drums in the night

I went to a Bahian restaurant in Pelhourinho last night. For those of you that don't know, Pelhourinho is just about the oldest part of Salvador, which itself is very old, so it has these European-style, very narrow cobblestoned streets. Somewhat like Florence if you've ever been there, with tall buildings and a lot of old churches. Anyway, at night it's real dark in some places, although it's relatively safe. The local government loaded up the place with cops since the neighborhood was cleaned up a few years ago, to keep from scaring away tourists. Dani and I took a cab there. If I were the driver I would have taken us to the edge of the neighborhood and told us to walk the extra two blocks or so to get to the restaurant, since the streets are so narrow, crowded, and bumpy, and some of the turns are so sharp that it doesn't look like even the small cars they have here can make it without nailing a building corner. This guy, however, drives us up to within a block of the place (there was a barrier to keep cars out of the end of the street), over head-shaking, whiplash-caliber bumps and through the aforesaid turns that I was sure he was going to destroy his car on. Plus there's more people there than I've ever seen during the day, and this very loud, deep, heavy drumming sound is coming from the center of the old city. The streets are lit but some of them are still very dark in places. We get out and start walking around looking for the restaurant, and eventually have to walk right past / through the group of people who were doing the drumming. There were probably 10 kids with drums and 10 adults (the latter had the bigger ones). The type of drumming they do is inspired by the local group Olodum, who did the drum part in the beginning and elsewhere on the Paul Simon song "The Obvious Child" from Rhythm of the Saints. The music has some African origins but is considered a product of Bahia. It was very, very loud, especially since our restaurant was near the center where the drums were being played, and at one point the bass sound was coming through the wall and past my eardrum to the point where it felt like they were drumming on my brain. Once the food came I sort of forgot about it. It's the kind of bass sound that you feel more than hear - bone-jarring but in a positive way, if that makes any sense.