Dawn is breaking. It is the beginning of my last day in Rio. I just woke up on the floor of the 9th story apartment of a Dutch painter named Dré in downtown Centro, and am currently stationed on the balcony of said apartment, wearing a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, headband and a woman’s sweatshirt that fits me quite snugly. The story here is unfortunately not as exciting as some of your sordid imaginations might suggest— my friends Jennie (a dear friend from Williams who just moved to Rio) and Sarah threw a going away/birthday party for me and Sarah, respectively, and they are looking after their friend Dré’s apartment while he is in Holland for a few weeks. I cooked some coconut chicken, Jennie whipped together some tiramisu and Sarah provided the wine and whisky. There were candles, someone put the Buena Vista Social Club on and things got crazy. I fell asleep on an air mattress at 1:30, but not before Sarah gave me a sweatshirt because I was cold and sickly. I am sorry to disappoint.
I usually never wake up before 9, and never get out of bed before 9:30, but the excitement of packing up and moving on has inspired otherwise this morning. Looking out from within the city I usually only see from above, as Santa Teresa is on a hill, I have been moved to reflect on my past four months here. I arrived here scared, anxious and uneasy. My first thought as I walked off of the plane into Rio de Janeiro airport back at the end of November was “Only four more months. Then I can go.” I spent a lot of time studying Portuguese, and even more time alone in my room with my mandolin, trying to get a handle on choro and samba. Although I made friends, I sacrificed what little social life I could have had for my music, in the hopes that I would get great. Three months later, following a humbling experience at the national choro festival, and a slew of visits from loved ones, I had my last lesson with Rudá, my friend and initial mandolin teacher. During the lesson it became clear that I had not gotten particularly good at the mandolin, and this was a frustrating discovery. All of a sudden, those 100+ hours spent with my instrument seemed ridiculous. I had given three months to studying a relatively random Brazilian folk music, and came away with so little to show for my efforts. It was the first time I had failed so spectacularly at something, and it took me some time to come to terms with this.
At that last lesson, Rudá suggested I see another teacher for a change of pace, and gave me the number of a young hotshot mandolinist named Luiz. I set up a lesson, and showed up at Luiz’ place a week later. I was greeted by a kid no older than 19, with a goofy smile, a unibrow and a tendency to laugh at everything he said. He led me to his room and asked me to play something for him. I began Cochichando, the first piece I learned. About 30 seconds in, he asked me stop. I looked up and realized he was giggling. “You play the same as all the other gringos. You pick like this,” he told me, as he loosened the wrist of his right hand and imitated a bluegrass picking motion. “You need to pick like this,” he continued, as he demonstrated a movement that was restricted to a flexion of his thumb and forefinger. I was willing to try anything. That afternoon, I went back to my room and tried Luiz’ picking style. By the end of the night, my playing was significantly better. Something still did not sound quite right, though. A week later, I bought a Brazilian mandolin from a luthier just outside of Rio, named Barros. I had been playing a $120 bluegrass mandolin I had purchased in the US, which I have not touched since my trip to Barros’. Brazilian mandolins truly sing, as they sustain their sound much longer, allowing for an entirely different level of expression. The novel picking style in conjunction with the new instrument has made all the difference. Over the course of two weeks, I went from being entirely disappointed with my playing ability to being quite satisfied with how far I have come. Last week, I played with a live group in a bar, with amps and microphones. I only jumped in for three pieces, but for those three, I was the only lead instrument. To be able to hold down my part alone felt fantastic. That kind of playing had been my goal from the start, and it was a highly cathartic experience to come away from the bar that night.
My final month in Rio has been a fine one. Outside of my music, I spent a good deal of time with friends I have made here. While I had no core group of friends, there are a number of people to whom I have grown very close, as a result of our friendships being based on one-on-one interactions rather than group-based relations. It was nice to be reminded how much I have learned from all of them, and how much I have grown as a result. I was also able to take a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to see a few Williams friends and check out another country in South America before I head east.
As a result of the confidence I have gained after living in and learning to love Rio, I am nothing but excited about my imminent departure for Istanbul. My recent decision to pursue writing and music upon my return to the US has also put me in a more stable place. I don’t have a job, nor do I have any idea what city I’m going to end up when I get back, but I do know that I’m looking forward for everything that’s coming my way in the near future. Especially kebabs.
Much love, and my apologies to those who prefer more lighthearted reports of my wanderings. I suspect Istanbul will bear many such stories.
Auyon
My parents and Arnob, my elder brother (who will heretofore be referred to as “Da,”) arrived at Galeão, Rio’s international airport, at 1 p.m. on February 16th. I had left the choro festival in São Paulo a few days early, on an overnight bus, in order to meet them as they walked out of customs. Following a few hugs and Da’s perfunctory disapproval of my unkempt appearance, I excitedly explained everything I would be showing them. I specifically emphasized the city’s abundance of juice bars and caipirinhas (Rio’s signature sugarcane liquor cocktail). My father and I have our differences, but one thing we share is a passion for sweet, delicious fruit drinks. Not even his bushy moustache could hide the childlike delight that my mention of fresh juices and exotic cocktails stirred in him. It was going to be a good week.
We headed back from the airport and settled my parents into a private room at Casa Manga Manga, which is the hotel/hostel where I spent my first few nights in Rio. It is also just a few houses down from where I am now staying. My brother stayed with me, which was an experience for both of us. To call him a creature of habit would be a gross understatement, and thus to explain to him that there are no hot and cold knobs for the shower— there is just the knob, and that is all— or that toilet paper must be thrown into a trash bin and may not be thrown in the toilet, otherwise it gets clogged, was something of a trial. We had a good time nonetheless. My brother has a moderate learning disability, and thus he and I tend not to have particularly deep or weighty exchanges. Our mutual zeal for potty humor, however, keeps things rolling. There is nothing quite like getting one’s older brother to squeal with disgust by mooning him after not seeing each other for seven months.
We spent the first few days of the family vacation in Rio, bumming around Copacabana and Ipanema watching fut-vollei (a highly impressive version of volleyball played without hands,) drinking coconut water and sampling snacks and juices as often as possible. At one point, I decided to take a dip in the ocean, and as any good Rio native would do, I stripped down to my sunga. The majority of men do not wear board shorts in Rio. They wear sungas— skimpy speedo-esque swimwear that leave little to the imagination. I bought a bright yellow one during my first week here. My father was not pleased. His Indian sensibilities are sometimes a bit conservative, and seeing his 21-year old son parade around a beach in golden undies was apparently too much. Cultural differences can be a tricky thing.
Following visits to Pão de Acúcar (Sugarloaf peak) and the Atlantic rainforest, we caught a flight to the city of Salvador in the state of Bahia. The airport was a good ride from our hotel in a neighborhood called Barra, so we got to see a lot of the Bahian coastline on the way over. Our hotel, which I had booked through a travel agent, was something I was looking forward to. The travel agent had said good things. He lied. We ended up with a view of the brick wall of a building next door, and a bathroom where the faucets fell apart upon contact. The city, though, made up for it. Salvador is known as the cultural heart of Brazil, and is incredibly rich in music. There is a great deal of African influence, as the population is predominantly made up of the descendants of ex-slaves. The city itself is beautiful, with a lot of fantastic colonial architecture (it was the first capital of Brazil) and surrounded by white sandy beaches. Salvador is the only place in Brazil where one can see the sun set over a large body of water, since the Brazilian coastline faces the Atlantic to the east. Salvador, though, is located on the western bit of a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, with a bay to the west. Thus, when one sees the sun set in Salvador, it looks as though it is over the ocean.
Our first foray out of the hotel led us to a few of the aforementioned beaches, and a number of restaurants along them. After some deliberation, we entered a family-owned joint that had a few police officers eating inside. If local police ate there, we figured, it must be good. We were seated by a friendly elderly gentleman, who first expressed his delight that we had chosen his restaurant, and then continued by describing everything on the menu that he did not have. Sometimes he would say that he did not have specific dishes in certain sections, but then at other points, he would just cut out entire pages, like “pasta.” His Salvadorian accent made comprehension tricky, but I understood him to say things like, “The bus did not come in today,” so “there would be no sandwiches this week.” We smiled and nodded pleasantly. My father then asked if I wanted to check out another place, but as I looked back and forth between the overstocked menu and the enthusiastic owner, I though we should give it a shot. We ordered one of each of the three dishes that were available, and they turned out to be great. We paid and thanked the gentleman for the meal, and then, as we were leaving, he gave my mother a small plastic Bahian trinket with a keychain attached to it. A token of his friendship. I was glad we had stayed.
The next day, we headed into the city. One of the main squares in the city is known as the “Pelourinho,” which translates to “the whipping post.” It used to be the site of public floggings of slaves, and is now a lively, cobbled crisscrossing with shops and vendors aplenty. The street vendors in Salvador, usually selling shelled jewelry or small knickknacks, are much more aggressive than in Rio. They often attempt to give you a “present” of a free colored band to tie around your wrist, but then pester you incessantly if you accept their gift. We navigated through the bustling streets and ended up in front of a jewelry shop. My mother walked in, and my older brother and I followed her. My father stayed outside. This proved to be a good move on his part.
Brazil is famous for its gemstones, and the store’s vast spread of stones, jewelry and sculptures housed quite a variety. There were no other shoppers when the three of us entered, so the salesman inside started chatting to us. He was impressed with my moderate grasp of Portuguese, and informed my mother that since he liked our family, he would be giving us a good deal. The poor man had no idea what he was getting himself into. My mother is a charmingly candid, vivacious Indian woman. This salesman’s mistake was to confuse her forthrightness with the naïveté often ascribed to gringos. As he would soon find out, shopping and haggling in the Indian markets of her youth have forged my mother into a merciless shark of a customer. I had forgotten how painful it is to watch her cheerily cut vendors down until they offer a price, often ludicrously below anything reasonable, with which she is happy. This particular transaction took 45 minutes to negotiate, and ended with my mother walking out of the shop with a little bag and an innocent smile on her face, leaving behind the ashen-faced salesman to slowly come to grips with how he had just been broken. I relayed the gory details of my mother’s exploits to my father, who responded quite simply, “That’s why I don’t go in.”
We continued on to a small shop stocked full of colorful paintings typical of Bahia. My mother wanted to buy a few gifts, and instructed me to ask the man in the shop how much each of the paintings were. I was apprehensive about getting involved, simply because if my mother decided to bargain, I would have to play translator. In the jewelry shop, I was allowed to be a spectator, since the salesman there spoke English. I did not have much of a choice, though, and relayed to my mother that each of the smaller paintings was R$40. She told me to ask him for five for 80. I asked the man, who then responded with an offer of 150. My mother shook her head, and repeated her offer. I informed her that my understanding of bargaining was that each side progressively makes concessions, in the hopes that a mutually acceptable middle ground is eventually reached. I was told to shut up, and that I did not understand. I turned to the vendor. My mother’s inability to speak Portuguese afforded me the capacity to say whatever I wanted. “My mother is difficult,” I said. “She won’t budge from 80.”
“I cannot do 80,” the man said. “That is cheaper than how much I buy them for.” I am aware that such a tactic is commonly used among greasy salesmen, but this man did not look like the sort. He was a short, pudgy man, wearing a tattered baseball cap, a faded T-shirt and jeans. He had honest, sad eyes, and spoke slowly. I liked him. “130 is as low as I can go,” he said.
I turned to my mother. “He says 130.” My mother responded with 90. I relayed her offer to the salesman.
“Your mother is a hard woman,” he said.
“She’s crazy,” I agreed. “Imagine being her son.” The salesman looked at me with a mix of pity and wonder. He then took a phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. I looked back to my mother and suggested that when someone has to call their supervisor to ask about how low prices can go, things have gone too far. I was ignored. After the vendor had gotten off the phone, he explained that the lowest he was allowed to sell the paintings was 100. Otherwise he would lose his job. My mother conceded, and the man wrapped up the paintings, glad that we were finally leaving. As we walked outside, I asked my father how he reconciles my mother’s bargaining techniques with his own good conscience. He looked at me and paused to think. He then instructed me to fetch the vendor from the shop. The man walked outside, confused. My father greeted him with a hearty pat on the back and asked him what he would like to drink. We ended up buying a green coconut for him. He thanked us, grateful for the acknowledgement that he had been wronged, and then hurried back to his shop. It made me feel a little better, too.
The rest of our trip consisted of more city wanderings, a guided tour and a few music shows. The tour was a difficult experience for me. After having lived in Rio for a few months, enjoying the way my skin color allowed me to blend in, and generally knowing my way around, it was uncomfortable to be a part of an obvious group of foreigners. It was probably healthy for me to be forced off of my high horse, though, and the tour did have its redeeming points. The highlight was the church in the city center, one of many which was built by the Portuguese during colonial times. The interior of the church was massive, and the area surrounding the altar was done up ostentatiously, with bevies of cherubs flitting around walls that glistened with gold leaf. The best part of the church, however, was not immediately apparent. Our tour guide explained that while the church was commissioned by the Portuguese, it was built by African slaves, who themselves were disallowed from practicing their religion (candomblé, a spirit-based belief system with African roots). As a result, the slaves slipped a number of candomblé references into the construction of the church, like lion heads and serpents carved into the woodwork. Additionally, the slave artisans who fashioned the angels deliberately sculpted them to look sickly and unpleasant, and often gave them engorged genitalia or apparent secondary sexual characteristics. Unfortunately, the bloated genitalia had been trimmed down since, but the rest of the angels had not been fixed, and upon closer inspection it became clear that many were suffering from gout. I have heard many people say that the greatest churches they have ever visited are in Italy, but these people have clearly never been to Salvador.
The music we got to see in Salvador was, as expected, fantastic. One show that stuck out was an open-air forró performance in the Pelourinho. Forró is a fast-paced music from the northeast of Brazil, and is readily distinguishable from other Brazilian musics by the presence of an accordion. I had seen a couple performances in Rio, neither of which was particularly noteworthy, but the Salvador show we saw was some of the best music I have seen in Brazil. On another occasion, I believed a taxi driver who told me he could take us to “a great beach show,” that was “free and not too far.” Believing this man was not one of my finer moments. We got into the cab after calling him later that night, and he took us to a place that was a) not a beach, b) not free and c) not close by. Although the show was very well done (Carnaval-style samba), the whole experience was tainted by the fact that I had swallowed a cab driver’s pitch hook, line and sinker. It was also a pointed reminder that, even after learning to speak proficiently in Portuguese and getting a good sense of Brazilian culture after 3 months in Rio, I can still get caught with my pants down as just another gullible gringo.
All of our misadventures made for an excellent family vacation, and I was sad to see my parents and brother leave at the end of their week in Brazil. It was nice, though, to get back in control of my life and get re-settled for my last month in Rio. It is now the 26th of March, and I leave for London on the 31st. I plan to make one final post in Brazil before I head out, to bring everyone up to speed with the going-ons of my last month.
Until then, and much love,
Auyon
It was 9 a.m. on February 9th, and I was sitting on a bus bound for São Pedro, a 30,000-person town in the middle of the state of São Paulo, for the fourth annual National Choro Festival. The Rio contingent of choro enthusiasts had organized for a direct shuttle to the hotel where the festival was being held, and I, exhausted from the Carnaval festivities that had just ended, was grateful for the convenience. I had chosen to sit at the back of the bus, and was soon joined by a rowdy gang of 13-15 year olds armed with cavaquinhos (Brazilian ukeleles), guitars, bandolims (mandolins) and a pandeiro (the tambourine-style hand drum). My efforts to catch up on sleep were thus frequently interrupted by spontaneous samba exhibitions, and I would have been annoyed had the kids not been excellent musicians. We reached São Pedro at 5 p.m., having stopped for an hour or two for lunch, and I got my room assignment at the reception desk. I then proceeded to wander around and inspect my new digs. The whole hotel compound was rented out for the festival— the rooms surrounded three sides of a large central square, which featured a pool, a restaurant/bar with a patio, and a children’s playground covered with giant, grinning, LSD-inspired plastic animals. At the fourth side of the square was the dining room and a small gated pond, no more than 30 feet in diameter, that was periodically filled with fish for the pleasure of those occupants who enjoyed fishing out of small ponds. It was, in short, a strange but not unfriendly place to call home for the next week.
I soon found my room, and saw that there were a handful of guys on the porch jamming. I began to ask, in Portuguese, if they were my roommates, only to have one of the guys respond in English, with an American accent, asking me where I was from. The festival organizers had apparently played a neat little trick and quarantined all the gringos into one apartment. After meeting the other guys, I heard honking noises and walked outside. We had all been instructed to leave our luggage on the bus, and I had wondered how I would later get it. My queries were answered. A massive, brightly colored tractor carrying everyone’s luggage was leisurely driving around the central square and tooting the horn every so often. I retrieved my things, thanked the driver, and then watched him drive away very slowly. After unpacking, I headed over to dinner with the other guys, and later saw a concert put on by a few of the teachers and older students. The concert ended at 10 or 11, and was followed by an entire night of impromptu rodas (choro jam sessions), wherein people would bring their instruments out to the patio and play until the wee hours of the morning. The rodas were spectacular to watch, but I never got the courage to jump in. Unlike in Ireland, where I could fudge the tunes by ear and no one would notice since everyone plays together, the rodas are all about solo performances. The principal solo instrumentalists (mandolins, flutes, clarinets) trade the melody back and forth, with only one of them playing at any given point. The guitarists (both 6 and 7-string), cavaquinho and pandeiro players compose the rhythm section, playing the chords, counterpoint bass lines and percussion beneath the solo. In watching the rodas that first night, I learned that most every participant at the camp was a highly accomplished choro musician. My two-and-a-half months of exposure were not going to cut it.
Classes started a day later, and I had three of them: mandolin technique, band practice, and harmony. The technique class was great, but it was downhill from there. I had signed up for band because it was the only word on the list I had understood (“banda”), way back in December, but it turns out that there are normally no mandolins in band. The band consisted of brass instruments, guitars, flutes, clarinets, and big drums. And, this year, a single gringo mandolin. I was able to seem Brazilian most of the time, but whenever I spoke Portuguese, or took out my instrument, I was a marked man. Brazilian mandolins are largely undecorated and feature a single, central soundhole. My mandolin is painted bright yellow, and has two ostentatious f-holes on either side of the strings. Were I a hotshot mandolinist, I might have pulled it off. Instead, I was one of the least talented musicians at the camp. I wore my instrument like a golden badge of shame. Finally, my last class of the day was a two-hour beast on the intricacies of harmony and chord progressions in choro, taught exclusively in Portuguese. Enough said.
The true highlight of the camp, though, was not class, nor was it the pleasure of living amongst Real American Dudes again (although that has been sorely missed), but was instead the nightly festivities. The only formally organized events were a few concerts in the auditorium, but somehow, in addition to the rodas, every night turned into a celebration. It seems that all Brazilians need to start a party is some kind of percussion instrument (if drums are missing, then empty cans are often used). No DJ or alcohol necessary, although the latter might speed things up a bit. These are a people who have no hang-ups about singing or dancing publicly. One night, someone snuck in a large floor drum, and a group of around 20 individuals proceeded, at 2 a.m., to have a Carnaval-style bloco parade through the streets of the compound, complete with inebriated dancers trailing behind them. In class the next day, we got a stern rebuking from one of the head organizers, who made it clear that “there would be no more marching parties. Only still parties. Drums stay by the pool.” The ringleaders nodded sheepishly. The same thing had happened last year. Another night, someone brought a small hand drum and started hammering out some incredible beats. Then someone started singing, and out came the cymbals. The party had started. What I enjoyed most about that night was that one of the guys must have thought to himself, “There will probably be a party tonight. I suppose I should bring my cymbals.” America could learn a lot from the example of this young man. I’m buying cymbals.
In more recent news, I’m now well into my last month in Rio. Nothing much noteworthy has happened, except that I have now tired of cooking for myself, so I’ve been eating a lot of papayas. I have also come to accept that I am not going to leave Rio as a particularly good choro mandolinist. I had rather high hopes when I arrived, and was sure that with a few months of dedicated practice I would reach my goal. Unfortunately, it will take a lot more than four months of practice for me to get to a satisfactory point, but my study has been quite fruitful here nonetheless. I’m now focusing on trying to learn Turkish, and have been listening to a bit of Turkish folk music as well. They use different scales, with notes that don’t exist in Western musics (quartertones), and instead of measures of 4 or 8 beats, they use “cycles” of up to 32 beats. It is a good thing I am no longer afraid of failure.
Much love,
Auyon
