*The following are my personal observations. Unidos da Tijuca at their Samba enredo final. When I arrived in Rio in mid October the samba schools were in the middle of the final composer competition to chose their school's samba enredo (song) for next carnaval. The enredo is the theme for the year and the samba enredo is the song based on the theme for the year. Each year the schools choose a theme for the next carnaval. For example, Viradouro's enredo/theme this year is Rosa Maria Egipcíaca. Who was a slave that was captured in Africa and brought in the slave trade to Brazil as a girl. She eventually earned her freedom with the help of her husband and learned to read...
*The following post is my observation and personal opinion. I was planning to write a post about all the Samba Enredo finals that I attended but then the election results happened. Brazilians had to decide for themselves what they wanted in their government the choices were stark and they had global implications. É Lula! As the results were announced people started screaming from their windows "É Lula!, é Lula!" It's Lula! It's Lula! Fireworks were going off. The owners of my AirBnB were headed out to the street to celebrate and invited me along so of course I'm going to go! Colors seem to hold more significance here. Much like right wing politics in the US have adopted the American flag as...
I'm in Brazil for 6 months improving my Portuguese and playing as well as learning about the culture. I'll be sharing experiences, photos and videos here so stay tuned! During this time the retail part of Go Samba will be on pause. Thank you for your patience! This is the view from the first place I'm staying. That's Pão de Açúcar there in the background and one of my favorite plants Bougainvillea in the foreground. Living in Brazil for 6 months has been a dream of mine for a while. I've been slowly saving my pennies over the last 5 years to make this happen. Before I left people who don't really know me asked "Oh, you're going to Brazil for 6...
In this post I’ll lay out the different types of heads and which will be the best for you. And I have a couple of pro tips at the end for getting heads to sound great. Heads that will work on surdos, in no particular order: Goat skin heads on a wooden hoop Goat skin heads on an aluminum hoop Napa heads Inverted napa heads Plastic heads Bass drum heads Goat skin heads tucked around a wooden hoop. This is by far the most traditional, original head. These sound amazing. Goat skin is my favorite sound. Every samba school in Rio that I saw uses goat skin drum heads. Even though they look like plastic they are actually goat...
Life is too short to wait for your hands to warm up by playing slow. In this post I outline 5 ways I warm up my hands fast before practicing and performing. I have added photos and video to show you exactly how.
