Gabriel--Spreading the Joy of Brasilian Music!

Season’s greetings, friends!

As we creep up on Thanksgiving, I can’t help but reflect on the past few months and how incredibly grateful I am for the opportunities I have had.  It’s been absolutely louco, that’s for sure! Since my return from Brasil, I’ve been caught in a whirlwind of teaching and performing.  The day after getting back, I launched GGH and The People of Earth with whom I scrambled to put together a music video for a grant.  Take that project, add a strong dose of different gigs, and well, you can imagine...pretty busy.  

The highlight of the last two months has no doubt been the ample opportunities I’ve had to share the music and culture we immersed ourselves in during DSC:Salvador 2013.  The music of Bahia that we spent 6 weeks exploring is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of my teaching and the opportunities to share that I’ve had since returning have affirmed for me how important our work has been.

In Salvador, it was often difficult to find the practice time needed to internalize the 45 hours or so of lesson material, while still having time to explore the community, attend concerts, interview people, and practice speaking Portuguese.  Now, at home, I am slowly piecing together and reviewing the material, and the curriculum we are building has provided a terrific framework for my studies.  The rhythms of Candomblé (Afro-Brasilian religion) and the rhythms of Samba-Reggae have proved to be potent teaching tools.  I’ve watched children from the ages of 1 (literally) to 21, as well as adults of all ages, get excited about Brasil and it’s music.  In this post, I’d like to share three different contexts in which I’ve shared our discoveries from Brasil with different communities.

First of all, the music of Brasil has been a staple in my weekly sessions at the Gesu School.   As many of you know, I work for The Philadelphia Orchestra as a teaching artist in their School Partnership Program. Every week I head to the North Philly independent Catholic school where I co-teach (with classroom teachers) children ages 7-10, leading a variety of music related classes.  This is my fourth year at Gesu, and I love the students, teachers, and staff.  This year, we’ve been going hard on Brasil and its music since day one.  My secret goal is that my students will be able to speak better Portuguese by the end of the year...we’ll see.  I use Portuguese in order to teach rhythms, and the kids are soaking it up.  As all my students can tell you (most likely with a bit of irritation from me drilling into their brains) if you say it you can play it.  So if I want to teach an Ijexa rhythm, instead of notating it, or just having them copy me as I do it, I teach them: “Ola, tudo-bem, claro, legal”. It fits perfectly over the Ijexa rhythm and teaches some basic Portuguese conversation (the connection between language and music is tried and true). It's been a joy returning week after week to Gesu and hearing how little things about Brasil are popping up in the students' lives.  Sometimes a student will tell me: “I saw a commercial and the man talked about calling Brasil.” Or, “Look in this book we are reading. The main character is from the Amazon in Brasil.” Now that Brasil is on their radar, my students can’t help but see it everywhere and get excited by it.  The same thing started for me about a year ago when I got turned on to Brasilian music, and I’m so glad this is starting with the students at such a young age.  I have big plans for Gesu and Brasilian music.  I’d like us to do another big bucket bash (we had a very successful show last year) and this time use Bahian rhythms as a foundation for the show.  I’d also like to bring in some other other Brasilian music specialists from the community to present to my students.  It’s going to be an exciting year!

Our journey in Brasil brought me another fantastic opportunity to give back and share this past fall during a week I spent as the Musician-In-Residence at Philadelphia’s Please Touch Museum.  I’m grateful to the Presser Foundation and the Museum for hosting me.  Part of what the museum was looking for during the audition and interview process was a musician who could incorporate music from another culture.  Being fresh off the plane, I was super enthused to create a Brasil-heavy curriculum for my week of workshops. After spending three days observing and learning about the PTM, I developed a series of activities centered around Brasilian rhythms, Portuguese, and Brasilian culture. Everyday I gave three half-hour workshops to whoever happened to be milling around the main hall of the museum.   Having never worked with kids younger than six, I was really excited (and nervous) to get the opportunity to hang with the kiddies.  Some days I had school groups of 27 four-year-olds.  Other days there might only be a three year old and her six year old brother.  Whatever the combination of ages and personalties was, I tried my best to be engaging and flexible.  We covered a myriad of topics: We looked at the Brasilian flag and discussed the colors and shapes we saw.  We tried to find low and high sounds by using Brasilian Agogó bells.  We read about Papagoya, the mischievous Amezonian parrot, and made our own soundtrack.  We used claves to play the Congo (Candomblé) clave.  We played follow the leader call and response, in which I would say some Portuguese words and the students would copy while playing their drums in rhythm with the words. No two of my fifteen workshops were alike.  It was a fantastic exercise in learning how to read when the audience isn’t digging what you’re doing and then being able to adjust accordingly.  Not all workshops went as well as others but I enjoyed every last minute of the residency. Finally, I had the pleasure of presenting three friends of mine in concert on the last day of the residency.   I brought in vocalist Alexa Barchini, steel drummer/trumpeter Chris Aschman, and my brother-in-groove bassist/quatro player Bam Bam Rodriguez to join me.  Together, we paraded around the museum playing a rhythm from Salvador’s Olodum, sang Bossa nova and samba, explored Venezuelan joropo music, and ended with a Soca jam from Trinidad.  We had our young audience on its feet, shaking shakers, playing drums, and having a ball. 

After being in front of an audience far younger than my comfort zone, I found myself in front of a group far older.  One of my high school mentors, virtuoso percussionist Jon Singer, brought me in to present at his Music from Around the World class at Queensborough Community College in NYC.  I didn’t know what to expect; these students are practically my age, and I was afraid that they’d just be texting or tuned out the whole time.  Luckily, one of the traits of Brasilian drumming is that it tends to be on the louder sound (so that the thousands of people marching around you during Carnaval can hear you, no doubt) so anyone trying to do anything other than play the drums and focus on me was going to have a hard time doing so.  Combined with my tendency to be annoyingly enthusiastic about whatever I’m talking about, it turned out to be a recipe for success.  Rather than lecture about our trip, I decided to engage the students by having them on the drums from the get go.  I was curious about my “say it while you play” methodology for teaching rhythms, because adults tend to less comfortable going out of their comfort zone.  However, I kept the pace of the class moving quick, jumping between drumming, some history, personal stories, and more drumming. There was no time for any student to feel embarrassed, and I was delighted to see how into it they got.  We talked a lot about Brad and my experiences watching Candomblé ceremonies.  The students were intrigued about the Orixa-possession process (as am I) and were enthralled by our video of the street ceremony (see early posting).  Of course I made it very clear that I'm hardly an authority on the music and culture of Candomblé or Brasil, and I encouraged the students to explore more on their own.  My presentation lasted two hours, and by the end of it I had more energy than when I had started.  It felt really good to be sharing this music with members of my generation, burnt out by school, homework and end-of-semester pressures.  Watching them open up and get excited trying to follow the drum-break the repiques were playing on our Samba-Reggae Merengue groove was very special for me.

This is just the beginning.  Less than a year ago we proposed that we should be sent, by our community, to Brasil in order to train ourselves in Brasilian music and learn from Salvador’s social programs.  We had a hunch that the information we would find would prove valuable back home.  I have seen joy on the faces of children and adults of all ages, and we’ve only been back for two months (I got home on  September 19).  We are not the first people to do this, and we aren't doing anything more than putting our own spin on a rich tradition that we will always be struggling to master.  I feel more inspired than ever about the power of the music of Brasil and beyond and can’t wait to share it with more and more people.  

As always, if you have suggestions, comments, or (gulp) critiques, please don’t hesitate to send them our way.  

Gabriel-Bye Bye Brazil, Hello My Life

Back home, back at it! Gabriel here, writing sozinho (alone).  Apologies to everyone for the delay in any blogging/uploading over the last three weeks or so.  It’s been a crazy time trying to get readjusted to the U.S.  Immediately after returning, I launched another new project I’m creating, this time a new latin-inspired inter-galactic band called GGH and the People of Earth.  We had rehearsal less than 24 hours after I got of the plane, so my brain temporarily left the world of Brasil and headed to Cuba :)))  More about that project in later posts.

We’ll upload more pictures and video of our time in Rio in the coming weeks.  But here’s some more of our story since we last left off:

After we left Salvador on 9/15 we spent four incredible days in Rio.  We tried to find as many musical activities as we could.  We saw two different Samba de Roda groups and learned the basics of Forro dancing.  However, four days wasn’t enough to make contacts and friends in order to discover where the real music scene was in Rio, so we ended up doing some touristic stuff along the way.  We climbed (er, drove...) up to see the Christ Statue, hiked up Pao d’Azucar, and spent a minute on the Copacabana beach.  For me, the highlight of our time in Rio was the day we visited Afro-Reggae, a social music program located in one of Rio’s favelas.   

Afro-Reggae was created in the early 90’s by a non-musician who wanted to start  a percussion class for kids living in the rough favela of Vergais-Geral.  Over the years the organization became famous within Brasil and now has a variety of professional groups that tour the world.  Our experience visiting Afro-Reggae was reminiscent of our time in Salvador.  In Salvador, we‘d cold call an organization, arrange a visit, be welcomed with open arms by the members of said organization, spend at least a full day visiting, and leave with about 20 new friends.  The same thing happened at Afro-Reggae.   As soon as we got there, the receptionist welcomed us and began a tour that lasted 5 hours!!!  She showed us the facilities, which include a professional recording studio, a dance rehearsal space, many, many music rooms, and rooms for kids to play games and sports in.  Afro-Reggae also boasts an out door courtyard space where they can perform for the community.  To top it off (literally) you can see the building from a mile away because on there is a giant silver sculpture of a fist (think 1968 olympic salute) attached to the roof.   When we arrived it was still too early for lesson observation but after couple hours the mind-blowing experience of watching little kids playing the butts off that we got so used to feeling in Salvador began, only this time it was Rio style.  

The first group we observed was a rock band, aged 15-20.  As one of the members of the group explained before they began playing, the group was created 10 years ago because the teachers felt that the students in the favela didn’t have any chances to play music other than the traditional Brazilian styles of pagode, samba, and funk.  So they started a rock band for the kids in the favela to provide a different musical perspective.  Rock has always been huge in Brasil, and while we were in town the massive Rock in Rio festival was happening.  We didn’t go, unfortunately.  I’m going to post videos of this band, because it was something else, for real, no joke.  They rehearse everyday, for a long, long time, and boy does it show in their playing!  Not only was the music tight and accurate, but they put on a show just like they were rockstars, compete with stage dives!!!! Also, they had Brazilian percussion infused in the music, reminding us yet again, about how pervasive and ubiquitous Afro-Brazilian percussion is .

Next, we observed a samba rehearsal for little kids.  I was dying to hear the differences between Rio samba and Salvador samba, and knew that even though it was  going to be played by kids, it’d be the real thing.  The only problem was, when our guide took us to find the rehearsal the teacher explained to us that only two kids had shown up, so they were going to start late.  We took off to grab a bite, and when we returned couldn’t find anyone, teacher or student.  We spent the next 20 minutes prowling through the favela trying to find the rehearsal.  That was actually really cool, because after seeing so many movies about Rio favelas it was kind of thrilling to be smack dab in one.  (There are certain details that I’d like to share about the experience, but don’t want them sitting on the internet, so message me or call me if you want to hear some other stories)  Anyway, turns out, they were rehearsing in one of the far reaches of the favela, where more of the kids lived.  Two students had now grown to 15, and the rehearsal was in full swing.  It was a hilarious scene, because right next to where the kids were playing was a horse, a few chickens, and a ram digging through some trash piles.  I had to pinch myself, because it was such a hilariously perfect scene.  I wanted to film and photograph but my guide explained that certain people in the community might have a problem with that and a potential dangerous situation could ensue.  So I kept my camera to myself.   I ended up banging a little solo out on a repique and before I knew it I was standing next to the goats and the chickens drumming along with the kids.  Once the mosquitos got too bad we called it a day and went back to Afro-Reggae’s base.  I owe a debt of gratitude to Wallace, the drum instructor for welcoming me into his classroom (can you call a dirt road a classroom? In Brazil, why not?)

The experience in Rio’s Afro-Reggae brought me right back to Salvador.  Once again we were observing Afro-Brasilian culture, born in areas riddled with countless obstacles, from violence, to racism, to poverty, being used to provide the community with a chance to create, inspire, and celebrate.  Afro-Reggae, like Ile Aiye, Olodum, NEOJIBA, and so many other programs has given Brasilians the opportunity to see the world, share their culture, and celebrate their heritage.

Last week was my first full week back in the U.S. after our almost 6 week journey through Brasil ended.  By the time I got on the plane to come home I felt ready to return to the U.S.  All the inspiration both musically and ideologically had me chompin’ at the bit to get our project up and running back home. Brad and I have so much more work to do as we figure out what Drumming for Social Change can really mean for our community.  But it’s exciting work, and I’m happy to be doing it.  In the coming months we’ll continue blogging as well as fulfilling our promises from our fundraising campaign.  

What I’m discovering through this process is that in the end, this project is about us finding our place within our community as well as understanding who and where our community is.  At this point, almost two weeks back home, I have an aching spot in my heart for Brasil.  I guess that’s what the Portuguese word saudades means...I know that Brasil is now part of my community and that I have been forever changed by the music, culture, and most of all people I met and lived with there.  

As I begin digesting the music we learned in Salvador, watching our lesson tapes, listening to recordings, and practicing, I am constantly searching for ways to translate the music and culture of Brasil so that I can share it with my students, friends, and colleagues.  Already last week, as I began a new year teaching for the Philadelphia Orchestra, my newly acquired Brasilian insights surfaced, as I taught second graders what a Roda is, and how to properly pronounce pandeiro.  This week, I think we’ll learn a little bit about Ijexa- a tradition imbedded within Candomble.  I’m really excited to began passing rhythms, language, and culture on, and will always have nothing but gratitude for the people that continue to believe in this project, or rather journey, and have made all of this possible.  Until next time...

Roda da Semana #4: Candeal, NEOJIBA, Parties, and more!

Salvador has yet to disappoint. It’s been another illuminating week filled with all kinds of cultural and musical discoveries.  Here are some highlights.

Visit to Candeal

Before arriving in Salvador, one of the places we heard a lot about is a neighborhood called Candeal.  Candeal rose to fame after its native son Carlinhos Brown created a bloco called Timbalada that was based there. Carlinhos is a famous percussionist who played with Gilberto Gil, Marisa Monte, Chico Buarque and others before starting Timbalada in ’91.  Timbalada became one of the most popular bloco’s in Brazil and put Candeal on the map.  In conjunction with the government, Carlinhos Brown used Timbalada’s fame to create a public renaissance in Candeal, including the building of proper public housing (previously, Candeal’s inhabitants lived in sub-par shacks, stacked on another, with out even proper sanitation).  He also helped build music schools and recording studios, making Candeal one of Salvador’s musical meccas.  Any way, for more info, visit Timbalada’s wikepedia page.

Our good friend Alex Shaw helped us get in touch with one of Timbalada’s drummers named Japa.  This past Thursday we took a trip out to meet Japa and see Candeal.  Japa is young, only a little bit older than us.  He told us that all his life he grew up listening to Timbalada and hearing about Candeal and Carlinhos Brown, even though he grew up in the interior of Bahia, in an area with far less musical opportunities than Salvador offered.  He told us that he always knew that one day he’d grow up to play with Timbalada.  Sure enough, he eventually made the leap to Candeal and after studying and practicing for 3 years realized his dream and joined Timbalada.  He’s been playing, touring, and recording with them for the past two years.  It’s inspiring to hear his story about how his dreams came true.

Japa took us around Candeal and told us the neighborhood’s story.  Being in Candeal is a strong reminder of how a musician can deeply transform their community through music.  Once Carlinhos hit the big time he did not turn his back on his roots.  Instead he used his success to lift his community in the same way we see Gustavo Dudamel and Ricardo Castro doing the same.  Being in this neighborhood and hearing the story first hand from Japa was truly inspiring. 

Interview with Ricardo Castro

Following our trip to Candeal, we were lucky to have the opportunity to sit down and interview Ricardo Castro.  Ricardo Castro is a world-class concert pianist born and raised in Salvador.  Ricardo left Bahia to study in Europe at the age of 18 and eventually rose to fame after winning a few international piano competitions.  Apparently, he took a fateful trip to Venezuela many years ago and became an El-Sistema convert.  In 2007 he founded NEOJIBA, the state youth orchestra.  We’ve already spoken a bunch about our experiences with NEOJIBA.  We’ve been hanging at their nucleos and getting to know their musicians.  For us, this has been the closest we’ve come to seeing what El Sistema is like.  Ricardo has closely modeled his orginization after Abreu’s model in VZ.  Getting a chance to ask him questions was a fantastic opportunity.

Ricardo said many profound things to us but perhaps the most important thing he told us were the four basics that for him define an El Sistema program.  Here they are:

1. Excellence.  Above all, an El Sistema program reflects musical and artistic excellence.  ‘Nough said.
2. Integrated Society-an El Sistema program should include all pockets of society, not catered to either those that can pay or those that can’t.  At NEOJIBA, musicians from all pockets of the city, from all different racial backgrounds and religions, and from different economic backgrounds come together to make music and celebrate.
3. El Sistema is a public service.  As such it should be funded by the government because it is a social service.  It is not merely a corporate initiative or a philanthropic endeavor but a social obligation, on par with other public services such as education and health care.
4. An El Sistema program should be cultivating a sense of duty in it’s students to continue to serve their community throughout their lives, remaining on board as teaching artists, administrators, or advocates.  If a student’s dream is to join the Berlin Phil and forget all about their community at home then someone hasn’t done their job correctly.  As we’ve said earlier, the musicians here easily but 11 hours a day into their jobs at NEOJIBA and do so with a smile.  Pretty. Freakin. Incredible.

After we get home we’ll post some of the interview so everyone can have a chance to hear Ricardo’s thoughts straight from the horse's mouth.  For us, speaking to him was deeply inspiring as we think about the various directions we would like to take Drumming for Social Change.  As musicians working in community development and education, Ricardo’s words hit deeply.

Special Needs Class at NEOJIBA

One of NEOJIBA’s most interesting offerings is a percussion class for students with special needs.  As two percussionist researching how percussion and folkloric music can be used for social change, observing this class was a special opportunity to see the power of percussion in a new light.   Both teachers, Washington Perreira and Pricila Santana perform with NEOJIBA’s top orchestra and have been part of the program since it’s start.  During this class, they used percussion instruments to practice a variety of skills including memory, reading, comprehension, pulse, listening skills, and motor skills.

At the beginning of class, the students reviewed the names of the musical notes, using xylophones as a reference.  The level of the students varies, and some knew all the note names while others struggled to read them off the whiteboard.  After reviewing the names, the teachers mixed the order of the notes on the students' xylophones and challenged the students to put the keys back in their correct order.  The second activity had the students using the xylophones to play a traditional capoeira melody.  The students mimicked the teacher both on the xylophone and by singing, and practiced saying the word “berimbau” to the melody that the instrument berimbau traditionally plays.  A couple of the students performed some actual capoeira while the other students played the melody and sang along.  Capoeira is a world famous tradition born in Bahia.  Here we got to see it put to use in order to offer the students a musical challenge.   The last part of the class involved some samba jamming.  Check it out here in this video:

Mario Pam’s Birthday

The last highlight we have to report home is the birthday celebration for our teacher Mario Pam.  We were grateful that Mario decided to invite us to his home this past Saturday to celebrate his birthday.   After celebrating Soiane’s birthday the past weekend and witnessing how much music was made at that event, we knew Mario’s party was not to be missed!  Mario lives in the same neighborhood as us but due to our terrible sense of direction and inability to follow instructions in Portuguese we arrived about two hours late.  Of course, being in South American means that 2 hours late is pretty much on time.

Surrounded by about 50 of Mario’s friends and family, we witnessed a beautiful celebration.  The Brazilian version of Happy Birthday has the same melody as the English version but lasts about three times as long, complete with a lot of clapping.  Of course, some of the guests added some drumming (what celebration here is complete without drums???).

The party was a meat lovers paradise, complete with tons of Brazilian barbecue.  Brad was in heaven and Gabriel had to scrounge to find something meatless to eat.  Towards the end of the party more of Ile Aiye’s musicians arrived and a jam session ensued.  Check out this clip of some of the jam.  Check out Mario’s son already playing some funky grooves at the ripe old age of 2:

We are mid way through our final week here in Salvador :((((  Stay tuned for more updates as the week unfolds.

New Pics!

One of Pelhourino's many street blocos.  After our Mario/Bloco Intensive this music made a lot more sense

Broomfield shedding on our new pandeiro... Scheherazade! (old habits die hard)

World Famous Afro-Bloco, Ile Aiye, showing us how to throw a block party! ... or "Bloc" party?... 

World Famous Afoxe Group, Filhos de Gandhy ALSO showing us how to party!

The man, the myth, the sit-in legend... Gabby Globus

OM NOM NOM NOM...

"15minute break" during our last marathon lesson = Brasilian BBQ! (That's Gabe's food on the far left...)

NEOJIBA percussionist Rodrigo Lima poses

Everton Isidore, veteran NEOJIBA percussionist and teacher warms up.

Broomfield needs some help before our early morning marathon lesson with Mario

Actor portraying the Orixa Xango.  Xango is a king who is always seen with his symbolic axe and red garments

Shot with Ile Aiye maestros Mario and Gato.  This was right before Mario gave us a final exam on all the rhythms we learned.

This is us after our final exam.  I guess you can imagine how it went....

Taking a break during a Gabi lesson

Paradise=beatiful music amidst beauty

Roda da Semana #3-Ile Aiye!

Bom dia everyone.  It’s been another jam-packed week.  Each week in Salvador has had a slightly different “focus” so we’ll try our best to recap the new discoveries this week.  

Bloco Intensive with Mario Pam

Starting last friday, we began taking lessons with veteran Ile Aiye percussionist, Mario Pam.  Ile Aiye is credited with being the group that started the Afro-Bloco movement back in 1974.  The group began as a reaction against racial descrimination during Carnaval.  Prior to their formation, many black Salvadorians were denied opportunities to participate in Carnival.  The group was born in the poor neighborhood of Curuzo, which is conveniently located about a mile and half from our apartment here in the Northwestern part of the city.  Mario is a master percussionist and experienced teacher who has a vast knowledge of the repertoire.  We decided to take a total of 8 2-hour lessons with him spread out between the end of the last week and the beginning of this week.  Mario feels very strongly that it is important we learn the information correctly and has instead offered us 3 hour lessons each time.  Despite being a jovial and relaxed dude, Mario is drilling us into memorizing about 32 different rhythms spanning almost 100 years of Bahian music history.  With the lessons being mostly in Portuguese to boot, we’ve been leaving each one with our heads spinning.  Many of the rhythms he has shown us are part of the famous musical movement here called Samba-Reggae, popularized by Michael Jackson and Paul Simon.  These rhythms are so powerful and so practical for music teachers.  If we only studied with Mario and then left to go back to our classrooms, these rhythms and styles could go miles back home.  Thank you Mario for kicking our butts on these grooves!

Ile Aiye School

Ile Aiye has now grown into a full fledged social movement.  Besides being a professional percussion group that performs world wide, Ile Aiye has a grass roots community development program at its home in Curuzo.  They have a grade school, a kids arts/music program, and an adult education school.  Last week, we had the chance to visit a rehearsal of their young person's bloco group called Banda Ire.  The kids in the group are ages 9-16.  After we arrived at the rehearsal, the instructors (who we had already met through Mario) invited us to introduce ourselves and say what we were doing there.  It was almost as if he forget that we didn’t speak Portuguese.  We tried our best to explain who we were and why we were there and felt very welcomed by the students and teachers.  The instructor then let us know that they’d be playing a bit for us and that then we would be teaching them.  Wait, what?  We have to teach these monstrous young percussionists something?  Gulp, ok!  Here’s a clip of the students playing some Samba-Afro grooves for us.  You can’t see him on the clip, but one of Ile Aiye’s professional singers is singing along with the group.

After they finished, they turned to us.  Talk about being on the spot!  Luckily for us, Brad is an encyclopedia of rhythms so we decided to throw some American Mardi Gras music their way.  Brad showed the snare drum and repique parts for a New Orleans groove and Gabriel worked with the surdo players.  Then, Brad taught a traditional Mardi Gras song (English and all!) and the students had a lot of fun grappling with the English words.  After we finished teaching the groove and jamming on it, we performed a surdo/snare duo that we improvised on the spot.   Everyone seemed to dig it and word got back to Mario our teacher that our visit was a success.

Ile Aiye Live!

Topping everything off was the opportunity to watch Ile Aiye’s professional touring group perform live at their home base in Curuzo.  They hosted a show that began at 10pm and lasted till 5 am.  Unfortunately we couldn’t see all of it because our host Soiane was celebrating her birthday and half of Salvador’s dancer and musician scene was at our house jamming.  We did get to see Ile Aiye’s set and boy were we glad we caught it.  To say that the band is powerful would be a huge disservice and understatement.  Listening to the 16 member group perform is like being in the middle of an airfield surrounded by massive jet planes that somehow are taking off and landing in a grooving rhythm that forces your body to dance wether you want it to or not.  We stood in the front row and watched the band make magic.  Ile Aiye is the essence of what drumming can mean in a community.  They are hometown heroes who have rallied their community to feel pride and to celebrate their culture for 40 years, and are now stronger then ever.  Our teacher Mario keeps reminding us how important drums are to the people of Brazil.  He says drumming provides exercise, develops motor skills, provides entertainment, offers a means with which to celebrate, tells stories, transcends language barriers, and most importantly creates a connection to the spiritual world.  As drummers coming from a collegiate and “formal” training its easy for us to neglect some of these opportunities.  Being here is a reminder, refresher, and opportunity to imagine the impact we can make in the United States through drumming and music.  

PLEASE COMMENT!!! Is anybody out there????

Picture Update! Foto, Photo, Foto, Photo

Here are some pictures of our recent escapades in Salvador

the tradition is passed on from maestre to students at the San Antoniou Capoeira Fort

Brad and our teacher Mario Pam of Ile Aiye doin' it big

Last Saturday we participated in a free outdoor Maracatu jam (video down below)

Brad and Keane Southard enjoying some traditional Brazilian cuisine. This was our last night chillin with Keane before he continued his Fulbright research studying El Sistema in Brazil in another state

A view from Bira Reis' studio. 

Icaro Sa about to take us to the promise land.

Gabi Guedes and crew rocking a jam session on the beach at the art museum. We have to put up some video of this on a later post because this is no ordinary jam...

One of Salvador's top percussionists killin' it on timbales

Broomfield holding a broom, about to do his Stomp impression during one of our lessons with Mario

Ile Aiye drums. This organization is somethin' else. More on them later.

Our friend Akaya getting ready for our beach jam. You scared?

Our landlady Soiane with one of her hilarious gatas

Soiane again leading her students through some capoeira moves

Cumbia jam session. Cumbia is folkloric music from Columbia and is super fun to play and listen

Some drums Ile Aiye have been chewing on for the past x amount of year. They taste good.

Catching some Z's on the Onibus to who knows where

Swag!

The view from our beach jam patio. 

Lesson of the day from this guy: "Beginner pandeiro player" has a WHOLE different meaning here. Video to come.

Traditional beachside chorino anyone?

The reason we spent one hour in traffic on the way to a lesson

Beach view from our house

Broomfield hard at work writing postcards to our funders

We'll leave you with this short video of how we spent our last Sunday after finishing a 3 hour lesson on Samba Afro.

Roda de Semana #2

This posting is a doozy.  We have had a truly incredible last couple of days.  We'll try as hard as we can to sum it up, but it'll be tough to adequately express our recent experiences.   On Tuesday, we caught a very early bus (well, ok, to be honest, we missed the bus and had to cab it over to the main theater in Salvador in order to catch another bus that ended up leaving one hour late anyway...nothing here happens on time, but you get used to it, sigh, good bye east coast up-tightness...).  The theater here in Salvador is home to an organization called NEOJIBA.  NEOJIBA is a Bahian-wide youth orchestra founded by native son Ricardo Castro in 2007.  Based off of Venezuelan's El Sistema, NEOJIBA now boasts a central youth orchestra comprised of young adults who rehearse for 3 hours every night after spending their days teaching in various nucleos around the city.  Lucky for us, NEOJIBA was hosting a statewide pedagogical seminar throughout last week giving us a unique insider look at how the organization uses music for social change.

One of our questions throughout this project is how popular and folkloric music can be used alongside classical music to promote social change.  In the percussion lessons at NEOJIBA, the co-existense of folkloric music and classical music is always present.  The first lessons we observed were led by veteran teachers Everton Isidore and David Martins, both percussionists in NEOJIBA's top orchestra.   On Tuesday, they were working with percussionists who have only been learning orchestral percussion for 5 months. The first hour consisted of some basic sticking pattern warmups and then a lesson on reading rhythms in 6/8 time--standard stuff that we teach to our students back home.  Things got really interesting in the second hour when Everton led all the students through a Maracatu jam.  Maracatu is a famous style of Carnival music that comes from Recife, a city about 15 hours northeast of Salvador.  Maracatu, while lesser known internationally then samba grooves from Salvador and Rio is one of the most fun and powerful rhythms this country has produced.  We'll be putting up more videos related to Maracatu in the coming weeks (Soiane, our land lady is a veteran Maracatu dancer, so lessons will ensue, we promise).  The following video is a clip of Everton teaching some Maracatu basics:



After having our minds blown by these rhythms (believe it or not, we were learning these rhythms too, along side of the students) Brad gave a little demo of some possibilities on the snare (or caixa as its known here).  Hopefully we'll start to see some Broomfield-isms popping up in the playing of the future generations of Salvadorian drummers :))))


Then we broke for lunch.  Well, at least some of us did, because the students refused to leave.  Rather they jumped on the drums and starting playing some samba-reggae (pronounced hay-gee).  Just when we thought we couldn't be more impressed by the percussionists in this city, things came to a new level.  These kids have supposedly only been playing for 5 months and yet they sound completely fluent in the percussion language of this city.  We started learning these rhythms this week with our teacher Mario, but have nowhere near the knowledge of the repertoire that these kids demonstrate.  They know all the individual parts of the samba groove and can also play together like pros.  We hope to be at their level one day :))))



 Our time at NEOJIBA ended with an open rehearsal that the nucleo's orchestra was preparing.  They played a variety of pieces including overture to the Barber of Seville, marches, a salsa song and then this song-a standard Brazilian tune.  One of our goals on this journey has been to uncover how popular music can coexist with classical music and part of why we chose Salvador was because we knew it had such a ubiquitous popular music presence.  Here's a little clip of the orchestra doin' it's thing.




We returned to NEOJIBA two more times.  We heard the top group perform a killer Mahler 1 and then returned to Sesi for a final observation, in which we demonstrated some timpani and percussion fundamentals.

Watching the youth orchestra (youth in this case goes until 28) was a deeply moving experience.   The NEOJIBA group in action brought to mind many of the things people have said about El Sistema in Venezuela.  For our colleagues in NEOJIBA, the orchestra is a living, breathing community.  It is a chance to grow together and overcome obstacles as one.  The musicians play with passion and skill and remain engaged and focused throughout the three hour rehearsals they have each day.  Musicians here don't hold orchestral music above the popular music that surrounds them.  Last week we posted about seeing the cello section perform at a jazz jam session.  We spoke with many musicians in the orchestra and all of them are well versed in classical music as well as Brazilian music.  For us, this is the ultimate goal...a community of musicians who can tackle all music with equal ferocity.  This is what's happening here and this is what we want to import home :)))))

Ate logo galera!

Pics, Pics, Pics, Pics, Pics, Pics, Pics, Pics

Attention!!! We are cooking up a major post with lots of videos, but in the mean time wanted to throw some pics your way.  Take a look. Let us know.  Do your thing.

Our dance teacher Rosangela Silvestre.  A true revolutionary and inspiration

the great Broomfield himself, hard at work on his Belizean drum

The view from Gabi's house

Broomfield trying out Gabi's pad

Percussion teacher, David, with his NEOJIBA percussion babies! 

With our master drum teacher Gabi Guedes after our first lesson.  This picture might be an album cover one day.

Taking shelter from one of Salvador's flash rains 

With the great Everton Isiodor and some of his students at NEOJIBA, Sesi

Broomfield ponders his freshly learned Candomble rhythms while looking out from Gabi's balcony

Fulbright superstar Keane Southard searches the heavens for inspiration

the Neojiba orchestra in action...

GGH demonstrating some timpani fundamentals in broken, broken, BROKEN Portuguese

Gabriel again at NEOJIBA's nucleo demonstrating some Rite of Spring bass drum techniques

Ricardo Castro, founder of NEOJIBA learning the basics of caixa (or snare drum)

Our incredible land lady Soiane helps us decode some Yoruban

 Two teachers from NEOJIBA take in the sunset after a long day of teaching.  The woman on the right, Priscila is the site coordinator of the very impressive Sesi nucleo where we spent two days auditing a pedagogy seminar

Sistema Percussion teachers unite! 

Outside of Gabi's Candomble house after an extremely educational ceremony

Our lovely landlady, Soiane. Last meal before the Candomble!

The drums Gabi Guedes' hands have been chewing on for the past x amount of years.