Category Archives: Brazil

Notes from the (Brazilian theatre) Underground

I had met Maciej before in Salvador, Brazil, at some Candomblé dance classes I attended at the Escola de Dança. He stood out for being tall, white, male and straight – all at once! I guess we had that in common – and being foreign. His passion for performance was powerfully obvious. He is Polish and did post-doctoral studies in Brazil. His work combines theatre, literature, philosophy dance. Continue reading

Some thoughts on our album Ritmeloxá

The project I completed with Ubiraci Santos in Brazil in September, the album Ritmeloxá with him playing percussion and myself on soprano saxophone, was based on an improvisatory and rhythmic affinity between us and on several conceptual objectives and opportunities. While rhythm with melody is a kind of default state in Afro-Brazilian music, it also offers the possibility of modal extrapolation and freedom of melodic line. I have been exploring modal ways of thinking, composing and playing, influenced to some extent by Arabic and Indian music. I also have a research interest in the modal approach of Ralph Vaughan Williams and experience as a performer of the modal jazz of Miles Davis.

Taking a modal approach means not thinking in terms of a chord progression, or a serial tone row. Instead there are a number of available pitches and a line can develop according to certain criteria, or simply in free improvisation. In Indian and Arabic music pieces often explore the range of pitches gradually, proceeding from a narrow compass around a tonic and exploring upwards as if climbing and celebrating the attainment of various important notes. Indian ragas also have particular figures or phrases which appear in the course of the improvisatory development. In Western modal music as used in mediaeval plain-chant and renaissance polyphony, for instance, there are rules about the direction the melodic line should take at particular points.

There are certain modes which are extremely common in popular and traditional musics around the world. Pentatonics (which make up much Chinese music) and the Dorian mode are the most often heard. The Oxóssi piece on the album for instance uses a minor pentatonic mode. The melody is a traditional Candomblé chant sung to me by Ubiraci which I subsequently transcribed and memorized. In the improvisatory section I keep mainly within the mode, occasionally extending it with ancillary pitches. It has a repeated phrase at the end of the melody which acts as point of rest and a pivot before the whole tune repeats. In my conversations with the Candomblé priestess of Ubiraci’s terreiro (place of worship) she told me that this music calls the Orixá (deity) and energises the people to receive him. After attending a ceremony at which Ubiraci led the drumming he pointed out that he was interacting with the dancers when he played, and particularly to the force of the Orixá in them. In a musical sense his experience and ability to do this informed our interaction as players and improvisers, being sensitive to each others expression and responding to it.

Horror Lands at Barra Beach

Two bodies found floating in the sea

(My translation of an article in A Tarde and Massa, two papers from Salvador, Brazil 18/9/14. I have written about this beach in a previous post on this blog. Stories of this kind are very common in the press here. I have been reading A Tarde regularly and have often been struck by the dramatic nature of the reports of violence. This story is extraordinary because it juxtaposes the attractive and horrific sides of Salvador. The original article can be viewed at www.jornalmassa.com.br/2014/09/147119-terror-desembarca-no-porto-da-barra.html )

Yesterday morning violence landed on Porto da Barra beach, voted the third best beach in the world by the English paper The Guardian. A navy launch towed ashore two bodies which were floating in the sea. A forensics team established that the victims had died from bullet wounds to the head and stab wounds to the neck. Continue reading

Birth, Sudden Death and Religion in Brazilian Politics

Campos crash site in the city of Santos

There was high drama in Brazilian politics last week with Sunday seeing the streets of Recife filled with mourners for Eduardo Campos, a charismatic presidential candidate in the current elections. An executive jet on which he was travelling on his 18 hour per day campaign schedule had crashed last Wednesday killing all on board. I really had not been taking too much notice of the electioneering until this point but this tragedy made me look more closely. I soon realised that Campos had caught my attention once before. When I was here in Brazil at the beginning of the year, a photograph in the paper, of a middle-aged man kissing a new-born baby had caught my eye. Alongside, Campos was quoted as saying; ‘Seja bem-vindo querido Miguel, voce chegou na familia certa’ – Welcome, darling  Miguel, you have arrived in the right family. Also reported was the fact that this, the fifth of Campos’ children, had Down’s syndrome. Continue reading

Tradition and the Camera – Nego Fugido ‘Festival’ at Acupe

Yesterday, the day after my birthday we went to a small town near Santa Amaro to see a kind of festival, although ‘commemoration’ would perhaps be a better term. We got up early, despite birthday party hangover, to catch a bus put on by a tour company. All the excursionists were Brazilian, and local, as far as I could tell, apart from our party which consisted of five foreigners, most of whom live here and another local who is married to one of them.

Acupe, the little town,is on a tidal mangrove river on the Bay Of All The Saints in Bahia, Brazil, and originated as a quilombo, a settlement of escaped slaves. In an annual festival the residents commemorate the period of resistance by slaves and the repression of them. We see children apparently shot at point blank range, we see men and boys begging for mercy on their knees, we see chaos and violence between black people – and we see demons walking the streets.

Despite the many interesting and important aspects of  the Acupe festival, the one which I have found most difficult to interpret is the way it was consumed by us,  as spectators, as tourists, and in particular as photographers. There was a veritable feeding frenzy of picture-taking which was almost more extraordinary than the actions being documented by the cameras. Continue reading

Exotic British Masochists

Since I’ve been in Salvador I’ve established the habit of having breakfast at one of the many little bars and cafés in Dois de Julho while reading a local paper. It’s a way of getting me through my morning blues, reading some Portuguese and keeping up with what’s going on. There are always some interesting crime stories which I find fascinating because of the human drama behind them.

Today A Tarde carried a section called ‘The New York Times: International  Weekly’ in Portuguese with various stories from around the world. The one that caught my eye was by Katrin Bennhold. It was a story about the apparently growing popularity of winter swimming in unheated outdoor pools in London. Continue reading

Beach

I’m quite wary about blogging on this beach visit in Salvador, Brazil. After all I have enough trouble persuading people that I am here working and researching, rather than on holiday. And although I do occasionally go, for a swim and run perhaps at the  end of another sweltering day, it tends to be a bit of a project. Get the bus, or walk, where is safe to walk? Will the beach be too empty (not  safe) or too full (not safe). Once I get there, there is the problem of what to do with my stuff while I swim. You don’t really need to take very much because cold isn’t an issue. It’s more about money really. You’ll probably want some on you, at least for a bus home, but also perhaps for a snack and a drink afterwards. The solution is to ask someone to look after your bag. I’m quite used to doing this and I’ve never had any problems with it, but it does mean scouting the beach for someone who looks friendly and trustworthy. Families are usually a good bet, but I’ve asked all sorts of people and it’s always been fine. The context here is that Salvador is fairly crime-ridden. People get mugged a lot and there are a fair amount of shootings and robberies. This leads to everyone being more or less paranoid about  security.

Today my flatmate went to  the beach and asked me to  join him. I was still doing work but said I might come later – which I did. It turned out to be a little cultural adventure. Continue reading