Salvador
da Bahia, Brazil "Before there was Brazil... there was Bahia..."
"There
are certain countries, the names of which fire the popular imagination.
Brazil is one of them; an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle
and elegance, beating drums and luscious jazz harmonics -- there's no
other place like it in the world. And while Rio, or its fame anyway,
tends toward the elegant and sophisticated end of the spectrum, Bahia
tends
toward the other. Bahia is the land of the drum..."
Bahia-Online/Cana
Brava is located in Salvador, at Rua João de Deus, 22, and in
that Bahia's principal modality for the existence and continuation of
its culture is music, this (along with much more) is something we propagate,
and celebrate.
CRASH PROOF! (but dying; a great music on the verge of extinction)
While the world awaits with trepidation the deepening of the economic downturn, there are some whose lives have never experienced an economic upturn. Brazil has a musical palliative for such material poverty, a rhythmic pearl which is no less a protective device than the lustrous layers secreted by an oyster to defend itself from a grain of sand. Pure joy born in the berth of misery, this would be the sweet mystery called "samba".
One Hot Night in the Bahian Backlands
This is Samba Chula de São Braz, featuring men in black hatsAlumínio and João do Boi (John of the Ox), along with Rita da Barquinha (Rita of the Little Boat), dancers from the community of Bom Jesus dos Pobres (Good Jesus of the Poor People), and Dona Nicinha of Santo Amaro. The clip is an excerpt from Jorge Pacoa's excellent documentary Samba de Roda na Palma da Mão.
Samba-chula (or samba-de-roda, there is a slight difference) is a seminal but dying art played nowadays by a mere handful of people. The music fulfilled a role analogous to that of the delta blues in the United States in that it was/is the root foundation for most everything which came after it in Brazil's musical world, from the golden age of radio to bossa nova to tropicália to Brazilian hip hop. And ironically and in total contradiction to the situation of the blues, this cornerstone of culture now finds itself precariously close to disappearing forever (although those last legs certainly do have some life left in them!).
It'd be great to board a time-machine and pay a visit to 1930's Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama, stepping up to a front porch on a humid summer's evening to clap hands to the rural American version of the above. But alas that time is gone and the time-machine is only a wistful figment of our imagination. Things have "progressed" more slowly here, but soon enough one will never be able to see or hear again what now requires but a journey into the Bahian interior to bear witness (or dance) to, if one knows where to go, and on what night...
Salvador
Brazil From the Ground Up
Bahia Chic!
Anybody who's spent any time on this site knows that my taste runs to samba-chula and cachaça with fishermen and fieldworkers out in the Recôncavo, and samba-de-morro from the Rio hills, music barely heard for the past sixty years or so. But we must give the arbiters of another world their due (especially when our disparate worlds meet).
Ergo, Calvin Klein's (Brazilian) creative director on his trip to Salvador in his New York Times featured blog...
Now, back to that rusty metal standup street bar on a Salvador side-street!
Invoker of the Gods
6
In the photo below find Gabi (as he likes to be called) in the flesh (as opposed to the spirit, above)...
Percussion classes available with Gabi (at extremely reasonable, non-diva prices) with Gabi Guedes, alabé (ogã) and principal drummer of Salvador's most storied terreiro de candomblé, Gantois (where Gabi was made filho-de-santo by Mãe Menininha, iyalorixá whose praises may be heard sung in recordings by Dorival Caymmi, Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa, Ivone Lara, Clementina de Jesus, and Caetano Veloso, among others).
Gabi later played and recorded with Margareth Menzes and Gilberto Gil, going on to spend nine years as percussionist in Jimmy Cliff's Oneness band.
He is currently head percussionist and arranger for the most celebrated instrumental band in Brazil (Stanley Jordan and Airto Moreira are two of the most recent to sit in), a band styled after the Afro-Cuban jazz bands of Tito Puente, et al, and based in jazz and the rhythms of candomblé, Rumpilezz.
Although not completely fluent, Gabi does speak English (as one might imagine after nine years with a Jamaican band!)
Donald Duck hangs in Pelourinho with Zé Carioca and gets all steamed up over Carmen Miranda's baby sister Aurora as she sings magnificent Ary Barroso'sOs Quindins de Yayá ("Yayá's Sweets"; Yayá is an archaic African-Bahian term of respect for a woman). The clip is from Disney's 1944 release The Three Caballeros.
Can you blame the guy?!
Valeu Gary Pozner! What a wonderful whirled we live in!
Radio Cana Brava...internet radio from Salvador da Bahia...is an aural rainbow stretching from Bahia's sweet fields of sugarcane in the land where samba was born (in the hands, mouths, hips and hearts of the Bantus), to the hills of Rio de Janeiro where samba-de-morro was composed for radio stars by wonderfully talented men who themselves were relegated to living in the favelas.
The rainbow arcs over Rio's district of Lapa, haunt of such slight giants as Cartola and Noel Rosa...over Praça Onze where Pixinguinha and Donga and friends gathered in the house of Tia Ciata for their choros while the candomblés and sambas-de-roda were conducted out back, away from the eyes of the police. It arcs over Maranhão in the north, and Minas Gerais to the south, over São Paulo's Praça da República, where samba is tapped out by shoeshiners on shoe polish can lids (samba professors to wonderful Germano Mathias), over the jongeiros of the Vale do Paraíba...
The rainbow is hued with the dust of the sertão (backlands) and imbued with the sophisticated dance moves of the gafieiras, Rio dance halls of the 1930's. It resonates with the agogô, the bandolim (mandolin), and the seven-stringed guitar utilized in samba and choro...
This is the soaring sound of the real Brasil...
Radio Cana Brava is provided through a service called Live365, home to thousands of great "stations" run by enthusiasts who are in it for the love, not the money, and we're crazy about a number of these musical outlets. As time goes by I'm going to be adding to the list below...
Absinthe Radio plays great swing music of the '20s and '30s. It's not a nostalgia trip (although it could be I suppose, if you've got enough experience under your belt), it's simply great music! And man! Swing they did!
Here's Vai Chover (It's Gonna Rain), written by Boghan Costa (seated next to his also-musician brother Leo in the photo below, Boghan in white) and sung by Daniela Mercury.
Just about every time it starts to rain and I'm with my (poor, long suffering) children, I'll start in with an off-key version of the refrain of the same. So one not-so-fine day I happened to be having a beer outside with Boghan after a rehearsal when, as fate would have it, it began to rain and (forgetting my children weren't around) I began to sing...and Boghan winced, asking me "Do you by any chance know who wrote that song?"
Boghan Costa & Leo Bit Bit happy to back in Bahia after three months in Europe
Salvador,
Bahia: Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Ash Wednesday...the party's over...memento homo, quia
pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris...
CARNIVAL 2009 BEGINS TODAY, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH!
Tonight Rei (King) Momo will receive the keys to the city and Carnival will reign (this year's Rei Momo is incarnated by Gerônimo, of the music-on-the-steps on Ladeira do Carmo on Tuesday nights; has there ever been a better choice for Rei Momo?).
Rei Momo 2009
The theme is afoxé, and the streets are adorned with the blue-and-white strung beads of Bahia's largest afoxé, the Filhos de Gandhy.
A circuit must be selected...Dodo being the Barra-Ondina circuit, Osmar being the Campo Grande-Praça Castro Alves circuit, and Batatinha being the Pelourinho area circuit.
Samba-de-Roda's Beloved Muse Has Passed Away
Dona Edith Oliveira Nogueira, who picked up a plate and knife at four years of age behind her house in Santo Amaro, Bahia and began to scrape out the rhythm of a samba playing on the radio, and who went on to light up the parties of Santo Amaro for decades, singing and playing the sambas of the region, passed away in the early morning of Friday, January 9th, 2009.
Dona Edith was a sweet and lovely woman who in her capacity as sambista had an unfailing sense of rhythm, and more importantly, an unfailing sense of life. She was recorded by Jota Velloso -- a magical CD entitled As Vozes da Purificação -- a name taken from the group of women who sing choir in Santo Amaro's church Igreja da Nossa Senhor da Purificação and who also acted as Dona Edith's call-and-response backup singers.
Dona Edith do Prato
Caetano Veloso participated and the record was released on Maria Bethânia's Quelé label (distributed by Biscoito Fino).
Note: There's forró tonight -- from 8 p.m. or so -- in Salvador's Praça Municipal (the public square at the top of the Elevador Lacerda linking the upper and lower cities, also called "Praça Tomé de Souza") in honor of the Great Man's birthday.
Rei do Baião
Rei do Ritmo
Luiz Gonzaga and Jackson do Pandeiro, the two Reis -- Kings -- of the Brazilian Northeast
And you know, I think that it's kind of interesting that of the two great divisions of the music of Brazil's Northeast -- samba and forró (forró being something of an umbrella term including several different rhythms) -- samba is generally considered as having links to candomblé, while forró seems to be something else entirely...
But here's an epiphany from one of the masters (and hey! If it caught Jackson do Pandeiro by surprise, don't feel bad if it catches you by surprise too!).
"Um dia, em Pernambuco, fui ver um xangô e não é que quando cheguei e fui ouvindo o batuque, eu disse, cá comigo: 'Oxente! Isso é um coco!' E era. Mas um coco com agogô, com atabaques...um coco africano. O coco é mesmo que ser brasileiro: um tem um nariz chato, o outro é preto, outro é branco, mas todos são brasileiros. Assim é o coco."
"One day, in Pernambuco, I went to see a xangô (candomblé) and wouldn't you know it but when I got there and heard the drumming, I said to myself: 'Gee! That's a coco (one of the rhythms utilized in forró)!' And it was. But a coco with agogô (rhythm bell), with atabaques (conga-like drums)...an African coco. Coco is like being Brazilian, one has a wide nose, the other is black, the other white, but they're all Brazilians. That's what coco is like."
Carnival Primer
Yesterday (Thursday, November 27th, 2008) I had the honor of meeting one of Bahia's great bambas (sambistas), a man so profoundly affected by the fall of samba from its place as the premier popular music of Bahia (to be replaced by what is now commonly called "axé music") that he spun into a deep depression and for years hasn't left his apartment, rarely seeing anybody but his immediate family (principally his sister Denise, who cares for him)...
Now, one might question the...stability or whatever one would like to call it...of somebody who would be so far derailed over the falling-from-popularity of one's musical style, and the story is a complicated one (more complicated than I myself know), but Ederaldo Gentil had a good distance to fall.
He was born in the area of Largo Dois de Julho and as a child was raised in the nearby central Salvador neighborhood of Tororó during a time (the '60s) when Salvador had samba schools. Ederaldo belonged to the Filhos de (Sons of) Tororó.
In 1967 his samba enredoDois de Fevereiro won the school's yearly contest, meaning that this was the principal song which the school would march to during Carnival. In the same year won Salvador's contest for Best Carnival Song with a composition entitled Rio de Lágrimas (River of Tears). He went on to win the competition for Best Carnival Song for the next three years in a row.
In 1969 Ederaldo had some sort of a disagreement with the Filhos de Tororó, resulting in the amazing fact (amazing to me, certainly) that of the ten samba schools marching in Bahia's 1970 Carnival, nine of those schools went out singing an Ederaldo Gentil composition as their samba enredo! The only one that didn't go out singing one of his songs was the one he'd had the disagreement with!
In 1972 he got back together with his companheiros in the Filhos de Tororó, and the school went out that year with an Ederaldo Gentil composition celebrating the 50th birthday of Bahia's most beloved mãe-de-santo (candomblé priestess) Mãe Menininha do Gantois, the samba In-Lê-In- Lá. This song also won that year's competition for Best Carnival Song.
In the years to come a number of Ederaldo's songs were sung by Brazilian recording stars of national stature, including Alcione, Leny Andrade, Eliana Pittman, and others, and Ederaldo recorded several albums of his own. He was an established member of Bahia's bamba royalty (I call them the Bahian Ratpack), a group which played together and drank together (usually at Clarindo Silva's Cantina da Lua, on the Terreiro de Jesus) and which included Batatinha, Riachão, Walmir Lima, and Edil Pacheco, all great sambistas.
The Bahian Ratpack in days past: Edil Pacheco, Riachão, Walmir Lima,
Batatinha, and Ederaldo Gentil
In the late '80s Carnival changed, and in Carnival '91 Ederaldo and some of the other bambas tried going the axé music route, on top of a trio elétrico. It was a flop and that was the last straw. Ederaldo withdrew.
1999 a group of distinguished musicians including Gilberto Gil, Beth Carvalho, Elza Soares, João Nogueiro, and Carlinhos Brown recorded a record (CD) of Ederaldo's compositions entitled Pérolas Finas in order to help him out financially. It has since become a collector's item.
And so there I was, sitting in his apartment, addressing the man. He suffers from clinical depression. I asked him if he still plays his guitar, and he answered no. According to his sister he has good days and bad days. He's sixty-five years old but surprisingly enough looks a good deal younger. I told him he isn't forgotten, much to the contrary. Among the cognoscenti of samba, he's a legend. I don't think it registered. But I'm going back.
And before moving on to the modern Bahian Carnival, how about lingering a bit in the past and reprising THE BIG Carnival hit of 1930? The song was written by a young composer (he was nineteen when it was recorded) by the name of Noel Rosa, who would go on to become one of Brazil's most prolific composers ever in spite of dying at 26 years of age.
Noel was a white kid from a not-poor-but-far-from-rich neighborhood (Vila Isabel, on Rio's north side) who moved freely up in the morros (hills where the poor people lived) and among the lowest-class botecos (bars), where he was accepted as one of theirs in spite of his own disadvantage. During a difficult birth he'd been pulled from the birth canal by forceps, suffering a broken jaw in the process. The jaw never did heal correctly, remaining crooked and underdeveloped for the rest of his life (there was some paralysis of the facial muscles on one side too), and although he was uncomfortable with his odd visage, that unmistakeable profile would become iconographic to the point where nowadays who would want Noel (setting his personal feelings aside) to have been one more guy with boring, standard-issue good looks? Brazil, from the sophisticated jazz-influenced bossa novistas in Ipanema to the roots sambistas in the morros, LOVES him the way he was, and is!
So, back to the Carnival hit...
Self-Portrait
Noel's mother wasn't too happy with all this samba stuff (she wanted him to study medicine instead, something he briefly tried), and knowing that he was planning to go out to a festa with his friends on what would become one propitious evening, hid his clothes. When the galera (gang of friends) showed up at the house yelling up for him to come down, he leaned out of the window (I imagine him plaintively bare-bottomed, but it probably wasn't quite like that ) asking "Com que ropa eu vou?" (With what clothes will I go?). The question inspired a monster Carnival hit!
I've included two recordings below, the first being the original, sung (in September, 1930, by Noel himself, and the second (so that the song can be heard with modern recording values) by the Grooveria galera of now-defunct Trama Records).
Comedian Kenny Kramer (left) was Seinfeld producer Larry David's across-the-hall neighbor and inspiration for Cosmo Kramer in the series, while keyboardist Howie (aka "Jaui") Schneider wrote Ray Barretto's hit La Cuna. Great guys and fellow Brazilian music fans!
"La Cuna" is "The Crib", by the way.
Sunshine? No...Shoeshine! Made in Brazil!
Getting beyond Bahia, the irrepressible Germano Mathias (seated above) learned to play samba as a kid in São Paulo's Praça da Sé, from the shoeshine men there. He's back at it here, with three real-deal shoeshiners from the praça.
For some reason, Bahia-Online/Cana Brava is given to (almost) lost causes and dying genres of great music (per samba-chula)... Germano is the absolute main man for samba sincopado, a very earthy close-to-the-roots São Paulo style seldom heard anymore.
I LOVE THIS GUY!
The Roots of Samba in Candomblé
This is an interesting clip demonstrating the connection between candomblé and samba. On the left is Luizinho do Gêge, ogã and principal drummer (runtó) in the house of Bogum (of the Gêge nation), and on the right is Gabi Guedes, ogã and principal (alagbê) drummer in the house of Gantois (of the Ketu nation; I love Gabi's little dance at the beginning!). They are playing a rhythm variously called "cabula", "kabila", and "samba de caboclo", while a traditional samba-de-roda is sung (specifically in order to show the connection).
This is from the Perc Pan 2008 Rumpilezz workshop (Rumpilezz is a marvelous percussion/wind-instruments ensemble based in candomblé and jazz; these guys are part of the group), on Friday, September 19th.
Masters of Afro-Bahian Percussion: Ogãs Gabi Guedes & Luizinho do Gêge
Out of the Ashes
Nicolas Farruggia ("Nico" to us) was one of the owners of an absolutely wonderful venue here in Salvador, a place which unfortunately closed its doors last year....Casa da Bossa. Nicolas was able to take solace though in the fact that he then found the time to rededicate himself to his own music and compositions (he's a classically trained guitar player), and here he is, wishing us a Feliz Primavera (Happy Spring; it of course being spring here in the southern hemisphere!).
DORIVAL CAYMMI IS DEAD!
Long live his music!
The man whose music embodied Bahia passed away at 94 years of age on Saturday, August 16th, 2008, in Rio de Janeiro after a long battle with cancer.
Dorival Caymmi went to Rio as a young man, leaving behind him a Bahia where employment was scarce and happily for the world taking his guitar with him. He practically fell into the music business and became the consumate myth-maker, incorporating the African sambas of Bahia into his music, and candomblé, and life as it was (and in many places still is) lived here.
Adoiá Dorival! Saravá!
A Mãe da Chula
(Chula's Mother)
Laura Rosa Brandão, born July 22, 1911 in the interior of Bahia, played guitar and was a repository of chulas, Bahian sambas. She taught these chulas -- and the intricate guitar style which accompanies them -- to her son Raimundo Sodré, who would go on to master this art form and make it heard throughout Brazil.
