Pelhourinho, Olodum, Argentinians, Germany
One of my fellow students, the guy who was determined to be at the same "level" as I (but who clearly speaks and understand Portuguese far better) is German. He speaks English without an accent, Italian, French, and (surprise!) German. We went to Pelhourinho this past Tuesday because Olodum plays there. I'd seen them already this past Saturday at the African-Brazilian music festival at the Farol, but it had been a week or so since I'd been to Pelhourinho. Everybody's always talking about it, since it's the historical district and the place to be when you're going out, so I went despite the 40 (~$18US) reals it cost to get in to see the band.
I was a few minutes late to meet him at the bus stop, and coincidentally as I arrived a bus that could've taken us there left the curb (typical). We waited for a few minutes for another bus, and skipped a few express ones because of the cost. A man asked us in Portuguese if we wanted to share a cab with him and the woman he was with, presumably his wife, and we said yes since it would be much faster. Once we got in the cab it turned out, after a few moments of trying to figure out what everyone's native language was, that the couple was from Argentina and had only been here a few days on vacation. Once this was established everyone switched from pidgin Portuguese to English. I told them I was planning on going to Buenos Aires in March or afterwards, and they said they lived in a suburb of that city. When I told them I'd heard that Buenos Aires was a great place I got somewhat unenthusiastic agreement from the man, I'm guessing (hoping) because he didn't completely understand what I said.
A song from Nirvana on MTV Unplugged was playing on the cab radio, and when it switched to a different song on the same album I realized that it was a CD. I asked the driver if he liked Nirvana and he said yes, that he also liked Led Zeppelin and a couple other of what I'm guessing were British-American rock bands that I couldn't understand because of his accent. The German guy suggested he might be playing this because we were in the car, which was very possible, but to me it seemed like a lot of work just to increase your number of tourist cab fares.
The driver, like all the cab drivers here and in any major city, was a complete nut, weaving at high speed and at one point screaming at a car who had been blocking us that they were idiots. Cab drivers must have a high rate of heart disease and high blood pressure, because they almost unfailingly get more aggravated and prone to road rage than anyone else, which is unfortunate since most of them spend 12+ hours a day driving.
We got out at Pelhourinho and paid, and the fare came to just a little more than a bus when split 4 ways. Before shutting the door I told the driver in Portuguese that Nirvana was "way cool". He laughed through a newly-lit cigarrette, gave me the thumbs-up (which is often substituted for a wave here) and we shook hands.
The popular neighborhood of Pelhourinho, like anything else in Brazil, is a mix of different types and styles. Large, open courtyards surrounded on all sides by European-style churches border an intricate maze of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with tourist shops, military police stations colored in shades of brown, and Bahian restaurants. On a Tuesday night the streets are crowded with tourists and locals, and you can't walk a block or so without being approached by young restauranteurs waving you towards their restaurants with a copy of their menu.
I can't help think of it as being like the Latin Quarter of Paris, or what I imagine New Orleans looked like before this year's hurricanes.
We ate a small dinner at a restaurant that I would rate at marginal at best, since the food was overpriced, not well-prepared, and the service left quite a bit to be desired. Plus they were playing Jackson 5 tunes while the band (outside, in back, where we sat) tuned up. Despite the drawbacks there were plenty of what looked like locals swarming in once it hit mayb 8pm.
We'd heard that Olodum went on around 9:30 or 10, which gave us something like an hour and a half to kill, so we wandered around the streets, stopping to watch a few bands play on the temporary stages set up for the evenings. There were also a couple of groups of kids and young women playing Olodum-like drums. The sound of these drums covers the whole range of percussive sound, from deep bass to tap-tap-tap little snare drums, and regardless of the song or beat it is utterly mesmerizing, almost instinctivey appealing. And the groups are usually between 15-20, sometimes maybe 30 members, usually all ages. There's also a wide range of enthusiasm. One girl in the group we stopped to watch for a while was dancing in sync with the beat, as the drummers for Olodum do (it's part of the show), doing things like twirling her drum sticks high in the air and raising her arms in an elaborate, ceremonial way when she wasn't drumming. Another woman who looked bored beyond sanity, shoulders slumped and eyes wandering around the crowd, though mostly looking to something unidentifiable on her left, played on of the medium-sized snare drums. When it came around to her to do what was probably the longest solo of the particular beat they were playing, she barely flinched. She was really good, but it looked like she was ready to graduate to more challenging work.
Mesmerizing as it was, you can only see so much of this kind of drumming before it gets repetitive. Plus it's a great environment for pickpockets to work in, so we moved on after about half an hour. My feet were getting tired and I suggested that we sit on the steps of one of the churches that surrounded one of the big courtyards, in a well-lit area where other people were sitting. My friend had a caiphirina (local rum, sugar, lime drink) and I had a spring water which I had thought was carbonated when I bought it but turned out not to be (dammit).
I think we were talking about the political situation with the war in Iraq and the world economy, and somehow we got on the subject of Germany and the current economic conditions there. This was a continuation of a conversation we'd had earlier at dinner about the newly elected female prime minister of Germany, who had been officially sworn in that day. In this earlier conversation he'd described one of the more powerful political parties, which he described at one point as being as far to the right as was legal in that country.
Since there was all this music playing as we sat on the church steps, I said that I liked Brazilian / Bahian music although it was notable that they always seemed to be yelling "Brazil!" in their songs. Not that the same doesn't fly in the US, I added, particularly in Country music but elsewhere as well. He said, interestingly, that he'd been brought up to not talk too much about his country, or brag or boast or doing anything that was explicitly patriotic, for obvious historical reasons. Only recently had there been sporting and other international events where German flags were very prominent. I pointed out that even if Germany had reason to keep their patriotic voices in check, there was much for them to be thankful for, one of them being that it was one of the largest (4th? US-Japan-China-Germany?) economies in the world, and this seemed to be proof that it had sprung back from the war. And he pointed out too that it had been 60 years already and Germans, at least, had to move on.
He quietly mentioned something I already knew: there are elements still in Germany, particularly in the poor regions of the East and elsewhere, that try to revitalize fascism or racism or whatever mix of anger and hate there is as a result of poverty, not unlike in radical Islamist circles, as my friend rightly pointed out. Germans are as disturbed if not more so than the rest of the world about the existence of these groups and the tension they arouse, particularly in a society that wants to remain open and free but at the same time move on from its past. I asked him if he'd seen the movie Der Untergang (Downfall), which was a German-made, fictionalized account of HItler's last days in the bunker during the Battle of Berlin, and he said he was one of the few of his group of friends who hadn't. He said, too, that according to Germans who had either seen HItler regularly or known him (it wasn't clear to me which), the actor that played him nailed the part. So much so that when he got into character on the set either before or after shooting, some people were genuinely scared by his presence. If you've seen the movie, which if you haven't you should, I think you'll agree. I told him that the part that struck me most about the film was that when things went wrong Hitler blamed all of his generals for their incompetence, and said something like "You can't even win a bloody battle, and I went an conquered a continent all by myself!"
He seemed particularly saddened by all of the beautiful places in Europe that had been destroyed as a result of the war. I hadn't heard anyone speak of this with such conviction before.
The human tragedy, in my experience, at this point is something that is always implicitly registered, as if even between two people who have never had direct experience with it (who in the world hasn't seen its effects?), it will never be forgotten but at the same time is still too almost horrific to comprehend, much less discuss with a level of true understanding. I think there are those that would caution against allowing "implicitness" not evolve into amnesia, and I would agree with that.
Anyway, it turns out that Olodum wasn't playing that night. But who cares.
The cop who was watching the club where they usually play told us they were in Brasilia for the weekend and would be here later, presumably next week although I couldn't really confirm this. The cop was exceptionally good-natured, and come to think of it, most of the cops I've talked to in Pelhourinho are very friendly, which is surprising when you look at them because they look like soldiers.
I was a few minutes late to meet him at the bus stop, and coincidentally as I arrived a bus that could've taken us there left the curb (typical). We waited for a few minutes for another bus, and skipped a few express ones because of the cost. A man asked us in Portuguese if we wanted to share a cab with him and the woman he was with, presumably his wife, and we said yes since it would be much faster. Once we got in the cab it turned out, after a few moments of trying to figure out what everyone's native language was, that the couple was from Argentina and had only been here a few days on vacation. Once this was established everyone switched from pidgin Portuguese to English. I told them I was planning on going to Buenos Aires in March or afterwards, and they said they lived in a suburb of that city. When I told them I'd heard that Buenos Aires was a great place I got somewhat unenthusiastic agreement from the man, I'm guessing (hoping) because he didn't completely understand what I said.
A song from Nirvana on MTV Unplugged was playing on the cab radio, and when it switched to a different song on the same album I realized that it was a CD. I asked the driver if he liked Nirvana and he said yes, that he also liked Led Zeppelin and a couple other of what I'm guessing were British-American rock bands that I couldn't understand because of his accent. The German guy suggested he might be playing this because we were in the car, which was very possible, but to me it seemed like a lot of work just to increase your number of tourist cab fares.
The driver, like all the cab drivers here and in any major city, was a complete nut, weaving at high speed and at one point screaming at a car who had been blocking us that they were idiots. Cab drivers must have a high rate of heart disease and high blood pressure, because they almost unfailingly get more aggravated and prone to road rage than anyone else, which is unfortunate since most of them spend 12+ hours a day driving.
We got out at Pelhourinho and paid, and the fare came to just a little more than a bus when split 4 ways. Before shutting the door I told the driver in Portuguese that Nirvana was "way cool". He laughed through a newly-lit cigarrette, gave me the thumbs-up (which is often substituted for a wave here) and we shook hands.
The popular neighborhood of Pelhourinho, like anything else in Brazil, is a mix of different types and styles. Large, open courtyards surrounded on all sides by European-style churches border an intricate maze of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with tourist shops, military police stations colored in shades of brown, and Bahian restaurants. On a Tuesday night the streets are crowded with tourists and locals, and you can't walk a block or so without being approached by young restauranteurs waving you towards their restaurants with a copy of their menu.
I can't help think of it as being like the Latin Quarter of Paris, or what I imagine New Orleans looked like before this year's hurricanes.
We ate a small dinner at a restaurant that I would rate at marginal at best, since the food was overpriced, not well-prepared, and the service left quite a bit to be desired. Plus they were playing Jackson 5 tunes while the band (outside, in back, where we sat) tuned up. Despite the drawbacks there were plenty of what looked like locals swarming in once it hit mayb 8pm.
We'd heard that Olodum went on around 9:30 or 10, which gave us something like an hour and a half to kill, so we wandered around the streets, stopping to watch a few bands play on the temporary stages set up for the evenings. There were also a couple of groups of kids and young women playing Olodum-like drums. The sound of these drums covers the whole range of percussive sound, from deep bass to tap-tap-tap little snare drums, and regardless of the song or beat it is utterly mesmerizing, almost instinctivey appealing. And the groups are usually between 15-20, sometimes maybe 30 members, usually all ages. There's also a wide range of enthusiasm. One girl in the group we stopped to watch for a while was dancing in sync with the beat, as the drummers for Olodum do (it's part of the show), doing things like twirling her drum sticks high in the air and raising her arms in an elaborate, ceremonial way when she wasn't drumming. Another woman who looked bored beyond sanity, shoulders slumped and eyes wandering around the crowd, though mostly looking to something unidentifiable on her left, played on of the medium-sized snare drums. When it came around to her to do what was probably the longest solo of the particular beat they were playing, she barely flinched. She was really good, but it looked like she was ready to graduate to more challenging work.
Mesmerizing as it was, you can only see so much of this kind of drumming before it gets repetitive. Plus it's a great environment for pickpockets to work in, so we moved on after about half an hour. My feet were getting tired and I suggested that we sit on the steps of one of the churches that surrounded one of the big courtyards, in a well-lit area where other people were sitting. My friend had a caiphirina (local rum, sugar, lime drink) and I had a spring water which I had thought was carbonated when I bought it but turned out not to be (dammit).
I think we were talking about the political situation with the war in Iraq and the world economy, and somehow we got on the subject of Germany and the current economic conditions there. This was a continuation of a conversation we'd had earlier at dinner about the newly elected female prime minister of Germany, who had been officially sworn in that day. In this earlier conversation he'd described one of the more powerful political parties, which he described at one point as being as far to the right as was legal in that country.
Since there was all this music playing as we sat on the church steps, I said that I liked Brazilian / Bahian music although it was notable that they always seemed to be yelling "Brazil!" in their songs. Not that the same doesn't fly in the US, I added, particularly in Country music but elsewhere as well. He said, interestingly, that he'd been brought up to not talk too much about his country, or brag or boast or doing anything that was explicitly patriotic, for obvious historical reasons. Only recently had there been sporting and other international events where German flags were very prominent. I pointed out that even if Germany had reason to keep their patriotic voices in check, there was much for them to be thankful for, one of them being that it was one of the largest (4th? US-Japan-China-Germany?) economies in the world, and this seemed to be proof that it had sprung back from the war. And he pointed out too that it had been 60 years already and Germans, at least, had to move on.
He quietly mentioned something I already knew: there are elements still in Germany, particularly in the poor regions of the East and elsewhere, that try to revitalize fascism or racism or whatever mix of anger and hate there is as a result of poverty, not unlike in radical Islamist circles, as my friend rightly pointed out. Germans are as disturbed if not more so than the rest of the world about the existence of these groups and the tension they arouse, particularly in a society that wants to remain open and free but at the same time move on from its past. I asked him if he'd seen the movie Der Untergang (Downfall), which was a German-made, fictionalized account of HItler's last days in the bunker during the Battle of Berlin, and he said he was one of the few of his group of friends who hadn't. He said, too, that according to Germans who had either seen HItler regularly or known him (it wasn't clear to me which), the actor that played him nailed the part. So much so that when he got into character on the set either before or after shooting, some people were genuinely scared by his presence. If you've seen the movie, which if you haven't you should, I think you'll agree. I told him that the part that struck me most about the film was that when things went wrong Hitler blamed all of his generals for their incompetence, and said something like "You can't even win a bloody battle, and I went an conquered a continent all by myself!"
He seemed particularly saddened by all of the beautiful places in Europe that had been destroyed as a result of the war. I hadn't heard anyone speak of this with such conviction before.
The human tragedy, in my experience, at this point is something that is always implicitly registered, as if even between two people who have never had direct experience with it (who in the world hasn't seen its effects?), it will never be forgotten but at the same time is still too almost horrific to comprehend, much less discuss with a level of true understanding. I think there are those that would caution against allowing "implicitness" not evolve into amnesia, and I would agree with that.
Anyway, it turns out that Olodum wasn't playing that night. But who cares.
The cop who was watching the club where they usually play told us they were in Brasilia for the weekend and would be here later, presumably next week although I couldn't really confirm this. The cop was exceptionally good-natured, and come to think of it, most of the cops I've talked to in Pelhourinho are very friendly, which is surprising when you look at them because they look like soldiers.
posted by n10471 at 5:08 PM
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