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????