This is really just a short clip of some real deal samba de roda in Parafuso, Camaçari just outside of Salvador.
Samba short – Learn from the Pros
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Monthly Archives: April 2009
Subversive – Ferreira Gullar
Subversive
by Ferreira Gullar
Translation by William Jay Smith
Poetry
when she comes
respects nothing.
Neither father nor mother.
When she struggles
up from one of her abysses
she ignores Society and the State
disdains Water Regulations
hee-haws
like a young
whore
in front of the Palace of Dawn*
And only later
does she reconsider: kisses
the eyes of those who earn little
gathers into her arms
those who thirst for happiness
and justice
And promises to set the country on fire.
*The Presidental Palace in Brasilia
For the poem in Portuguese, go here.
Bombing of Salvador – 1912
There’s a piece of Salvador’s history which apparently has been swept under the rug, so to speak. Its called the ‘Bombardeio de Salvador’ and involves various politicians fighting over control of Salvador in the early 1900′s. I came across a video on Youtube of the incident and took it upon myself to spend a few hours transcribing and translating the copy in order to reupload the video with English subtitles.
The first 10 seconds should be skipped. Also if the little Youtube watermark in the corner blocks some of the translation, just click on the video and go to Youtube to get a better view.
Unfortunately, the only other information I could find on the matter is the Wikipedia page (PT) and the following, which I will translate…
“A causa imediata do incidente foi a recusa do então governador do Estado em exercício, Aurélio Viana, Presidente da Câmara dos Deputados, em cumprir decisão exarada por juiz federal, … de mandar retirar a milícia estadual que ora ocupava o Paço Municipal.”
“The immediate cause of the incident was the refusal of the acting governor of the State, Aurélio Viana, President of the Chamber of Deputies, to follow a decision rendered by federal judge demanding the removal of the state militia that occupied the Municipal Palace.”
This Is Diversity featuring my articles!
This Is Diversity, a global community of citizen journalists, has featured two of my stories and hopefully there will be many more to come. I’m not in charge of choosing which stories are picked so all I can do is keep doing what I do and hope for the best.
Here’s story number one, on the UK Guardian’s top ten beaches. Story number two is on the theater art of Mamulengo.
Cheers!
Tiradentes Day – The Day of a National Hero
“Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, also known as Tiradentes (Tooth Puller), was the leader of the first organized movement against Portuguese rule in Brazil in 1789.He was born to a poor family in São José de Rey, which is now called Tiradentes, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.
During his lifetime he was a cattle driver, miner and dentist (hence his name), but it was in his job as a low-level public official that he became aware of the exploitation of Brazilians. He was sent to missions in cities along the road between Vila Rica (the capital of Minas Gerais) and Rio de Janeiro, which was the path most of the gold mined in Brazil took on its way to Portugal. Here he saw firsthand how much gold was leaving Brazil, and he knew how valuable it was.
In his travels he became aware of the ideas that had sparked the French and American Revolution. He organized the Inconfidencia Mineira in Minas Gerais, which advocated complete independence from Portugal. An attempt by Portuguese officials to collect back taxes (not too different from the collection of tea taxes by the British in the thirteen American colonies) touched off the call for a rebellion.
The plans were revealed to the governor by Joaquim Silverio dos Reis, who was a participant in the movement and betrayed the group in exchange for waiving of his due taxes. Tiradentes fled to Rio, where he tried to reorganize the movement. Not knowing who had denounced the group, he went to meet Joaquim Silverio dos Reis in Rio, and Tiradentes was arrested.
The trial lasted almost three years. Tiradentes assumed the entire responsibility for the movement. Ten members of the group were sentenced to death; all of them, except Tiradentes, had their sentences commuted.
On April 21st, 1792 (today the date of a national holiday in Brazil), Tiradentes was hanged in Rio de Janeiro, in the plaza today named Praça Tiradentes. His body was cut into several pieces. With his blood, a document was written declaring his memory infamous. His head was publicly displayed in Vila Rica. Pieces of his body were exposed in the cities between Vila Rica and Rio, in an attempt to scare the people who had listened to Tiradentes’ ideas about independence.
Tiradentes’ martyrdom made him a national hero. Thirty years after his death the king designate of Portugal declared Brazil’s independence and became its first emperor. April 21 is a national holiday.”
