24 Hours in Buenos Aires

It is 1 am in Buenos Aires, which means I've now enjoyed my first 24 hours here. They have not been wasted, except for one of them, but even that one gave me a story to tell. The flight from Rio, on Varig, arrived on time at midnight. The procedures for immigration were efficient and painless, as the line was not long, and as Americans do not need a visa for tourist visits. I picked up my bag, got out my winter coat, and walked to customs. I was selected for my bags to be searched, but I just had to put them through the xray machine, and that was it. I was met outside by Eduardo, a tall and elegant man who speaks impeccable English (as well as four other European languages) and who has worked for many years in the travel industry. I learned that he loves travel, and is a great fan of classical music--symphony and opera. He is an enthusiastic supporter of the Teatro Colon, which he tries to attend at least once a week when he is at home in Buenos Aires.

As the taxi reached downtown well after midnight on a Sunday night, it was apparent that many people were out dining in restaurants, and the streets were not at all empty of cars and pedestrians. New York is not the only "city that never sleeps." It reminded me of the very rich and very late nightlife of the city. Buenos Aires shares a late night dining, strolling, and dancing culture that one also finds in other great cities of the Latin world, notably Rome, but especially it seems to me Madrid and other large cities of Spain. The taxi turned onto Las Heras, and I realized that my lodgings would be close to my good friend Leandro, the editor of Gourmet Musical. My destination was in fact only 5 blocks from his apartment. (I knew it was in Palermo, but I was not sure exactly where). When I arrived, it was after 1 AM. My friend Charles, from whom I'm renting a room, was of course up and waiting for me. I decided that 1:30 AM was not too late to call my friend Leandro, who was also of course up and working on one of his projects. Charles and I stayed up chatting until about 3 AM, when we decided it was time to retire, since I had my first dance class in the morning. (Actually bedtime was an hour later for having gotten locked into the bathroom and occasioning the visit of a chavero at 4 in the morning...that's the hour that I could have done without!).

I got up at around 8:30 (AM). I am in a comfortable room with a queen bed with a nice firm mattress. I had a good four hours sleep. The morning sky promised a lovely day. I opened the window and two flamenco dancers seemed to smile at me from the tiled courtyard in the back (the photos here don't show the smiles--but if you woke up on a sunny day in August in Buenos Aires with the prospects of two weeks of simply dancing tango, valse, and milonga, you would see the smile, too; or perhaps they just don't smile when being photographed...). Charles' friend A. prepared tea and also went out and rounded up some medialunas (croissants) for breakfast. At 11 AM, I took the bicycle that Charles has so generously made available to me, and rode a couple of kilometers to Santos Dumont and Cordoba, where my first tango class was to start at 11:30.

I love riding bikes in big cities, and I had not really had the chance to do this since the time I commuted daily by bike from Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn to mid-town Manhattan back in 1993 (when I was working on Alan Lomax's "Global Jukebox" project). This was a perfect day to bike in Buenos Aires. It must have been around 50 degrees outside, and the streets were practically empty of traffic, because today is a national holiday (I haven't learned which one, but banks were closed, and the city was quiet). Although treacherousness is part of the thrill of riding bikes in busy and pot-holed cities such as New York and Buenos Aires, I'll definitely have to be much more careful on my rides beginning tomorrow, when traffic should return to its normal state of chaos. I've been warned to especially watch out for the taxis and buses.

A woman let me into the dance studios, where flamenco is taught as well as tango, and probably many other dances, too. The studios are in a charming old home with a courtyard, tiles, brick and metal work, and high ceilings, typical of Buenos Aires (and owing much to Spanish architectural style). My friend Charles had made the arrangements for my study, over the next two weeks, with three different instructors at two different studios, both of which are located in the Palermo district. (I explained in a prior post that it was last August through Charles that I originally learned about what some people today call "milonguero" style tango; we became friends, and I trusted him implicitly when it came to organizing my local tango program.) My instructor, Monica, arrived right on time, and after a pleasant greeting (in Argentina it is usually the exchange of one kiss on the left cheek; as I had just arrived from Brazil, I automatically made it two; but one is reminded of this small difference in cultural habit by the hesitation of the other person when going from the left cheek to the right), class began. Monica started the same way that Paulo Araujo did, which was to have me dance a tango as I normally would. In this case, my partner was also my teacher. Like Paulo, I found Monica to be extremely observant, and extremely effective in helping me isolate areas of posture and movement that needed work. Monica, who is a professionally trained dancer and teacher, believes that tango is most pleasurable, for her, when the steps are relatively simple, but the execution is masterful. She admires watching couples dancing in the milongas, where it is apparent that the two are working together with ease, grace, and fluidity. I really enjoyed working with her. The hour and a half lesson passed quickly, and I was glad that I had another hour and a half scheduled for later, in the evening.

The morning class ended at 1 pm, and I was to meet my friend Leandro for lunch at 1:30. It was exhilirating again to be outside with the bike, in a city that I really love (with Buenos Aires, it was love at first sight, two years ago). The temperature was now about 60 (F), and the roads were still empty. But people were out on the street--sellers of fruits and vegetables; mothers strolling their infants and toddlers; men carting some goods; some people on bikes--it was a normal, pleasant city day, made that much more so by the relative lack of traffic. Once I had my camera out, I couldn't put it away, and took a number of photos, some of which I'll share here. To the left, you can see two notices posted on a pole. One is for lessons on the electric bass, and the sign indicates that the styles taught include "rock, blues, funk, bossa, and jazz." (I am trying to be a conscientious ethnomusicologist once again.) The lower poster advertises "clases de rock & roll, salsa y merengue." Other posters in the same area promoted other kinds of dance, including Arab, Afro, and Flamenco.

Riding a bit further, I passed an area where a bunch of large posters for music concerts had been plastered. One of the more interesting ones you can see on the right. The heading says "Amparanoia"; I learned froma Google search that this is a Spanish group formed in Madrid in the mid-1990s, and they mix Folk, Mestizo, Reggae, Ska, and Bolero. You can learn more about them and hear their music at www.amparanoia.com/.

I also enjoyed, of course, just admiring the architecture of the city, filled with charming houses, elegant buildings, usually only a few stories high (except for the downtown business district near the river, where there are also some impressive skyscrapers) and lovely detail. But it was time for lunch, so I rode the rest of the way to the corner of Armenia and Santa Fe streets, to meet Leandro at the well-known restaurant Hermann, which specializes in the combination of foods that seem to be most favored here, meat, pasta, and wine. The photo on the right really tells it all. This was a Norton 2002 Tempranillo. It was recommended by the waiter, and it was indeed, an excellent choice, a rich, full-bodied red, which you can order at a restaurant in Buenos Aires for all of 15 pesos (US$5)--and not just for the glass, but for the bottle.

As it is already approaching 3 AM, I will try to make the rest of this recounting of the past 24...well, now, 26 hours...relatively brief. My second lesson with Monica, between 6:30 and 8 pm, also went extremely well, I felt. When we began I was a bit tired, still reeling a bit from the after-effects of about 3/4 of a bottle of red wine (Leandro is a very moderate drinker God bless him), but by the end of the lesson I felt revived, and decided to take a taxi to meet Charles and A. at the Confiteria Ideal, where I could catch the last 2 hours of the late afternoon / early evening milonga. When I got there, it was full, and I wondered whether I would be able to dance. There was a bit of normal stage fright, but in the end, I'm not too shy, and soon I was dancing. It was certainly a challenge to navigate the crowded dance floor, although it wasn't as bad, I was told, as an hour earlier. By the end, and through the grace of the four different partners I was fortunate to dance with, I found ways to incorporate some of the elements of embrace, posture, rhythm, and pattern that I had learned in my classes in the past week. What a floor, what a space! Some find it a bit run down, but I agree with the napolitana dance partner with whom I shared a tanda that it is meraviglioso (a tanda is a sequence of three or four tangos that are played in a sequence; hopefully, you dance the full tanda with one partner). Charles was both complimenting my dancing, and pointing out small details in between the tandas, like a boxing coach in between rounds. "Always keep your head up, looking forward"; "make sure you don't lean forward to much"; "be confident--your dancing will reflect what you are feeling." He insists that I have to practice at the Ideal every afternoon, as a necessary part of my dance training. "That's where I learned to dance--dancing every afternoon at the Ideal." I'll have to listen to him, because today is his birthday. (Of course, I would listen to him anyway). Happy birthday, Charles!

Some more photos: 1. The lights of Corrientes Avenue, the Broadway of Buenos Aires, through a rainy taxi window, as it is moving.
2. Los Productores, showing where Corrientes actually does meet Broadway











3. An image of the Confiteria Ideal, on Suipacha near the corner of Corrientes, where the age of elegance lives on...

After the milonga, we hailed a taxi, and Charles decided that we should head for the Brazilian restaurant on Mansilla in Palermo. We arrived there at around 11 pm, and ordered a muqueca de peixe with a side of vatapa. I found it happily ironic that I'd be spending my 24th hour in Buenos Aires, in a sense, back in Brazil. There was Zeca Pagodinho, promoting Skol beer; a map of Brazil showing all the different states in different colors; and on the TV was a talk show featuring one-time rival soccer stars Diego Maradona and Pele (in the image I caught here, you can see the no. 10 jerseys of the two Argentine and Brazil heroes displayed for the TV audience).At around midnight, at the back of this small Bahian restaurant, couples were dancing samba de gafieira (a gafieira is a dance hall, and you dance the samba de gafieira as a couple dance, rather than as a solo display of foot skill). Charles of course, decided that he had to learn this, and he and A. went to the back and joined in. I starting chatting with Luiz, a gentleman who was dining with his grown children and their friends at the next table. We spoke in Portuguese. When I asked if he was from Buenos Aires, he said, "Não--eu sou um caipira de verdade," he said was a smile--"I'm a country hick!" He hailed from Lobos, in the hinterland of Buenos Aires province. In the tierra de gauchos, in fact--I recalled that there was a British documentary on gauchos that focused on people living around Lobos. Luiz said that the program had basically recreated a past that no longer existed. Luiz was a real gentleman, and a lover of Brazil. We conversed in Portuguese. He told me that just last week occurred the largest bank robbery in Brazil's history, in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceara. The robbers had bought a nearby property and had dug a tunnel (I have not gone to the web to confirm this story; I had not heard about it during my stay in Brazil; I only heard about massive robbery of state funds by politicians, something that people always talk of). I said to Luiz that this sounded like a story out of a film I had seen, a French film. "Ah, Rififi," he said. "It has a great whistling theme--it is the leitmotif of the film." I awarded Luiz an honorary doctorate in film music studies right on the spot. If you are reading this, Luiz, saludos!

It was after midnight. We went out to find a taxi. Charles pointed out that the Salon Canning was nearby. The Monday night milonga there would be just getting hot around now. We smiled, and all realized that a good night's sleep is also a valued commodity.

Tango in Rio

I think this will be my final posting from Rio de Janeiro, as I fly this evening to Buenos Aires. Before I depart, I wanted to include a short entry about my experience with tango in a cidade maravilhosa ("the marvelous city," Rio's most famous tag, at least in Portuguese). I first discovered tango two years ago, in August 2003, in my first trip to Buenos Aires. The trip was inspired first by simple obviousness--after traveling yearly to Rio for about 12 years, it was about time to get to know that other grand city of the Latin southern hemisphere (apologies in advance for those who believe there are other candidates). I also had a friend there--he runs a wonderful website called the Gourmet Musical (www.gourmetmusical.com/home.asp). We originally met via a musicological listserv, but we subsequent met on trips he made to New York, Pennsylvania, and Rio. So it was time to return the favor. To make a long story short, I fell in love with Buenos Aires--it is one of my favorite in the world--and I became fascinated with the tango. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to practice tango again for a full year, until my return trip to Buenos Aires in August 2004, when I had also arranged to teach a graduate course in Music and Cinema at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. My first three weeks pursuing tango was a frustrating affair. I found that many classes were not graded, and that barely had you begun that the teachers were having the class do complicated giros (turns) and sequences that were difficult to memorize. A week before I was to leave, I was lucky to meet Charles. Originally from Nigeria, and a native of London, Charles also had become enamored of tango, and was spending extended stays in the world capital of that dance. I was fortunate to spend a week tagging along to nightly milongas and finally getting an introduction to tango as it was actually danced by the porteños themselves (porteño is a local term to describe native residents of Buenos Aires, as carioca is used to describe natives of Rio de Janeiro). Charles now runs a service to facilitate the study of tango in Buenos Aires (http://www.argentinatango.com/).

In the year since returning from that second trip, the tango bug has been gradually grabbing hold of me. Still, I did not find the opportunity to do any dancing in the US, where I live most of the time, until November, when I made a weekend trip to Boston to see a performance by Ghanaian musician Koo Nimo (see my link section to learn more about Koo Nimo). It so happened that the Tango Society of Boston (www.bostontango.org/) was offering one of their third-Saturday tango workshops that weekend. I decided to sign up, and had a delightful series of classes on milonga (a spritely 2/4 dance with a happy mood that contrasts with the more serious tango) by Omar Vega, one of the luminaries of the current tango revival. After the very positive experience in Boston, I decided to make an extra effort and check out tango offerings in my area. The closest available tango community was in Philadelphia. I cannot compare it to many others, but it has to be one of the nicest, with great teachers, a number of weekly dance events, and a very interesting and international assortment of people involved (these are characteristics that seem to be common in international tango communities; for a listing of Philadelphia tango activities, check out http://www.tangophiladelphia.com/). In January 2005 I taught a special course on the cultural history of the tango, and Juan Carlos and Teresa, two accomplished dancers from the Philadelphia scene whom I admire greatly, came to give weekly workshops for 15 of the students.

It has been especially since this past May that I've been able to attend milongas on a more regular basis, and thus begin to improve my dancing. Since that time, I've danced at milongas in Philadelphia, New York, London, Rome and in Rio. A great thing about tango is that one can find quality dancing in just about any big city in the world, as well as in many smaller places; I made these trips for other reasons, but sought out the tango whenever evenings were free, and dancing was available. It was in June when I danced tango in Rio for the first time. It was a delightful surprise, because in 14 years of traveling here, I had never thought to explore tango. Simple recourse to google was all that was necessary. I found a tango calendar (www.riotango.com.br/riodejaneiro.htm) and was able to visit and dance at two milongas, both in Botafogo: one was Café Xangô (on Rua da Passagem, on Friday night), and the other, the Centro de Dança Jaime Arôxa (on Rua São Clemente, Saturday night).

Tango in Rio was especially on my agenda for this visit. I was inspired by the colorful series of reports on tango in Rio by a contributor to the Tango-L listserv, under the rubric "Randy Does Rio." I contacted the author of these posts, asking recommendations for a teacher in Rio. He named several, including Paulo Araujo, who operates the milonga at the Café Xangô. According to my friends in Rio, Paulo is known as a leading figure in the Brazilian tango scene, and a little web research revealed that he is known internationally. I was able to find his email on the web, and I was lucky to be able to arrange two private lessons, conducted by Paulo with the help of a lovely young assistant, Tugliana, a fine dancer (and when not dancing, a biology student). I honestly found Paulo to be among the very best teachers I have had the privilege to work with. He has sharp powers of observation; is extremely economical in his teaching style; is a masterful dancer himself; and is a non-pretentious and extremely warm individual. I hope to be able to continue working with him on future trips to Rio!

Sunday morning sunshine

The title to this post simply reflects the reality of the sun pouring into the room this morning, a welcome change to the past few cloudy days here in Rio. It has been cloudy, cool, and damp, which is normal for this time of year. But so is sunny, relatively dry, and pleasant, like it promises today. T and I got up early, and finished the 500-piece puzzle of Venice. It is already 9:30, and the rest of the gang is still sleeping, so I have a little free time, hopefully enough to add a few more photos and commentary, before I am called upon to make pancakes.

My blogpal Peter the Other added a comment to my last post, to the effect that he is one of the few people in the world who has actually seen a live performance of Gomes' Il Guarany, the most famous Brazilian opera (in the Italianate sense of the term). This reminded me that I had one additional photo relating to opera in Brazil, which I've placed at the top of this posting. It is a reproduction of a postcard of the Theatro Amazonas in Manaus. It was built in 1896 at the time of the rubber boom, and it was, I believe, the inspiration for Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo. This postcard was reproduced in another one of those impressive, glossy, and highly cultivated monthly magazines that I mentioned in my last post. This one, called Nossa Historia ("Our History") is published by the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) (this again I have to qualify with an "I believe"--as this blog consists of my own off-the-cuff ramblings, and I do not have time to footnote all my assertions, I hope that readers will understand this, and forgive the errors of fact that will inevitably appear), and is thus comparable to the North American magazine Smithsonian. I try to collect all of them--they are beautifully published--and highly recommend visiting their website (see their website, http://www.nossahistoria.net/).

In Peter the Other's comment, he also referred to mass-communication and the pushing of corporate products. This reminded me of another photo I had taken this past week, of some graffiti near the intersection of Rua Jardim Botânico, and Rua Pacheco Leão. As you can see here, it is a colorful drawing of three young men, in a hip-hop attitude. The bearded figure on the right wears a T-shirt that says "Joy Division," and holds a red book that says "Marcuse" on the cover. Marcuse, of course, is a reference to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University of California professor and "Frankfurt School" philosopher, who was an inspiration for the counter-culture movement of the 1960s. He was a great critic of mass media and promoted the theory of "false consciousness." I have to cut short now, because pancake duty has called! I must bow to the demands of the masses!

Further Rio musings

I've wanted to add a new blog entry for the past several days, but alas, time wouldn't allow this. There is precious little to spare of that most precious of commodities. There is so little of it, that I wish I had access to a magical device that would allow me to be two places at once, as Hermione Granger enjoyed in one or other of the Harry Potter novels. The best I can do here is to read a book while I am also traveling by bus or taxi or plane from one part of the city (or the world) to another. In this way, I've just finished an immensely enjoyable book, Boris Akunin's Murder on the Leviathan (the second Erast Fandorin novel to be translated into English; the third, The Turkish Gambit, should be waiting for me when I arrive home at the end of the month, thanks to internet shopping). But I am already going off on tangents, and I haven't even begun this new post, for which I've received entreaties, from far corners of the world. As I seem to work best improvising around photos--and perhaps these will keep me out of trouble, as well--I'd like to pick up where I left off, at Cinelândia in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Standing proudly there, cast in bronze, is the late 19th century Brazilian composer of Italian opera, Carlos Gomes (1836-1896). His opera Il Guarany, based on a novel by José de Alencar, was premiered to acclaim at La Scala in 1870. Gomes's statue faces the grand Theatro Municipal (I spell it with the "h" that would have been used at the time it was completed in 19o8). This, along with the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires (for example) is among the great monuments reflecting the dramatic urban development and modernization in late 19th and early 20th century Latin America. To the right, you can see a detail from this massive structure. On the upper left, we see a hommage to the genre of "Comedy" (as part of the repertory of classical theatre), and to the right, near the bottom of the photo, we can see inscribed the names of two great musical dramatists--"R. Wagner" and, of course, "C. Gomes."

Though I am not here in Rio on a particularly professional mission, my sense of ethnomusicological curiosity never wanes, and one way that I like to satisfy this is by looking for musical references in various publications. I try to keep track of what is on display in the music sections of bookstores, and follow as much as possible the musical reportings in the daily newspapers and weekly or monthly magazines. For a relatively poor country with a famously low ratio of readers, it has always surprised me how vibrant the magazine offerings are at Rio's newsstands. There seems to be a large number of glossy, attractive, and highly literate magazine offerings in the area of culture, music, news, history, politics, literature and lifestyle. One of these is Bravo, a monthly culture magazine that last year put out a set of CD-ROMs containing all of its back issues (it was founded sometime in the 1990s, I believe; see http://www.bravoonline.com.br/). The cover for August 2005, which you can see here on the right, shows Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central do Brasil) with American actress Jennifer Connelly, with the cover-story headline, "Hollywood está a mais perto?" ("Is Hollywood getting closer?"). Indeed, the film world does appear to getting smaller; as if in call-and-response with this article, the New York Times very recently (August 9th) had a feature about Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (Cidade de Deus), who was selected by "Hollywood" producers to direct Ralph Fiennes in the forthcoming The Constant Gardener, set in Kenya and based on the John Le Carré novel. But more directly to music...when one opens to the index, we can see the musical topics for this issue:

These are admittedly hard to read from the photo. But the first article, on page 70, is about the growth of audiences for symphonic music in Brazil (Carlos Gomes is certainly smiling); the second article, on page 80, is about "the victory of rock"--another issue, I think, that might upset MV-Brasil (see my prior post, "Visit to Centro"). The third entry is a review of a CD entitled Dreaming Wide Awake, by Lizz Wright...from her website, I learned that she is a North American singer in whose style reverberates "jazz, gospel, rhythm-and-blues and the singer-songwriter tradition" (http://www.lizzwright.net/). This issue of Bravo does approximate aspects of the musical interests of Brazil's "elite" communities. Would I the time--perhaps for a future book--I would go into these kinds of analyses further. But just for the sake of brevity, and humor, we can compare Bravo's offerings with those of the Thursday issue of O Dia ("The Day"), a daily newspaper with a populist reputation. The lead musical story of the "D" section ("Culture, Diversions, and Lifestyle") section of O Dia, is about the new girlfriend of a popular singer called "Latino," and her resemblance to another Brazilian pop singer named Kelly Key. They are both louras (blonds) and both have other attractions that help sell popular newspapers and magazines. And yes, that is Robert de Niro, too, on the front page of Section D. Nowadays, and in fact for a long time, Hollywood está pertíssimo. That's all for today! I will continue to respond to requests, as best I can...

A Visit to Centro

Heading for Centro (downtown) from where I am staying in Jardim Botânico, I jumped on the first bus that approached, even though I had never taken this one before. It was the 409 Express and its sign said it would go via the Tunel Rebouças to its destination, which I believe is Saens Peña (I love the name, but have no idea where that is in this sprawling metropolis). I asked the ticket-taker if the bus passed through Centro--the regular 409, which I had taken before, goes through Lapa, just a couple of blocks shy of Rio Branco, the "5th Avenue" of downtown Rio. He said "no" but that I could get a metro at Estacio. nIt was midday, traffic wasn't bad, and the bus made it to Estacio in about 20 minutes (it gets there via Tijuca). Getting the metro (Linea 1) to Carioca station added just ten minutes to the trip (the trains are frequent); this was a good alternative route to downtown. At Carioca--in the heart of downtown Rio--onthe finds oneself in a vibrant city, a real city. Much of Rio spreads out along the beach, or in the vast expanse of the Zona Norte, largely residential and definitely not where most tourists want to wander. Many of the famous neighborhoods, such as Ipanema, Leblon, or Copacabana, feel like isolated, smaller cities. Although they have their own points of interest, it is a long and not terribly interesting haul to walk through these, more than a little. You certainly can't walk the city from one neighborhood to another, as one does Paris or Rome or New York. But in downtown, the walking is good. Centro is crowded and busy, and has the things a big city is expected to offer, in a fairly broad and interesting space...beautiful architecture, some new, but much dating to the late 19th and early 20th century (and some older); interesting book stores and music stores; special streets specializing in particular kinds of goods, such as antiques or artisanal woodwork; restaurants and cafés and juice bars; pleasant squares with trees; open air fairs; museums; and millions of interesting faces passing by.

There was not much music in the air today. Sometimes one hears some Andean musicians down from Bolivia or Ecuador playing their quenas and charangos. Today, I only recall hearing the strains of an old Stevie Wonder tune on a synthesizer--the saccharine "I just called to say I love you." This tune was in definite counterpoint to the protest, just half a city block away, against American (North and specifically USA "Anglo" American) culture. I came across two stands promoting a movement dubbed "mv-brasil", one on the pedestrian mall at Rua Uruguaiana (in Carioca) and one in Cinelândia, on the large concrete island standing between the Teatro Municipal, the Biblioteca Nacional, and another grand fin-de-siècle building that houses the municipal government (that is the way it might politely be described; cariocas have other names for it). Cinelândia is perhaps the most impressive architectural space in Centro, and looks much the same as one can see it (very briefly, in stock footage) in Hitchcock's Notorious, from the mid-1940s.

On the left you can see a photo of the mv-brasil stand on Uruguiana. I like this photo because you can appreciate the beautiful Brazilian flag (pardon the Z, por favor!). You can also see MV's website address so that you can learn of his protest (I am assuming it is a "he" behind this, but I don't know for a fact). In the banner "entregue sua arma" you can see that one of mv's main issues is rallying support against a bill currently in the Brazilian congress, that would ban or limit ownership of arms by average citizens ("Turn in your arms--and turn into a slave!"). The word on the street is that, by contrast with the US, average citizens in Brazil are not highly armed, although organized crime as well as petty criminals are armed to the teeth. Some blame this bill on the anti-gun lobby in the US and its imitators (a complementary argument would be that MV is a front for the American NRA). This is, of course, only one of a laundry list of complaints against the US that one comes across here, as one does in many parts of the Latin world. If you look carefully at the photo, you can also see a t-shirt with the letters "USA" covered by a large red X. MV also has a T-shirt protesting the use of English words in the place of Portuguese--for example, using "diet" instead of "dietético". This recalls similar linguistic nationalism, most famously of the French. But my favorite T-shirt (although I don't necessarily agree with the sentiments expressed), is the one showing the little girl Mônica--one of Brazil's most famous comic-book characters--carrying a Brazilian flag and chasing a horde of cartoon characters from the North American imagination away from "Brasil" (which even in Brazil, up to the late 19th century, was spelled with a z). English speakers can conveniently read the heading on the t-shirt, "Valorize a cultura nacional," without the burden of translation. This is of course ironic. Should it perhaps be the English-speakers of the world who should rise up against the centuries-old infiltration of Latin in their tongue? Our dictionnaries would be half as heavy, and half as expensive.

Ah, I should be talking about music, as that is my special field. Truthfully, the music in the air in Rio de Janeiro is mainly the Foley stage of urban life, accompanied by its Foley smells. These are dominated by the sounds and smells of autodom: the rattles, roars, whooshes, grumbles, honks, whirrs of cars, buses, trucks, and motorbikes, and the attendant smell of petrol that accompanies them (not only in Rio of course, but in so many large cities in the world; the oil-driven car is the plague of the modern city, isn't it?)

Apart from the Symphonie mécanique à gasoline, music is apparent in the posters that advertise upcoming public concerts. These are in fair abundance around town. The very large posters plastered on the walls in Cinelândia, at its beginning, where the Cinema Odeon on one side faces a great traffic convergence that leads to a view of the great Guanabara Bay, announce shows directed at a modern, youthful audience, for Brazilian groups playing in rock/soul/funk, hip-hop, DJ-electronica-dance, and reggae styles: Barão Vermelha (rock), Charlie Brown Jr. (a kind of young Brazilian James Brown) Gabriel o Pensador (a very interesting carioca exponent of hip-hop in Brazilian Portuguese), and the Tribo Marley (reggae). One poster announces what is apparently "dance music", because of the terms "DJ" and "80's"--but to find out about this I accessed Google, where we learn that "PLOC 80's" is the "maior festa 80s do Brasil" ("the biggest 80s dance music festival in Brazil"--check out www.ploc80s.com.br/). That is interesting. Just before seeing this sign I had met with a colleague and friend, one of Brazil's leading ethnomusicologists, at the Cinema Odeon café. In our conversation, we touched upon the popularity of dance music. He said that contemporary dance / DJ concerts (he referred in particular to a show by Fatboy Slim) have attracted crowds as large 200,000 here in Rio. This number suggested a rivalry in popularity with samba. We talked about how styles change with the generations, and how the content and meaning of any particular style, and the terms used to describe it, also change. He has been working on projects with what Americans might call "inner city" youth communities, and he said that it was fascinating to learn their perspectives on "samba," which were significantly different from concepts he had grown up with. I will leave it at that, in the hopes that he will publish on this fascinating subject.

For the last musical note of this post, I'll mention my visit to the discount CD and DVD section of the Lojas Americanas, branch in Cinelândia. This is a large department store chain, the equivalent to our Woolworths, I think, when Woolworths was something grander than it is today; or perhaps K-mart. There one can pick up CDs for at little at 10 Reais, which at the present exchange rate is slightly more than $4 US dollars, meaning that the CDs are less of a bargain than they were a year ago, when you could buy collections of famous Brazilian MPB musicians--Baden Powell, Elis Regina, Milton Nascimento, etc.--for 8 reais (at the time, around $2.70 US). I picked up two Gilberto Gil CDs, one, the soundtrack to Quilombo, and the other, his album containing the song Palco, a joyous, disco-inflected tune from the late 70s/early 80s. I used to love that one; I'm not sure it would have the same affect on me today. I also bought a collection of works by Egberto Gismonti, one of Brazil's great and fascinating guitarist/composers of the past 30 years. As a final comment, I have noticed that the musical DVD has grown tremendously in importance over the past 2 years or so. DVDs containing music videos, or filmed versions of concerts, are now taking up a considerably larger space in Brazilian music stores compared to 2 years ago (when, I believe, they were insignificant). The newspaper Globo is currently beginning to offer musical DVDs together with their Sunday newspaper, for an extra fee (for a total of 12,90 instead of 3,50, you take the DVD and the newspaper). The first in the series was a DVD concert by Zeca Pagodinho, a popular exponent of the samba-pagode, a style considered "traditional", and certainly very popular among working class audiences in Rio de Janeiro. It is a song style in which vocals and thoughtful lyrics take center stage, but accompanied by a lively assortment of harmonic and percussive instruments, notably the cavaquinho (a relative of the ukulele) and the diverse battery of percussion used for samba. The DVD was sold out at many of the bancas when I checked late on Sunday, but it was still available in Centro. I think I'll have to get it.

Rio in August

The flight to Rio was delayed for three hours. We boarded at Newark after 1 AM. The upside was that we only had to fly about 5 hours (half the flight) to reach daylight. I find it easier to travel by plane, at this time of my life, during the day. Perhaps because, over the past 20 years, I am 20% larger (belt size 32 to 38), the seats are seeming to be that much smaller; they also do not lean far back enough to be able to sleep comfortably. Luckily, I also had a thousand mp3s which kept me in an adequate trance state until day broke. Flying toward Sao Paulo, I was able to enjoy patterns such as the one above, in the ample farmland that makes up most of the rich state to which that big city belongs. The connecting flight was waiting for us, and after I got on, I must have promptly conked out, because when I regained consciousness (I wasn't aware, really, that I had lost it), we were already approaching the beaches to the west of Rio de Janeiro. A clear day, apart from the smog, I was also able to get a grand view of the Zona Norte, where most of Rio's population is concentrated.

It is always nice to be back in Rio, but especially in the "winter" months--June, July, and August. Although there is always a possibility of rain and chill (I've experience 55 F / 13 C), my usual experience has been a very Mediterranean 78F / 24C and beautiful, relatively dry, warm, and clear days.

Other than reading the headlines (mostly having to do with the current political problems of president Lula and the governing PT Workers' Party), my stay has been uneventful. Recuperating from the long trip in Europe and Africa, the more recent jet lag, and spending time with my kids. M (my 11-year old daughter) devoured Harry Potter No. 6 in one day (I brought her the English edition, purchased in London); T (my 9-year old son) was happy with the new, large National Geographic Atlas, and books on Minerals and Shells he had asked for; and O (my 4-year old son and everyone's sweetie pie) hasn't had enough of the puzzles I brought--T predicts that he'll be an expert puzzler. That's enough for my first blog entry ever. Thanks to my long lost brother "The Other" for leading me to this intriguing distraction.