading up to the Carnaval, and there are 3 schools parading each of these nights:

You can see the schedule here >>

*** UPDATE ***

I found this video, taken by Denilson, one of the other tamborim players … it’s the best one I’ve seen of this rehearsal, a real insider’s look at the bateria in action, and he catches almost all of our “paradinhas” or special breaks:

Just to set the scene, ensaio técnicos in the Sambódromo are like exhibition sports games. These rehearsals are not just for the bateria, but for EVERYONE involved in that school’s parade; probably more than 3000 drummers, dancers, baianas, porta-bandeiras … (don’t worry, I will describe this in great detail in a future post).

The floodlights were drenching the avenue with that deluge of brightness only reserved for the world cup or a prison breakout … and the bleachers were PACKED with wild samba fans!! Needless to say, I was flying on adrenaline!

This night was extra special because it was the very first ensaio técnico of the season; a total of 24 samba schools will parade in the Sambódromo during carnaval; 12 in “Grupo Especial” and 12 in “Grupo de Acesso”. Each school in Grupo de Acesso gets only ONE big rehearsal at the Sambódromo, whereas each school in Grupo Especial gets 2 … we were the VERY FIRST school to kick off the season, and since Rocinha is in Grupo Acesso we only got to do that one ensaio técnico … so let’s say I was very fortunate to get here when I did and not a day later, to have been able to just barely grab onto Rocinha’s bateria’s tails and have the chance to be a part of such a powerful and thrilling experience!

From my perspective in the bateria, this could easily have been just as exciting as the carnaval itself. I found the following video on YouTube of footage from the ensaio – you can see yours truly in the tamborim section from 7:01 – 7:16 and my friend JR on caixa directly afterward, but even if you don’t have time/patience to watch the whole thing from the beginning, do start the video from 6:29 because the Rainha da Bateria (drum corps queen) and the cuicas are fabulous!

Chasing Butterflies

***2014 Update!! I’ve now created my own video describing tamborim technique! You can check it out here: ***

—–

(from January 8, 2011)

I’d like to thank my good friend, great percussionist and fellow Brazil nut JR – who is from Toronto but makes a much better Carioca than I do – for inviting me to rehearse with the bateria of the Rocinha samba school. JR arrived here a few weeks before I did and began playing with Rocinha, so he knew when rehearsals are held and let me in on the action.

JR, myself and 2 of the section leaders in the bateria – I still have to learn everbody’s name …

My biggest ally in this quest is Bruno, the jovial and intrepid leader of the tamborim section. He took some time to meet with me before rehearsal tonight to royally kick my sorry gringa hiney!

First we worked on some basic carreteiro* technique (the bloody difficult part of playing tamborim … Bruno solved a big mystery for me by showing me that the turn actually starts on the 2nd hit, and is completed with the upstroke.)

Then we were joined by another one of the tamborim players and went over all of the “desenhos” or breaks/conversations – the musically varied and really brain-racking parts – specific to this song.

During a technical rehearsal, there are times when the whole bateria is accompanying several (heavily) amplified singers and a cavaquinho player, and some times when the bateria takes a break for a chorus or two. During one of these breaks, Bruno played along softly so that we could learn how all of the desenhos fit together with the song. So here’s what I’m up against! Meet Bruno:

Even though I’m here a full two months before Carnaval, these schools sometimes start practicing 7 or even 8 months before, so I’m in on the very tail end as far as trying to participate in the bateria is concerned. I still don’t know if I am guaranteed a spot or not … like Negin says, we don’t really know until they hand us our fantasia (costume). JR and I are going to check out a few more schools just to try to keep our options open. I’m quite liking Rocinha though, I hope it works out.

Here’s Rocinha’s samba enredo for 2011:

Marca o tempo já é hora
Voa borboleta encantada
Mata sua sede de vencer
que eu faço tudo pra te proteger

(If you’re interested in tamborim technique, comment and we’ll talk more … for now, check out this little demo, it’s pretty slammin’! … even if you don’t understand Portuguese, it’s a beautiful, melodious and rhythmic language and it’s fun to listen to):

Back in Brazil

(from January 6, 2011)

I suppose this all started with my father’s side of the family being from the West Indies and hearing calypso music in the house growing up, and was then catapulted to the point of no return by my involvement in Montreal’s Salsa music scene and my good fortune to have spent some quality time with Hammond B-3 guru and groove master Dr. Lonnie Smith … as this blog evolves I will go into much greater detail about those experiences …

So here I am in Rio de Janeiro, for the 3rd time in as many years. I’ve come to accept that I will never get a higher rush for the rest of my life (unaided by narcotics of course, but we won’t go there …) than the first time I set foot in the cidade maravilhosa … for about 10 years leading up to that moment in January of 2009, I was gradually becoming more and more captivated by samba in general, and samba school “bateria” in particular … 200+ drummers parading together, prodded along by a truck covered in speakers blasting the theme samba song (Samba Enredo) … I gravitated toward the tamborim – because the parts are among the most musically varied in a samba bateria, and of course also because it’s REALLY LOUD!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamborim

At a certain point it became an obsession – I absolutely HAD to participate in Rio’s carnaval parade in the bateria of a samba school playing tamborim, dressed in an outrageous feathered costume, if it were the last thing I ever did in life … this is one of those things that you either understand, or you don’t.

The samba, whether slow & sensual or fast and fiery, has a very unique and infectious swing to it – the beat is not evenly divided and it feels like it will all fall apart any second … of course it doesn’t, but as you try to make sense of it all, it will pull you in deeper and deeper … and you will realize that there is no other rhythm anywhere that sounds and feels exactly like this …

(Ana Costa at Carioca da Gema, my favorite small samba club):

So on that beautiful sunny afternoon in January 2009, after taking the red-eye flight I groggily stumbled out of my Ipanema hostel and made my way to Praça General Osório … a brass and percussion band, which I later found out was the famous Banda de Ipanema, was playing in the square … small children, grannies, and everyone in between were dancing and singing, were so full of joy … and it hit me hard at that moment that I had finally made it to Brazil … there was nowhere else on earth I could possibly be … and I proceeded to cry my eyes out for the entire two weeks I spent in Rio because the music is really that powerful … and also for the entire 15 hours home on the plane at the end of the trip because it was pure agony to leave.

Being the travel nut that I am I used to have a rule that I would visit a new place I had never been to before at least once a year. I had that going for a good 11 or 12 years … but now I’m willing to toss that one right out the window just to get to be in Rio de Janeiro as much as possible. So come January 2010, I found myself back here again, except that time it just felt normal. At that point I realized what it must be like to have a substance abuse problem … that the extreme chemical high you crave is no longer possible, but you have to keep supplying whatever it is that your body is screaming for just to feel NORMAL. I now feel very normal in Rio de Janeiro. If I didn’t manage to make it here every year I’m sure I’d be a miserable wreck. [2014 note: now I live here!]

As I said, I’ve come to accept that I will never feel the way I did in January 2009 ever again, simply because to me there really is nowhere on earth as exciting as Rio de Janeiro, and one can never re-create that magic first moment of discovery. However, I am on a quest that started 10 years before that, one that may never truly end (because I’m sure I’ll want to do it over and over and over again), so now finally in January 2011, 2 months before Carnaval, I am gearing up to realize this dream of playing tamborim in the parade with a real samba school bateria!!

Here’s an example of what I am hoping to have the honour of being a part of:

(Bateria da Grande Rio, 2009 – two good friends of mine Maninho and Negin were in this bateria; they have been constantly encouraging me to go for it ever since, so I thank them very much for that!)

Tomorrow I will attempt to purchase some sort of camera and video recorder so I can document this experience and share it with you … stay tuned!

Bach to my Roots

(from December 1, 2010)

All I ever listened to for the first 10 years of my life was classical music, especially baroque music (I still love it to this day, though my tastes have diversified quite a bit since then, from that to Led Zeppelin to John Coltrane to Sergent Garcia), but I have always loved Bach the most and always will … if I ever got banished to isolation and was told the only music I could ever listen to for the rest of my life was the complete works of Bach, I’d be totally ok with that.

When I was 7 years old, my parents gave me a cassette tape (yes, that’s how old I am!) of assorted baroque music that had recently been released, among them Albinoni’s Adagio, and I’m pretty sure there was also something by Vivaldi … but of course the one piece that stood out the most to me was the Brandenburg Concerto #5 by Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded by Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert; the harpsichord solo toward the end of the first movement hit me like a ton of bricks … even though I was 7 years old and could barely even reach the pedals on the piano at the time, I promised myself I would learn to play that piece someday … I listened to it over, and over, and over … and wore out the cassette … lousy technology; thankfully some slightly less lousy technology came along a few years later, and my parents bought the full 3-CD set of all 6 Brandenburg Concertos and 4 Orchestral Suites from that same English Concert recording.

I finally decided to tackle it at age 17 – sometimes it takes 10 years to keep a promise, but hey, better late than never. However, once I decided I was going to do it, I was very motivated to learn it as quickly as possible … I couldn’t be bothered going to the store, looking for sheet music, picking it apart off a page … nah … I just figured I’d learn the whole thing by ear. I’m sure I’d heard it at LEAST 500 times by then, so it wouldn’t be too difficult … except that crazy fast part that I needed a half-time machine for, but I digress … anyway, at that time, I had no idea what baroque tuning was. This is a slightly important detail … see, Baroque ensembles (the whole resurgence of which was pioneered in part by Trevor Pinnock – the idea of playing on instruments of the Baroque era using period-appropriate articulation, phrasing, bowing, etc. and of course their tuning system … ) use A-415. Which is pretty much our modern A-flat. Soooo … I learned the entire harpsichord solo from Brandenburg #5 in D-flat major … it’s supposed to be in D. Oops! Oh well, there’s no danger of me trying to play this with an orchestra, so it’s all good.

As the years went by and I got into playing other styles of music … jazz, salsa, funk … I never really forgot about the piece but I didn’t play it as often … though I was exploring many other genres, and the lifestyle that goes with them (anyone who’s been to a Salsa club knows what I’m talking about!), Trevor Pinnock’s recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos stayed very close to me – through highs and lows – graduation celebrations and break-ups … it’s always been that one recording I’d bring with me to the proverbial desert island … in fact, I seem to remember telling my father right before I moved away that if he didn’t buy me another copy I’d just take his with me to Montreal … so another copy of that 3-CD set was purchased immediately!

So, as these things go, even more years went by … now, I’m not one to make a whole pile of New Year’s resolutions – it almost invariably ends in disappointment and feelings of inadequacy – but around New Year’s 2009 it hit me how much I missed Baroque music (I forgot to mention I played viola in the McGill Baroque Orchestra my final year of University and it was my absolute favorite ensemble during my post-secondary career, bar none!), so I resolved to bring more Baroque and early music back into my life … I went to some great concerts, including the Tallis Scholars as well as a really nice harpsichord series put on by Luc Beausejour … but I had no idea what was in store for me, how my New Year’s resolution was going to bring my entire musical identity full-circle … see, the whole time I had been listening to this amazing landmark recording of the Brandenburg Concertos, I never thought of Trevor Pinnock as an actual human artist whom I could actually go see perform … I had never tried, never seen a live concert, never met him … his recording was just totally woven into the fabric of my musical soul since I was 7, and that was that … and then in a completely unrelated, seemingly unlikely context, there he was, at my workplace, around this time last year.

me, star-struck

I told him about listening to his solo since I was 7, and then learning how to play it note-for-note in D-flat major … we had a good laugh over that! Yes, I realize I’m almost a year late writing about this meeting (hey, it took me 10 years to learn the piece, so I suppose I’m not doing too badly considering …), but I can’t possibly convey in mere typed text how heavy an experience this was for me, coming face to face with the original source of my inspiration to become a musician … how it completely derailed me for about a week …

Anyway, needless to say it was all the motivation I needed to dust off the cobwebs and finally record the one piece I’ve carried with me pretty much my entire life … and I got to learn some video editing skills while I was at it. So, ladies and gentlemen, here you have it … the harpsichord solo from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto # 5 played on the piano, in the wrong key: