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. 

Live Footage of a Candomble! Say what???

Today’s video is a real treat for us to share with you !  One of the primary reasons we are down in Salvador is to study the rhythms of Candomble.  Candomble comes from the Yoruban people of Nigera and traveled to Brazil with the slaves.  In Brazil the religion morphed slightly and became a distinct tradition of its own, while still maintaining many elements from Nigeria, including song lyrics which continue to be sung in Yoruban here in Brazil.   So far, we have gone to observe two Candomble ceremonies.  One of the great things about Candomble is that it is celebrated in large gatherings in which people who aren’t members of the religion are invited to attend.  The downside is that it is forbidden to photograph or video record the ceremonies.  We were delighted to come across this Candomble ceremony happening in the street last night, especially because it allowed us the chance to make a video to show everyone what these ceremonies look like.  

A few things to note about the clip:

• There are four drummers, called ogun.  Three are playing conga-like drums called Atabaque.  There is also a bell player, or gan player.  All the ogun sing as they play.
• The dancers dance in a circle during which they may become “possessed” by an Orixa.  The Orixa are the god/goddesses in the Yoruban traditions.  During this clip noone becomes entrance or possessed, though we’ve seen it happen at the other ceremonies we attended
• One of the perks of attending a Candomble is that food is served freely to everyone attending.  In this clip you can see Brad chomping down on some grub.  The food is believed to spread energy, or “axe” (pronounced a-shh-ay) It tends to be a mixture of chicken, blackeyed peas, and grains.  

Two Awesome Videos!

Todays posting will be two different video clips for your viewing pleasure.

Number 1 is a sampling from a lesson I took on Friday.   For the lesson, two of our teachers, Eduardo Santos and Bira brought one of their proteges, Bruno to help in the lesson.  Bruno may only be 17 but he plays like a total beast.  He helped to demonstrate many different rhythms that I was learning.  During that lesson we were using djembes to  focus different afro-brazilian rhythms.  As an educator, its been interesting to note the differences in student/teacher relationships here.  As far as I can tell this far, there tends to be more apprentice style relationships here.  We’ve seen so many young kids learning informally by watching rehearsals and jumping in from time to time as opposed to taking lessons.  This way of learning is common in the states as well, but seems to be prevalent here.  Anyway, what makes this lesson so special is what ensued after the one on one portion.  We had a full on djembe jam session for about two hours straight.  All these drummers kept coming to the lesson and jumping in and we went around the circle trading solos over and over while occasionally trying different tempos and different grooves.  In this clip you can hear all of us taking a solo.  l learned so much by sitting with all these masters and taking some baby steps of my own.  

The next clip is a video we made this morning of a kid demonstrating his skills on the street.  We were just leaving Gabi’s house after finishing our first lesson and we bumped into 8 year old Vito who said he was a drummer.  We asked if he could show us some grooves and he obliged, all on a plastic bucket.  Pardon my french, but we think this boy is badass.

Until next time, and remember, feel free to comment!!!

Last night in a nutshell...

As per requests for more written material, here is a quick recap of our activities last night.  Our soon to be teacher of Candomble, Gabi Guedes plays every saturday night at a jam session at the museum of modern art.  We walked to the jam in order to take in more of the city.  The route to the museum was reminiscent of Columbus Avenue in Philly, with the added bonus of a thick fish stench.  The route took us along the coast of Salvador which, big surprise, is strikingly beautiful.  It’s no surprise the Portuguese chose it as an ideal capital city, with its high coastline.  Unlike most jam sessions, this one was number one on the lists of many tourists we met as well as musicians.  We are used to jam sessions being insider affairs, mostly musicians who want to play and network with other musicians.  This jam session was totally different.  First of all, the museum is located on the beach by the ocean.  We’ve never been to a jam session at a more beautiful place.  The session takes place on a stage outside, right at the ocean.  As we arrived, the cello section from the Bahian youth orchestra, NEOJIBA was performing.   They played a few folk songs with the house band at the jam session accompanying.  Orchestral instruments seemed like somewhat of a novelty after spending a week here, where drums are totally ubiquitous.  After the cellos finished the jam started.  Rather than being an open jam, the session was invite only and the music was absolutely stellar.  It tended to have a Brazilian swing to it, but for a couple of tunes the musicians dove into some American jazz standards with total competence.  Obviously the highlight for us was hearing the amazing drum solos, of which there were many, played by many different drummers.  After the jam was over, our teacher Gabi Guedes gave us a lift back, but not before inviting us to a Candomble ceremony happening at his house tonight.  We are in luck, because the woman who is renting us the place here is going to help us get there.  Turns out she is a Candomble dancer and is initiated into the religion.  Maybe we can get her to help us get deeper into the dances we studied last week.   We are heading out now to go to our second Candomble ceremony and it’ll surely be worth blogging about so stay tuned for that.  Once again, if you have any requests for updates let us know!  Till tomorrow...

Roda de Semana #1 (weekly round-up)

Beach at Barra

Ola, tudo bem?  (for all you gringos out there, that’s the equivalent of hello whats up)

After a hectic week of getting settled in our new city we finally have a second for some written reflection.   What a week its been!  Between fumbling our way through Portuguese and taking our first dance classes we’ve been learning a ton.  Here are some highlights:

Orixa Dance Movements with Rosangela Silvestre:

From the get go we knew we were in for something special at Rosangela Silvestre’s dance intensive.  People from all over the world had come to study here at this workshop, now in its third year of existence.  Rosangela is a true master teacher.  In the class, Rosangela demonstrated various Orixa movements that were specific to gods and goddesses from the Yoruban/Brazilian religion of Candomble.  Rosangela made it clear that while we were doing the dance moves, the real dancing is incomplete without the full ceremony, which includes specific songs, drumming, and spiritual intent.  The movements themselves are spiritually meaningless unless the dancer is possessed by the actual Orixa (God).  Despite our best efforts, neither of us ever became possessed :)  The class turned out to be a double-whamy because each one was accompanied by amazing Salvadorian master drummers.  Occasionally both of us fumbled across the floor as we tried to recreate the steps Rosangala demonstrated after being distracted watching the drummers (Funders, check our other blog for some footage of us on the dance floor).  Also, studying at the Escola de Danca was a great way to meet drummers in the vast Salvadorian musical community and we even got to accompany other classes during the week.  Totally. Worth. It.

Master Drummer Eduardo Santos (Cachorro is his nickname--means Dog)

Glimpses of the master...

This week we connected with the master drummer who will be teaching us about the rhythms of Candomble.  His name is Gabi Guedes.  Walking through the streets of Salvador with him is like walking through Nazareth with Jesus.  Everybody knows him and he is a local hero, having toured internationally with reggae star Jimmy Cliff.  We’ve set up a full lesson schedule with him and can’t wait to get started on Monday.  We also got to see Gabi perform with an amazing Bahian ensemble Orkesta Rumpilezz, a band that incorporates religious drumming with jazz and funk.  It was mind blowing.  We’ll post some video tomorrow.

Life in Pelhourino

For the last week, we’ve been shacked up at a hostel called Galleria 13.  Its the top rated hostel in Salvador, and after staying here it’s no surprise why.  This place has it all.  Free breakfast with eggs every morning.  A hip owner who knows whats up.  Countless interesting foreigners drifting through daily.  A lovable boxer (dog) named Spartan who only speaks Portuguese and has NOT been nuetered.  And of course, free capereinhas at 5:15-6:15---don’t worry, we haven’t been indulging.  We are sad to move out of here today, but we found an apartment with a dancer a few neighborhoods away better suited to our needs.  So we gotta do what we gotta do.

Learning to say “Nao”

Connecting with the Salvadorians has been a lot of fun.   The Salvadorians we’ve met are extremely generous and laid back.  Sometimes we get in to trouble because its confusing wether they want us to give them money or just chat.  With the language being the barrier it is we’ve tried to avoid offending anyone, but unfortunately one of us (cough, Gabe) tends to get suckered into various schemes that end up with Brad having to save the day with a stern, Nao, obrigado.  Nonetheless, the interactions we’ve had with people living here have been a highlight so far.

What we are looking forward to next week:

-our first week in our new place!  stay tuned for pics...

-studies with Gabi start Monday!

-visit to see Neojiba perform Mahler 1

-seeking out Dona Cici, a local legend, and scholar on all things Candomble

-supplemental lessons with various drummers (of which this city has thousands)

-observation at Projeto Axe, and Escola Municipal here in Pelhourino

-Checking out Gabi’s infamous jam session at the Museum of Art 

-Friday night capeoira roda in Pelhourino’s historic center

That’s all for now.  We’ll be uploading more content later today and throughout the weekend so please stay tuned.  Also, we would LOVE if people would leave comments, criticisms, love poems, recipes, and ANYTHING else in our comment section, so that we know that other human beings are actually reading this.

New Pics!

Some pics for those of you fiending for updates!