Raimundo's rock-star-like fame has subsided (he exploded in Brazil in 1980), but his mastery has only grown deeper with time, and through him the chulas of Laura Rosa's childhood have been kept from disappearing from the world forever.
The chulas in the first link below were passed on from Laura Rosa to Raimundo Sodré to Roberto Mendes...
This site -- Bahia-Online -- goes hand-in-hand with a record shop based here Salvador, Bahia, a place by the name of Cana Brava. This real Cana Brava is based on an imaginary record shop in the screenplay below...and that record shop is in turn based on a real record shop on 125th Street in Harlem, New York City...a place by the name of the Record Shack (sometimes the Harlem Record Shack, sometimes Sikhulu's Record Shack; located across the street and down from the Apollo Theater). Owner Sikhulu Shange (below) is a South African emigrant to the United States, and the screenplay's character "Joe" was in part based on him. Sikulu is fighting eviction...trying to survive the gentrification of Harlem.
One seminal Harlem record shop that didn't survive and just recently closed down forever was Bobby's Happy Shop (Bobby Robinson's place, located down the street and around the corner from Sikhulu's). Doesn't sound like a cool place? Well think again! (Hint: Bobby produced Elmore James, King Curtis, the Shirelles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Grandmaster Flash, among many others.) Venerable Bobby was a client of mine back when I was in the music business in New York.
And the screenplay?
Capoeiristas? Nah... But the guy on the left knew something about dancing, and according to him the guy on the right was really the... (picking up from page 18)
SONNY
An' what about the greatest?
RHAKEEM
Muhammad Ali?
SONNY
JOE LOUIS!!! The Brown Bomber! Louis was his middle name. His real name was Joe Louis Barrow. Now what was the problem with "Barrow"? And come to think of it...what was the problem with "Black"? The Black Bomber!
RHAKEEM
Yeah! That's some pretty heavy sounding shit!
SONNY
Too heavy for them times. But look...the way I see it...there's a difference here. It's one thing if you don't like the way a name sounds, or what it stands for. But it's somethin' else if you don't like a name because what it stands for...is you.
Going to Rio? Want to stay in the same place where Quincy Jones, Alan Parker, George Martin (who recorded a part of Rhythm of Life here), and Stephen Frears have all stayed (among numerous other artists of various stripes)? And you're not a millionaire director, producer, or musician (or even if you are)? Well go to Bob Nadkarni's Maze Inn! Double rooms are 100 Brazilian reais per night (like, 40 euros).
Host/Raconteur/Good Guy Bob Nadkarni
Is there a catch? Yes, there is...a very interesting one: The Maze Inn is situated in a favela. This, however, is a very safe favela (Tavares Bastos, in the area of Catete, minutes away from Lapa), and in that the guesthouse is located at the top of a very big hill it has a spectacular view over Rio that absolutely no other lodging establishment in the city has (soon to be seen in a scene -- shot right in the guesthouse -- from the upcoming Incredible Hulk 2). This is a place like no other in the world!
* From the hanging-out area...not from the rooms themselves.
** Disclaimer: Bob does not pay me for this blurb, although he plied me with free beer and caipirinhas when I was there.
Intrigue, Inspiration, and More Intrigue
Although rarely visitied, Maracangalha is by far Bahia's most storied community...
The now closed-down Cinco Rios sugar factory obliquely inspired this fame, thusly...
Dorival
Caymmi
Bahia's premier sambista Dorival Caymmi had a close friend by the name of "Zezinho", and Zezinho had -- in addition to his wife and family proper -- a lover and four children living in another area of the city. Dorival asked his friend one day what excuse he gave when going to visit his second family...
Zezinho would send a telegram to himself, his friend replied, informing him of business requiring his attention in Maracangalha. Upon returning home to his "official" family Zezinho never failed to take along with him a large sack of sugar as evidence of where he'd been. Dorival, intrigued with the poetry in the name of the community used in this subterfuge, composed "Maracangalha" in one sitting...
Young men when the samba was written, Mestres Pedro Alves & José Grora of SAMBA-CHULA DE MARACANGALHA
continue the tradition of their communty's association with great music!
Unfortunately, the intrigue around Maracangalha grew last year to include far more than one man's family life...
An airplane carrying millions of reais (Brazilian currency; it was also the equivalent of millions of dollars or euros) crashed onto a ranch just outside the municipality, killing the pilots and security men and spreading money around the immediate area...
The aftermath of this affair included plunder, murder, kidnappings, and torture; involving local residents, homeless members of a nearby "tent city", police, and men posing as police...but as all this is outside of what I consider to be the scope, provenance, and purview of this site, I'll leave it at that.