Written by Stephen Guild, Editor of Recife Guide
A Base de Guantánamo – Caetano
There’s a simple yet kind of catchy tune put out recently by Caetano Veloso, which came from a sentence he wrote to someone in an email. Later, he saw a film on Guantanamo Bay and remembered the email, at which point he decided to make a song out of what he wrote. On the recorded track, the backup singer’s voice isn’t so high as it is in the video below. The second video I’ll post features Caetano commenting on the song.
The fact that the Americans
Disrespected
Human rights
On Cuban soil
Is excessively strong
Symbolically
So that I don’t get shocked
(perhaps the last line can be slightly better translated)
Hospitality, one couch at a time
Taking a page (or rather a post) out of Expat Brazil’s book, I’m going to suggest a “new” site for those wishing to see more of the world for less mullah. It’s called Couchsurfing and it’s said to be a great way to avoid hotels and see the local culture, especially in Brazil where it has been gaining popularity. The basic idea is to offer up your couch to a traveller for what is usually a short period of time. By doing so, you open up your place and create an opportunity to share your culture. One of the ambassador’s of Couchsurfing.com commented on Expat Brazil’s posting and said the following…
“There are now over 1 million members, but the community that is actually hosting and surfing is significantly smaller. Generally, members detest when people treat them as “free accommodation” – they are opening their homes to have an interaction and exchange with the people they welcome. I know this, as I have hosted countless times and surfed in about 20 countries.
Most of my best friends in the world are from Couchsurfing, and it is a way of life for me now. When I go to live in a new place the first thing I do is meet the local members, and instantly I have a new circle of friends who are on the same wavelength.”
My Take
Aside from snoozing and losing out on creating my own site 10 years ago using some principles similar to CS, I think the concept is pretty cool. That being said, I’ve never used it to sleep on someone else’s couch (even though I tried when visiting Colombia late last year). You see, the idea can work and it does…it just hasn’t for me. My impression from being a year-long user is most users use the site to meet new people on and offline more so than they use it to offer their couch. There seems to be an art to getting a couch, one which I have yet to master. Everyone who knows me or who sees anything I’ve created, knows I’m heavily into culture and I would never travel somewhere using CS and just take the couch and not ask for the host’s knowledge, help and friendship. That being said, I still find that finding a couch can be a difficult task.
Surfing aside, one of the great recent ‘tragedies’ of the site is they closed their chatroom and gave no good reason for it. They gave some mumbo-jumbo about declining usage and how users are preferring other chat services yet never provided any further details. Interesting…because everytime I logged on to use the chat, it was either full, quite full or full enough. What is a user to do? Use it less (if making real-time connections and friendships with other users is your thing) and go on hoping that the art of finding a couch gets less complicated as the idea catches on.
Here’s a video (PT and some English) of the site’s popularity in Brazil.
Surfing the waves of the US Navy
“CAMPINAS, Brazil — On the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles above the Earth, U.S. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly erupted with illicit activity. Jubilant voices and anthems crowded the channel on a junkyard’s worth of homemade gear from across vast and silent stretches of the Amazon: Ronaldo, a Brazilian soccer idol, had just scored his first goal with the Corinthians.
It was a party that won’t soon be forgotten. Ten days later, Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. military satellite transponders.
“This had been happening for more than five years,” says Celso Campos, of the Brazilian Federal Police. “Since the communication channel was open, not encrypted, lots of people used it to talk to each other.”
The practice is so entrenched, and the knowledge and tools so widely available, few believe the campaign to stamp it out will be quick or easy.
Much of this country’s population lives in remote areas beyond the reach of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if illegal, communications option. The problem goes back more than a decade, to the mid-1990s, when Brazilian radio technicians discovered they could jump on the UHF frequencies dedicated to satellites in the Navy’s Fleet Satellite Communication system, or FLTSATCOM. They’ve been at it ever since.”
- Source (the rest of the story here)
My Take
As long as they aren’t tapping into US military secrets, etc, then I really don’t see a problem with it. Much like anything illegal, if one method is knocked out, another will replace it. Certain things I think should be free of charge, among them are communication and education. Barring the fact that the activity itself is considered illegal, I’m curious to know the breakdown of criminal use versus everyday chitchat…and I would guess that over 75% is everyday chitchat. Criminals use cell phones too, so we should stop cell phone usage, right? The overall issue I am concerned with here is, what differentiates right and wrong from legal and illegal? I’ll tell you the answer…the latter tries to dictate the former and I am of the opinion that they don’t always correlate. Politicians can never be ‘of the people’ because by default, they run in ‘higher’ circles, so what proof do I have that they are looking out for my interests? And (if we’re going to go all the way) who gave me my interests and talking points to begin with?
