Samba School

Paraty, Brazil

Today I have planned as a work day, though I get a late start because I need to take Alison to the hospital. Now that the sangria has worn off, she can barely walk a couple of steps. I get a taxi and take her down to the local clinic. Luckily for my dodgy Portuguese, it doesn’t take much explanation. As I feared, there didn’t seem to be much the doctor could do. He decides to clean and pop the biggest blister, but this turns out to be a very unpopular decision. It’s so painful that Alison actually screams at the top of her lungs at one point. So, the doctor prudently just put some soothing cream on the rest and bandaged them up.

Unfortunately, now Alison can’t walk at all, so once I get her in a cab, Steve and I actually carry her out and put her in our room. As all the passengers are camping here, we have the only room. I had planned to spend most of the day in my room doing accounts, but it looks like any computer work I want to do will have to be done at an internet place.

Before I do any of that I take the cook group shopping. On these tours, when we’re camping, all of the shopping, cooking and cleaning is done by the passengers. They have different groups and rotate jobs. The two girls who are cooking tonight are Claire and Kyanne.

After shopping it’s already 2 o’clock. The problem with this job is that you never seem to have enough time in the day and plans constantly change. I’m desperately behind in my accounting, but now I don’t have time or a place to do them. Oh well, I’ll save them for the Pantanal.

That as we’re cooking dinner we hear the pounding rhythms of a practicing samba school who are in the little stadium next door. We can’t see them from where we are, but it sounds like a band of about 120 people.

After dinner we go over to watch. These schools are all over Brazil. They practice almost every day from August until Carnaval in February, all for an hour and a half of entertaining. Though this school sounds much bigger because of the stadium acoustics and of enthusiasm put into their music, I only count about 36 people. Though when they march in parade they march line by line, during practice they situate themselves in kind of a spiral. On the outside are the 5 or 6 women of the group. Usually, women are reserved for dancing, but the drum groups always have a few shaking a kind of a tambourine like instrument. They stand with bored expressions shaking their instruments in perfect time. Because of their apparent indifference, they’re job looks easy at first glance, but if you notice they all have instruments of different pitch and they don’t just shake them through the whole song. There are very specific times when they have to shake their specific instrument. This goes for the drums as well. Even though you might have three or four guys with the same kind of drum, they won’t just be banging them at the same time. They’ll kind of alternate, so if you look at one person it seems pretty easy, but when you take in the whole section you realize it’s actually a very complicated rhythm.

In the middle is the leader. All eyes are on him. He is a flurry of sweat, movement and multitasking. The entire time he is blowing his whistle, signaling changes from different sections, waving his hands and glaring at delinquent drummers, and meanwhile dancing the whole time. All of a sudden on his signal the entire group will stop, he’ll bang out a quick complicated solo, and then group will beat out a reply, he’ll solo again, they’ll reply again, finally with a deft flick of his wrist the whole group will be back into the song again. It’s absolutely impossible to stand still while watching. Among the spectators you see children still in diapers dancing along while forming they’re life long addiction to rhythm and dancing. It’s a community event. In the small town of Paraty there are 6 or 7 samba schools and groups of friends will walk between each one laughing, playing and flirting while watching they’re free entertainment. These schools represent a single minded commitment that this country has to having a good time. I never get tired of watching it.