Oi queridos~ It’s been awhile, for various reasons good & bad, but not to worry, I have heeded the call of your emails & I am back w/ more adventures of the girl bandolimist in Rio. It is July now, & the 2nd was my “surprise” concert w/ Paulo Sa @ the Conservatorio Brasileiro– classical music for 2 bandolims. He forgot to tell me about it before I left home, but we have managed to put together a good program of original mandolin duets in no time at all. We have our second & last rehearsal Tuesday the 1st & stop in to look @ the hall, a fairly elegant mini-auditorium currently holding the dress rehearsal for an end-of-the-semester student samba group.
I skip Luiz’ Tuesday-night roda to try to keep my classical chops in the front of my brain– hard to do on the bandolim. The Wednesday concert goes well & people seem to really enjoy the music. We end w/ my “Siga em Frente,” that is a fun contrast to Mozart & Leone. Afterwards Romulo & Jesse & I meet Marcia near her office in Gloria for a nordest lunch in a little inauspicious-looking place that turns out to be great, of course. R & I go back to the EPM offices w/ Marcia to put in process the paperwork to get the rights to record Mauricio’s music– one piece for Agua, and another for my group Enigmatica in the US. And it is here, while we are chatting & having a cafezinho, that I first encounter Brazilian cake.
It’s an innocent step into temptation— Marcia offers me half of her piece of white cake w/ a filling of tart maracuja (passion fruit) and sweet cream. But this is the first cake in all my trips to Rio & it flings open the magical dessert door. Somehow it’s been so hot every other time I have been here that fruit juice is as sweet as I have wanted to get. But now I am sliding down the slippery slope of where’s-my-sun-gone? winter blues, and “bolo” the airy delicious Brazilian cake grabs my hand. When early sundown & the rainy weeks of winter combine to make you one un-Brasileiro, it’s cake to the rescue.
And it’s not just me, it seems to be everywhere. The most amazing appearance is on the way home from Joel’s, when TaxiPaulo asks if I’d like to stop for a cafezinho (the little espresso-type coffee that seems to run the country). He pulls into a gas station & walks over to a beat-up pick-up truck where a man is selling coffee, a marbleized bolo that melts in my mouth, and quindim– my first, a denser variation on flan, (and actual flan is “pudim” as I will discover later on my tour of desserts). It is so good that I am threatening to write a piece of music about it– “Quindim no Bonsucesso”– the neighborhood we were driving through. And so cake enters my life in Rio, along with mango mousse, and cuzcus– a fluffy slice of tapioca & coconut heaven– and guava-newtons, and lime pie.
I’m usually not a really big fan of desserts, but I have fallen completely. & if I come home the same size I left it will have nothing to do w/ willpower, but will be because of the most efficacious exercise program known to man- public transportation. I really think that obesity in the western world must date from the moment cars became ubiquitous. Buses & metros require so much walking, climbing hills, stairs to reach them & to get where one is going. & are sometimes so maddening that one would really rather walk miles then wait another minute. I am not a person who regards exercise as an enjoyable end in itself, but here in Rio I walk miles and never even think about it. And so far it seems, from the fit of my clothes, that public trans may just save me from my close encounters with cake. (Just succumbed to a Mil Folhas- cake of 1000 layers- in Petropolis, but I digress…)
The reason R & I are hanging w/ Marcia & Samantha this afternoon is that we have to get Cassio to the studio in the evening to record the last overdub for our CD. And with public trans, it is easier and more fun to hang than to go home and start out again. So we pick up C & his clarinet @ Praca Sao Salvador a couple of hours later & catch a cab to Sta. Teresa, to Marcelo’s studio. We have recorded our whole CD @ Pablo’s house in Mage, but Marcelo offered to record Cassio when we went to met w/ him about mastering last week, and it seems the easiest way to get this final track done. It all goes smoothly & Pablo arrives near the end to pick up the completed tune to take back w/ him. He’ll be doing the final mixes over the next 2 weeks, and then we will master the CD. I’m figuring out tune order, Bernard is working on the cover design, and everything should be done so I can take it all with me when I leave, as I am getting the CDs pressed in the US. [Those of you who want a preview, the cover & some tunes are 
now up on Agua’s website, http://www.myspace.com/aguanofeijao]
Well it’s now much later. Life intervened again and this email has been languishing. I added a couple of updates above & I’ve had the photos all picked out, so I’ll skim ahead as far as I can before I need to leave for my last full day’s packed schedule. & I’ll finish up w/ a 4th log after I get home, Thursday.
Miriam is sick all week with a winter cold & complications, so on Saturday, before EPM, I go to pick up her order @ the RedeEcological food coop. It’s interesting to see how they work, and who knew there were so many types of potatoes! I make 2 trips to get all the food home, and then it’s off to the last EPM of the semester. It’s only apresentacaoes by the various classes (bandolims don’t have one) & the last Bandao. But it’s fun to play the tunes one more time & talk to my friends, including Luiz Barcelos who is back to visit for a day & comes over to say he heard my band on our Myspace page & liked it. Marcia takes some pics of me playing @ Bandao & I record the whole thing for posterity. Afterwards I go hang out at Bar Urca & eat their great fish soup w/ Luiz etc.
The next day is Sunday roda @ Sao Salvador & it is totally amazing. I play so well that the pandeiro section all look at me amazed after “Santa Morena” (which was too fast for almost all of them) & say “parabems!” (congratulations). Maybe it was the time spent on classical, maybe it’s just that I’ve broken through to a new level, but I am flying, and Cassio & I are playing so well together— counterlines, interactions on melody— that I want to take him back to the US w/ me. Romulo & Mariana meet me there afterwards & we go off to lunch w/ R’s parents @ a great kilograma place. The Brazilians have these pay-for-the-weight-of-your-plate places everywhere, from simple buffets to gourmet w/ a huge variety. This is one of the latter & I have sushi, salad etc. &, of course, delicious cake. It’s fun to hang out w/ R’s parents, especially as I’m understanding Portuguese better now.
Back @ home I get an email from Isabel & Dagmar— who are coming to spend 2+ weeks in Rio- saying that their flight was delayed so they will come a day late. So I reschedule TaxiP, & Monday, suddenly free, I go to the beach @ Apoador & lie there in the warm winter sun, although the water is too cold to swim. I stroll, eat lunch at one of my favorite places &, sunblind, take some pics on the wrong setting of my camera—so now I have a lot of 6 second movies that you will never get to see.
Tuesday TP picks me up just before 7:00 AM (big yawn…) & we’re off to the airport to get the road-weary girls. We drop their stuff @ their hotel, get something to eat, and they come back to my place to nap until they can get into their room. It’s their first time in Brazil & it will be fun to re-live the newness of it all w/ them. Tuesday night is Luiz’ roda— muito fun! I really want to make a T-shirt that says something like “Voce precisa ter mais fun” or “Nos temos fun!” or just “Tenha fun!” for when I come back. Because I am having a lot of fun teasing Brasileiros about the lack of “fun” in their language.
Wednesday is my lesson w/ Joel— I had to miss last week because of my concert & his recordings– & afterwards I meet Is & D @ Modern Sound to hear Ronaldo play his weekly gig. I haven’t seen him yet this trip & he is his usual funny cheerful self, and plays awesomely. D&Is are settling in well & we plan to meet Friday for a concert. Alas that is not to be, as it is sold out, but Is & I do meet R&M for dinner at a little place in Botofogo (D opts out in favor of sleep) & Is & Mariana have fun talking samba.
R is majorly stressed about the progress of the CD mixes w/ the mastering deadline approaching & is on the phone to Pablo many times during the evening. I am trying to put the tunes in order anyway w/out final mixes. It’s a job I like, because it’s my theory that there is one particular way the tunes want to go, so that each one will be exactly what you want to hear after the last one. Sometimes a wrong order can make a tune sound too slow or insecure, but just re-placing it will make it sound the way you heard it when you recorded it. I have a tentative order, but am still fiddling w/ it, (and actually won’t land on my final version until next Tuesday). Saturday is no-EPM. Miriam is away so I pick up her order at Rede again, but the rest of the day appears to have disappeared from my memory.
Sunday morning I am running late for roda & nearly collide w/ the bus @ the bottom of the hill & the driver kindly stops for me, even though I’m halfway between stops. But then, alas, I just miss the metro racing down the stairs. So I plop down on a bench to wait for the next one & a guy w/ a cavaquinho over his shoulder sits down next to me & asks if I have a bandolim or a banjo, and so I meet Vivi. He’s one of the old ones & lives near the Lago do Machado metro so we chat onto the train & off & he walks me to roda. Everyone in the neighborhood knows him & he invites me to a samba/choro roda @ 3:00 in the Catete park, and also invites me to lunch at his place, but those will have to wait for another day. He doesn’t play at out roda, just sits down on a bench w/ a friend & wave good-bye.
I am late for roda, & everyone cheerfully reprimands me & someone says I have to run around the bandstand 3 times as punishment. It’s a good roda, and R&M arrive at the end & we go off to Sta T to have a traditional feijoada lunch @ Bar do Mineiro. There’s a huge line, and Mariana calls a friend who lives nearby to join us & we talk & laugh & drink beer while we wait, out in the street in the sun. and I will leave us there & send the email now, because I do have to pack to go. Enjoy the pics & I will report on the last 2 weeks when I get home, because everyone wants to know how the story ends. And I probably won’t see most of you for awhile so you can pretend I’m still writing from Rio. Although I just heard that there will be an airport workers strike starting tomorrow morning, so who knows, I may actually be.
Ate pronto!
m