Mamulengo – Puppetry Brazilian style
I just got back from an excellent free showing of a Brazilian art called Mamulengo, performed by Chico Simões, which according to the handout,
“…is the most traditional and popular kind of puppet theater in Brazil. Passed along over the centuries by itinerant performers, mamulengo reveals the influence of the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte and African cultural aesthetics. The form is still alive in the Brazilian countryside and in the marginalized outskirts of big cities.”
More specifically, mamulengo is a type of typical puppet from Northeastern Brazil, especially in the state of Pernambuco. The origin of the name is controversial, but it is believed that it comes from mão molenga (soft or floppy hand), ideal for giving life to the puppets.
Chico Simões & Culture Points
(Source)
Chico Simões is currently the University of Berkeley’s Distinguished Writer in Residence occupying the Mario de Andrade Chair with the support of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Latin American Studies. Chico is a puppeteer, an educator, and the director of a Ponto de Cultura (Culture Point) known as Invenção Brasileira (Brazilian Invention). Sponsered by the National Ministry of Culture, thre are presently over almost two-thousand of these Pontos throughout Brazil. There are also three in the USA, including one in San Francisco (see links on San Francisco). The purpose of the Pontos is to use art forms to effect social change in marginal communities.
Mr Simões distinguishes his art form as traditional (alive and envolving) as opposed to folkloric, which he describes as immune to improvisation (much like a museum display). Mr Simões’ shows incorporate the theatrical language of “Grammelot” that dates back to the 16th century in Italy, and involves a mix of languages, sounds, gibberish and onomatopoeic elements. Since 1983, he has been travelling throughout Brazil, studying, lecturing and giving presentations of mamulengo, in addition to various other traditional forms.
Characteristics
To the folklorist Câmara Cascudo, the mamulengo is the same as the French guignol and the Italian pupazzi. In all of them, there is a cloth in front, behind which hides either one or two manipulators that give voice and movement to the dolls.
The presentations are given in a public square, generally in the outskirts of town during religious festivals, presenting both religious and present-day themes. Mamulengo itself has been practiced since the colonial era, depicting the daily lives of the people in a format which is generally comical and satirical.
Further Info
Videos, Music and More
Music is sometimes played alongside the puppet theater, usually in the style of Forró. See a short video here. As well as being played alongside the theater, sometimes the puppeteers themselves sing, as can be seen here. For a lot more videos and information as well as photos, see this story on Mamulengo, The Theater of Laughter. Recife Guide also has a story on the art form.
Museum
In the city of Olinda, the Espaço Tiridá – Museum of Mamulengo aims to preserve the tradition of the dolls, counting among its collection close to 1,500 pieces, aside from showcasing daily presentations.
The Museum is maintained by the municipality of Olinda, with antique pieces preserving the memory of the popular masters of the art form, like Saúba, Tonho de Pombos, Luiz da Serra, Pedro Rosa, Zé Lopes, Antônio Biló, Manuel Marcelino, etc.
How the Mamulengo puppets are made (PT)
The Guardian’s 10 best Brazilian beaches
The British daily, The Guardian, put out its list of the top 10 Brazilian beaches and a description of each, after polling some ‘experts’ on the matter.
“The Brazilian equivalent of the British expression “Just my cup of tea” is “é minha praia” (‘That’s my beach”), which tells you all you need to know about the two countries’ relative cultural values. Brazilians can talk for hours about their favourite strip, nowhere is more closely associated with the beach as lifestyle than Brazil, and golden sands provide many of the country’s cultural icons: The Girl from Ipanema, Havaianas, fio dental (“dental floss”) bikinis, Copacabana …
With 8,000km of coastline and thousands of beaches to choose from – most of them lying beneath palm trees in the tropics – we asked 10 experts to choose their favourites, from a river beach in the Amazon down to one of the country’s hippest beach cities, Florianópolis. And if we’ve missed out your favourite, we’d like to hear from you.”
1. Alter do Chao, Pará (which I’ll write about on the new Belém site)
2. Fernando de Noronha (technically an archipelago, not a beach)
3. Praia do Toque, Alagoas
4. Taipus de Fora, Maraú peninsula, Bahia
5. Caraiva, Bahia
6. Arpoador, Rio de Janeiro (Ipanema is better. Prainha is a local favorite)
7. Lopes Mendes, Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro state
8. Praia da Fazenda, São Paulo state
9. Bonete, São Paulo state
10. Lagoinha do Leste, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina
