Last Hours In Barra

Spent my last few hours in Bahia basking in the sun,
Lying on the beach observing the scene on the sands of Porto do Barra…
Felt like I was stockpiling heat for what promises to be a long winter up north…

Unadulterated beauty and exposed physiques everywhere…
Vendors singing melodic strains as they hawk their goods,
Sunglasses, lotions, handicrafts, necklaces, blankets, barbequed quejo,
Camarao, acaraje, cigarettes, fresh coconut water…

These last few days in Barra have been a glorious vacation… Haven’t gotten much done, the heat slows down the flow of things to a trickle, and the sun beating you down into submission each day forces your metabolism to decelerate. Everything is heavier, harder to move, in need of stimulation and impulse to draw it forth from beneath the spell of the heat.

I’m coming to the end of this particular journey, and have less to show for it than I’d hoped. Haven’t gotten around to cleaning up my writings on the Candomble ceremony I watched, but I should have that finished up in the next day or two. But in a larger sense I feel defeated by the sheer scale and size of this place, what it does to your perceptions, how overwhelming each moment is. I suppose all places can be like that, but there’s something very welcoming about this Bay, that encourages assimilation… Many people call America the melting pot, but in truth, the metaphor sociologists have been using in recent years to describe it is “a tossed salad.” The elements inside it don’t dissolve, they retain their distinct flavors and identity, and intermingle in a rich combination of flavors. Brazil, this Bahia I’ve been trying to transcribe, this is much more akin to a melting pot… Everything melts and loses its original form, assimilates, acquires the characteristics of things unforeseen. Blood lines, cuisines, dialects, beats, they all trade chromosomes on their way to a transformation into a new hybrid, a strong cocktail of strange juices fermenting slowly in the humidity…

This blog was a vain, foolish attempt to capture this initial Brazil experience in words, to transcribe the impressions of this trip into something shared. Every interaction I’ve had, every subtle flavor, linguistic nuance, passing car with it’s stereo blaring, every vendor, thief, working girl and sun worshipper adds up to a scene that my language fails to describe. I don’t have the words for this state of mind, it’s laid back vibe eludes my convoluted sentences and excessive rhyme schemes. This place is beyond the stilted gray overcast moods so pervasive in English, the tongue loosens under these skies and waxes lyrical, drunk on spiced seafood stews and cod fish curries. I can’t capture this place, I can’t even take a proper snapshot of it. This state of being transcends my corporatized mind, slips through my safety nets, floats off into an understanding that only those who live in the tropics can fully grasp. I am no brasileiro, I’m a fraud, fronting, bearing an outer image but with a soul tied to the American-identity dillemna, race questions and appropriation issues and hips forever hemmed in by Puritanism and an absence of abandon in public life…

I would raise children in Brasil, because they would elude some of the most pressing questions that’ve consumed so much time in my life, the issues that need to be explored to be understood. In terms of racial identity, religious identity, the role of music in life, the folks in Brazil are ahead of the curve. The gene pool is ahead of the curve, melding into new combinations far ahead of the homogonous monocultures that populate the rest of the planet. I’ve never been anywhere with so many interracial couples hanging about, organically drawn to each other, without the constructs of race and prejudice framing their interactions as starkly as they do in America…. It’s OK to love people across lines here, to see people for people, and not the constructs we’ve created to house their characters. Or maybe the grass is always greener, and I’m seeing only what I want to see… But this place is magical, Bahia, this is a bay area filled with immigrants enthralled by what they found here… And I want IN…

solar meditation III

We are different creatures when under different suns
people don’t get enough light and warmth where I come from
some of us are better suited to hot spots & tropical zones,
surrounded by a broader spectrum of skin tones…
why are Brazilians so beautiful?
Because they soak up more rays than the rest of us
Because they know the rhythms and in the rhythms they trust
Because they never learned to be stiff, or to survive in the cold
Because they don’t throw layers over their souls
just to stay warm…

Floyd L.Morris & friends...

I spent the day today with my new friend, Floyd, a smiling photographer who befriended me over breakfast in the hotel restaurant the other day. A transplant from Jamaica via New York, Floyd spends a couple of months out of each year in Bahia, working from a rented apartment and selling his images to pay his way. Check out his site. It was a pleasure and a privilege to stumble across him at the Village Novo, as he opened up a world to me that I would never have accessed without him. He looked like good people from the outset, sitting in the corner of the café, deep into his Apple Powerbook (in the pic he's the guy on the right. Damien Marley is on the left). In the private echo chamber of my own prejudices, dreads with powerbooks = a better planet. Floyd spent a chunk of that first morning chatting up one of the lovely waitresses of the Village Novo in sly, endearing Portuguese, and when he started talking to me he had those signature island accents to certain words that spell out Jamaica to anyone who listens hard enough. I’m so grateful to have found a friend for my last few days in Barra, because there are scenes beyond my ability to find in Brazil, and it takes someone like Floyd to crack open the door…

We visited the Pelhourinho for my last time on this trip, as I wanted to pick up a few things before I departed. I had the traumatizing experience of having my bank card refused and subsequently locked out by Big Brother, because clearly someone at Chase stateside thought it suspicious that my bank account was suddenly being used in Brazil. So I’ve had no money for my last few days and nights in Brazil, which is not a good place to be in as a tourist, or anyone else for that matter. Funny how your cash flow determines so much of what you take from any given place, or moment in time…

So Floyd decided to take me around the Pelhourinho as he took pictures. The best things in life are free, right? He took me down an alley into a shop owned by a righteous dread named Chilly Stone, transplanted from California, a silkscreen artist, graphic designer, and serious student and devotee of the Rastafarian faith. A conscious soul with a penchant for deep reggae and duotone art, Chilly makes some sick T-Shirts, so I bought a few to hawk at the Africa Hi-Fi DJ nights I work in Chicago. It was a solid connection to make, because I could totally sell a bunch of his T-shirts in Chicago, and it doesn’t hurt to have a friend in Bahia. Chilly & Floyd spent some time catching up, and clued me into the looming crisis on the horizon dealing with the continued devaluation of the dollar. As the dollar continues to shrink in value (the Canadian Dollar is now worth more than the US Dollar), it’ll trigger widespread economic repercussions throughout Latin America, ranging from inflation to capital flight. It’ll look ugly in the US, too, but you never hear people discuss the fact that real wages have shrunk under George W Bush, and that people are in fact making less for more work. Paul Krugman has been riffing on this for years, but he’s largely been written off as a “liberal new york times columnist,” instead of the serious mind he is. The fact remains, if the dollar keeps plummeting downwards, it’ll take a lot of people with it for the ride…

After leaving Chilly’s store we hopped a cab and headed to a rendezvous with a couple of Floyd’s photographer friends in Castella Branca, outside of Salvador, about a 30 minute drive.

Castella Branca...

Castella Branca was a trip. After a week spent holed up in an exclusive hotel in the Pelourinho, it was a wakeup call of sorts to get into a cab and drive out of Salvador, and find a veritable sea of favelas in all directions. Stacks of slums, piled up like crooked building blocks laid out haphazardly on woefully planned stretches of public land, the favelas are a symptom of some of the serious social problems facing Brazil. The wealth disparity in this country is as aggravated as anything I’ve seen in India and Bangladesh, and there is no physical division between classes: the very rich live alongside the very poor. Anyhow, we drove for about a half hour out to Castella Branca, where we were met by Floyd’s friends. They were documenting the creation of a fantastic community graffiti wall, about 40 meters long, which showcased some of the best graffiti artists in the area. The styles were unique, an interesting amalgamation of influences that included some African/South American art elements that I’ve never seen in any tags in the USA. It was a spectacle to behold, and it’s a wonderful thing to see the hip hop aesthetic manifesting in places where you weren’t sure it reached. But the wall, although glorious, was just one highlight on what turned out to be a very fulfilling trip…

At the end of the street, in a small public park, a few more of Floyd’s friends were camped out. There was a DJ table set up, connected to a series of speakers piled into a makeshift column, and littered around the table were crates full of records and 7” dub plates. After making a few introductions, the guys started to spin some records, in a very laid back, easy going way, and we were treated to what I can only call an original sound system dub set, courtesy of “The best ragamuffin & Dub DJs” in Bahia… I’m a student of Dub, or the aesthetic that emerged from Jamaica out of the work of artists like Lee Perry, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, and more, who completely revamped records by finding new and interesting ways to play them on mobile sound systems throughout Jamaica. The setup these folks were rocking in Castella Branca was an echo of that world…







Mad deconstruction session
a dread convention
Spinbacks & delay filling the square
Rivulets of drippy bass spilling out into late afternoon air
Reggae by the bay
roots & raw bumping riddims winding through throbbing speaker cones
the ghost methodologies of imported island bones
synchronicity & sudden clarity in a strange place:
dub is simply stripped down sounds tweaked out & defaced
a spirit of seeking truth through minimal tools
the recrafting of the old by the hands of the new school…

…Took a public bus home. Long ride. Ended up heading out to a late dinner of Brazilian Barbeque, which was a bit overpriced but absolutely delicious and well worth it. A fabulous feast that covered the gamut from mussels to filets to chicken hearts to fried bananas… mmmm… unfortunately, when we walked out of there, I was down to my last 30 reals, no counting the cash I needed for the taxi to the airport, so I had to bail and head back to the hotel. We stood outside the Fashion Club for a minute though, a club with a formidable line out the door, of people dressed very well and looking very sharp. Gorgeous women in impossible heels and smoldering dresses, man candy fellas with afros and green eyes, triceps bulging out of designer short sleeves, everyone looked delicious… Unfortunately, I was the broke ass wallflower, so I stared for a bit and then headed back to the hotel… Last night in Brazil, I ended up staring out my balcony at the ocean, pondering the luck, fate, or fortune that brough me here to Bahia de todos os Santos…

sex for sale

Prostitution is such an ugly word. Such negative connotations, so many snap judgments in the spaces between the syllables… I used to think it was an ugly phenomenon, a blemish on the face of society, something tucked away in alleys and the shadowy places of the world. When I lived in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I’d walk out my front door at night and see the same girl standing on the corner, 25 meters from my front door, in the wealthiest neighborhood in the country, waiting for tricks. She couldn’t have been older than 12, face painted in garish shades, always with too much lipstick and a vacant look in her eyes… Looking at her was devastating, a single glance was a portrait in iniquity and desperation, defiling any sense of purity or morality you could possibly cultivate in a place like Dhaka. Seeing a girl younger than me turning tricks for a living put things in perspective…

But my perspective has changed with age…For better or worse, I can’t tell, I try not to put value judgments on what I see anymore. But I see sex for sale everywhere…and in Brazil, from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s just the way it is. I apologize to anyone reading this looking for the history, the culture, the things I’ve been riffing on for the last two weeks. Spend enough time somewhere and you start thinking about more than the mystique and heritage of a place, and about the actual people who inhabit it today… And what I see here in Brazil is a society so stratified that it’s reduced a large section of its population (aka underprivileged women) to selling themselves to survive. People pay for sex here all the time... From the very highest echelons of society to the favela dwellers, in this culture, you can make money giving it up. Sex is treated as a commodity, and bodies are bankable assets…

Is that wrong?

I never feel more American than when I’m passing self-righteous judgment on other cultures, speaking in platitudes about justice and what’s right and wrong and how life ought to be and how people ought to behave, to someone who never asked for an American opinion in the first place. So I try not to do it, I’m in no position to claim awareness of some kind of absolute for all the different people in the world. Besides, it’s not like America’s insistence on public Puritanism has led to a more righteous society, if anything it’s led to greater hypocrisy… I saw a great bumper sticker recently that sums up how I feel about America perfectly: “Waging War for Peace is like Fucking for Chastity.” Right? Right…

Anyhow, I bring this up because the opportunity to have sex for money presented itself a couple times this week. I, however, had my bank freeze my account cause they apparently think it’s suspicious that I’ve started spending my money in Brazil. So I’ve been colossally broke this whole week, and it’s been a pain in the ass. I’m not sure that I have it in me to pay for sex, but I would’ve liked to flirt, or at least buy a gorgeous Brasileira a drink, and I couldn’t even do that… how’s the Busta Rhymes song go? “Got no woman and you got no car? Then you got no woman, and there you are.” Plus I don’t have a phone, so making any kind of a connection with someone was damn unlikely. But I got some crude hints from passing strangers, in Portuguese no less, so I might have completely misunderstood, but I doubt it… the way those hips were cocked, they couldn’t mean much else… and there were plenty of spots around town where you can go and pick up someone looking to get paid. Is it right? Is it wrong? I don’t know, but it’s simply the way of life here.

Brazil, like many other countries, has created an economic system where many of the people have no specific skill sets or education, and the only value they can manifest is through selling the one asset they have, their bodies. That’s the way of things in a lot of places, actually, in Thailand, in the former Russian republics along the Baltic Sea, in a lot of countries with limited opportunities, women tend to turn to the oldest profession to get by… Although a lot of people would paint this story in tragic shades (and it is horrific, and there is sex-slavery, and there are terrible atrocities in that world), I get the sense here in Brazil it’s not something people wring their hands over much. This country as a whole has more serious problems than people getting paid to have sex… Although perhaps that’s the manifestation the deeper issues facing this society…

But I’m not a critic. This place is what it is, and no tourist who strolls through for two weeks should be dishing out overarching criticisms like this… I’m just observing…

Record Shopping II & III

Stumbled off the beach into a shopping center
In search of shaving cream
Suddenly I’m surrounded by a suburban kid’s most familiar dream
The mall
could’ve been in any city in the world
A bright-lit monolithic temple to capitalism
all angled glass and profit prisms
Brazil done by Disney under fluorescent lights
Escalators and food courts and dizzying heights
Levi’s Depots & Department Stores
Name Brands Are Such High Property Whores
But like a good consumer I stuck around and spent money
Looking for that sweetest honey
The music
the key that opens all doors

Bought:
Body Rapture – Brazilian Electro Compilation
Fatboy Slim – Fala ai! - Brazil Tour Commemoration Mix
Gilberto Gil – Perfil
Man Ray – Compilation
Emiliano 5 – Compilation
Urban Fusion – Tok & Stok -Compilation
Top DJs Brazil - Compilation
Club Trax – Brazil Clubfloor - Compilation
Bahia Mania de Pagode - Compilation
Nina Simone Remixed - Compilation

The number of compilations indicates I’m clearly flying blind and have no clue what to buy. Too many choices, Axe, Pagode, Tropicalia, MPB… when in doubt it doesn’t hurt to stick to what you know: and I know about buying random electronica compilations put together by DJs with axes to grind and sounds to spread…

I’m getting disoriented out here, the sun set in a place on the horizon where I thought I saw it rise the other day… Things are getting softer and slower under the sun, the hours run together and I find myself feeling done before the day is over, needing naps, this lifestyle is a trap…I don’t live here, and winter in Chicago looms on the horizon with its cold teeth and slow unfolding hibernations… I’m worried I’m getting comfortable… too comfortable...

from ´Through the Brazilian Wilderness`

In 1913 Theodore Roosevelt decided to spend his post-presidential years exploring Brazil, largely to escape US politics... he wrote some interesting memoirs...
quote of the day:
“The first settlers came to Brazil a century before the first settlers came to the United States and Canada. For three hundred years progress was very slow – Portuguese colonial government at that time was almost as bad as Spanish. For the last half-century and over there has been a steady increase in the rapidity of the rate of development; and this increase bids fair to be constantly more rapid in the future.
The Paulistas, hunting for lands, slaves, and mines, were the first native Brazilians who, a hundred years ago, played a great part in opening to settlement vast stretches of wilderness. The rubber hunters have played a similar part during the last few decades. Rubber dazzled them, as gold and diamonds have dazzled other men and driven them forth to wander through the wide waste spaces of the world. Searching for rubber they made highways of rivers the very existence of which was unknown to the governmental authorities, or to any map-makers. Whether they succeeded or failed, they everywhere left behind them settlers, who toiled, married, and brought up children. Settlement began; the conquest of the wilderness entered its first stage…”
Theodore Roosevelt from ´Through the Brazilian Wilderness`
1914

Visited a 500 year old lighthouse yesterday, perched at the corner of the steep precipice… Farol da Barra is one of the oldest Portuguese lighthouses in the world, and it affords a great view of the whole bay. Took some pics…

...sun fried fritters...

Sandy dreads, beach towels, & tangas on the brain
Neo-nubian mulattos rocking bodies no swimsuit can contain
Everywhere hungry skins & curly hair
Hips to kill for drinking in solar glare
Barra is a mecca for beach bums, and the traffic shows:
Cigarette butts dot the water’s surface, and plastic refuse floats below:
I find a spot a few meters north, towards Farol:
Fewer people and less vendors, but still plenty of sol…
Boats silhouetted in the distance against outcroppings of black rock
Teenagers frolicking and laughing around lovers sharing lip locks
A few meters away, on a makeshift rock throne,
A woman in a string-bikini sits siren-like, framed by wet stones,
Dangling half her body as a sacrifice to the oncoming waves
Skimming through a novel, she turns slowly, page by page,
her legs are submerged over and over in the pounding surf…
I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite as sexy anywhere on earth…

News from home...

It's a bit surreal to be so apart from the rest of the world, seemingly so displaced...

At someone who considers themselves Bengali, it's surreal to see the news today that Cyclone Sidr hit the southeast coast of Bangladesh and left a path of devastation in its wake... i'm here in paradise and the homefront is in ruins... but we all saw it coming...Bangladesh has experienced a slew of traumatizing events like this for the last 40 years, it's arguably one of nations in the world that's most prone to disaster. it's only a matter of time before the alluvial plane that comprises half the territory of Bangladesh is immersed in rising ocean waters... 1/2 the country is below sea level, so an inch will wipe away a chunk of the map... That is the history and future of every delta on the planet, isn't it? depressing, but true nonetheless... I'm reminded of Jimi's line, from the Axis:Bold as Love album... änd so castles made of sand, slip into the sea, eventually..."

beach blues

Spent all day yesterday working at the hotel restaurant/internet café…
Staring out at the beach just 30 meters away
Trying to finish up writings probably better left for another day…

The experience of a place is a lot different
once you’re no longer surrounded by native English speakers…
perhaps I appear to be the tweaker I am
As I’m not sure how I’m being received
And my feeble Portuguese
Is so bad you have to see it to believe
…a polyglot slop of stuttered Spanish, poor grammar, and desperate hand motions…

Aside:
…If the Convento do Carmo was like the setting for some Dan Brown-esque novel of international intrigue and religious espionage, this stretch of Barra I’m staying in feels like it’s replicating scenes from Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diaries.

In a failed bid to counter a sudden bout of unexpected homesickness,
I found myself drinking Guinness at an Irish Bar called Dubliner’s
On a garage-level stretch in front of the beach…

Three beers into a slow evening of watching a billiards game from a distance, I’m suddenly surprised to see the attractive pair of lesbians sitting next to me start making out. In an animated exchange of tongues and hands and palpable real emotions, these two women wrap themselves in each other’s and start seriously sucking face. Their public grope apparently caught me off guard, cause I really didn’t know how to react... Hmmmm… Is this normal or are these two women simply making fun of my complete inability to communicate with anyone in the room? I got the sense they were teasing me, hamming it up for the gringo burro, but who really knows…

Paid my tab and went to find some food, cause I hadn’t eaten dinner… Dined alone at an oceanfront hole-in-the-wall, had some very tasty penne pasta with pesto sauce and chunks of fresh tuna. Mmmmm…. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write a long-overdue post on the food I’ve been eating… the flavors… the textures…the fruit…the fish…the fried chicken… yeah…I’ll write about that tomorrow…

...shift...

lifting the veil to a new perspective ...

Checked out of the Convento do Carmo ontem
dentro o Pelhourinho
to move my life down to Village Novo Beach Suites on Porto da Barra
al lado a praia

Salvador is a city divided:
on High cliffs overlooking the bay,
the Cidade Alta resides with a view to history…
The lower town – Cidade Baixa –
Is the new mystery
I am waking up to…
This a story of segregation
Not completely unlike Chicago
But definitely a division of above and below…
The lower town was built on land reclaimed from the Sea:
The higher town was the home of nobility and clergy

The cliffs of Bahia constitute natural class walls
hard to scale
but elevators were built
-ski-lift style contraptions-
to transport people to where the action was…
in work and play
these people seem to get along out here by the Bay
maybe I can learn a thing or two more important than marketing out here
the cards tell me it has something to do with my fears…

…slept for 12 hours straight after I got here…
…these meetings are harder on your body than they appear…
…but gratitude is in order for this opening to explore...
…the cards tell me there are good things in store…

Last pictures of the Convento do Carmo

This hotel is something out of an Umberto Eco novel. All dark crimson red fabrics, marble statues, white walls and exposed old stone facades eternally fused together… Certain Church buildings are designed to live forever, and this Convent is no joke… you can just imagine the monks walking it with lit candles, the priests sweeping through in their robes and vestments... I feel blessed to have been through its rooms… took some terrible pictures, though...

...the stocks...

Saudade

said a round of hard goodbyes

to friends with horizons in their eyes

...spend enough time in a convent with your peers & strange bonds form...

...in this place of boundless memory the ghosts of the departed stay warm...

...we've left pieces of ourselves here...

& suddenly the cast of characters disappears

& i'm the only one still staring at this Salvador skyline,

sipping on Bahian wine,

spooning up steaming bowls of red fish stew

canvassing the divas on every corner crooning seductive brasileiro blues...

...and so this journey through Brazil continues...

...solo...

Pelhourinho Nights...

funky drummer riffs dripping off the walls like peeling pastel paints
junkyard dogs & streets clogged with processions praising syncretic saints
the cobblestones are jumping
impossibly fly women krumping
bumping around steep hills and narrow lanes
in this crucible where new myths are framed

the fracas grows louder


harder


fades in and out as the bands move along
the Pelhourinho is a mobile song
a moveable feast
a shuffling throng
with their ankles greased
getting down and dirty in front of decaying facades:
these Churches have no illusions:
they know that rhythms are Gods...

Record Shopping I

Finally made it into a record store... Did some damage to my bank account. There's a lot of great, distinct music here, and i'll be coming back for more soon... Stuck to the electronica section... maybe tomorrow i'll dig up some Samba or Tropicalia records...
check out the site of Cana Brava Records, it's got a ton of really interesting info on Bahia, it's history, culture, geography, a lot you'd want to know: http://www.bahia-online.net/

Here's what I got, and all of it sounds SICK so far:

Carnaval Eletronico - Daniela Mercury (compilation)
A Procura Da Batida Perfeita - D2
Karla Sabah - Drum'n Bossa
Iara Figueiredo - Aluado [+Remixes]
BPM Comp. - Vol.1 Next Brazilian Vibe Experience
Hotel Emiliano IV - Compilation
DJ Marky - Audio Architecture


:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

The Hostesses With the Mostest...

... these are the four righteous and beautiful women who made this conference possible,

and without them and the hours they put in, i don't think i'd be here in Brazil...

...obrigado Marina, Sarah, Rosalie, e Carolinha, por sempre...

Plastered @ a Praia do Flamengo

After a marathon stretch of hours spent finishing up this work meeting inside a stuffy conference room, all the delegates to this conference promptly boarded a couple vans that took us to a somewhat distant beach, outside of the city of Salvador... Someone told me today it was the Praia do Flamengo, way up north of the city, but we both might be mistaken... Regardless, it was a much different scene from the closer beaches, and although it was probably 9:30 at night before we got there, it was still gorgeous in darkness... Awaiting us was a beachfront restaurant overlooking the ocean, a swinging live band, a nicely crafted dancefloor, tiki torches along the beach, and a bottomless supply of caipirinhas and local beer... relieved to be finished with the bulk of my responsibilities, i got completely sloshed in a very short span of time... had some great conversations with Gisella Campo from Lima and Katy Martinez from Santo Domingo, about recent Latin American history, politics, and movies, which eventually dovetailed back into talking about music, as it so often does... before long i up on the dancefloor trying on some samba moves i pilfered from Wilson, our tour guide, who was shaking up a storm as the band played through its set... had a brief couple moments of insightful advice bestowed on me by the ever-stylish and always elegant Sergio Rodriguez, before it started to rain and we were herded on to the vans, drunk, disorderly, and largely under-nourished...except for the booze... so apologies for the handful of horrendous, completely out of focus pics i got that should've never made it off the memory card, but i'm posting them anyway. i'm hellishly hungover today, and nothing i could rhyme or write can possibly convey the feeling of completion, accomplishment, relief, and deliverance i felt last night...except maybe an undecipherable image of blurry lights & a band you can barely see.... i wish i hadn't drank so many caipirinhas, and crashed so early - didn't say proper goodnights to anyone, and passed out in a dizzy stupor bordering on nausea... not a good way to close out a week given the friendships i've made out here... anyhow, sorry for the shite images. i was too far gone...
































the restaurant from down on the beach by the water...

lost histories

food for thought:

Too often the pictures we paint of the world overlook the indigenous people of the planet, a long-neglected group diminishing by the day, forgotten and marginalized as inevitable casualties in our strident march towards globalization. The ancient peoples of the world are not afterthoughts, they are our shared heritage, and their increasing poverty and irrelevance to modern societies is a symptom of the pathologies inherent in our current economic world order. The most eloquent defender of this group is probably Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, arguably the sexiest revolutionary alive today. He writes: “We have to make sure of our place in society as indigenous Indians... In Mexico, there are movements, there are revolutions and change, but for the indigenous nothing changes.” Marcos recognize that the plight of the indigenous is the same worldwide, because "Free Trade" regimes like NAFTA and the realities of today's global trade rules are stepping stones towards the ultimate extinction of these populations. They've long lived beyond the understanding of the dominant European worldview that colonized most of the planet over the last few centures. Here's a little blurb i came across about the original Indians of Brazil, written 500 years ago by the first people to encounter the Amazonian Indians...

Descriptions of the Brazilian Aborigines, circa 1500 AD
“The language spoken along the whole coast is the same…it is very soft and easily learned by any of the tribes…It lacks three letters…namely F, nor L, nor R, a very wonderful thing, for they have neither Faith, Law, nor Ruler; and thus they live without order, [have no idea] of counting, weights or measures. They adore nothing, nor do they believe that after death there is glory for the good and punishment for the wicked. Their belief in the immortality of the soul is only this, that their dead will go through a future life wounded or cut in the pieces or in the condition in which he left this life… These people have no king or any one to administer justice, except a chief in each village which is like a captain, whom they obey voluntarily and not through constraint.”
Pedro de Magalhaes Gandavo “The Histories of Brazil” 1500 AD

swimming the bay of all saints

"Religious city, colonial city, Negro city of Bahia. Sumptuous churches bedecked with gold, wealthy houses decorated with azulejos, hovels, poverty-stricken slums, ladeiras, historic monuments, old fortresses..."
Jorge Amado

six hours sunning on the deck of a branco boat
submerged in the bay of all saints till my fears no longer float
drowning in salt, i swallow my fate and swim to shore,
hollowing out my insides to fill with appropriated lore
i've waited for so long to walk these sands,
i believe my fate is for these rhythms to fill my hands
this is where soul surfers belong
where glorious music satiates a swinging throng
where roving drum crews hold court out where the water ends
where crowds gather to sing in harmony as their guardians descend

Bahia, a safe harbor for spirits of all stripes
ya hear it in the grooves coloring each sanctified night
ya see it in the white light emerging from the headwraps of the holy
ya feel it amidst the churches decked in 18th century gold leaf

ya know it when your bones start bending & fold free

today i plunged into the ocean and let it hold me
this paradise is everything my lineage told me...

- chefe -

Renato Loes

LB/Sao Paulo

Sergio Rodriguez

LB/Milan

Rafa Anton - LB/Madrid

Almoco a Restaurante Amado

Carolinha Aranha - LB/Sao Paulo
Pablo Capara - LB/Buenos Aires
Katy Martinez - LB/Santo Domingo

Festa Observations...circa 1853

“About a fortnight after our arrival at Para there were several holidays or festa as they are called. Those of the ‘Espirito Santo’ and the ‘Trinidade’ lasted each nine days. The former was held at the cathedral, the latter at one of the smaller churches in the suburbs. The general character of these festas is the same, some being more celebrated and more attractive than others. They consist of fireworks every night before the Church; …processions of saints and crucifixes; the Church open, with regular services; kissing of images and relics; and a miscellaneous crowd of Indians, all dressed in white, thoroughly enjoying the fun, and the women in all the glory of their marine gold chains and earrings. Besides these, a number of the higher classes and foreign residents grace the scene with their presence: showy processions are got up at the commencement and termination, and on the last evening a grand display of fireworks takes place…a rather expensive honor among people who, not content with an unlimited supply of rockets at night, amuse themselves with great quantities during the day for the sake of the whiz and the bang that accompany them…Music, noise and fireworks are the three essentials to please a Brazilian population; and for a fortnight we had enough of them, for besides the above mentioned amusements, they fire off guns, pistols, and cannon from morning to night.”
Alfred Russel Wallace “A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro”
1853

elegy: in memory of sedef olcer

sitting in a hotel conference room in Salvador
staring for seven hour stretches at a laptop screen,
scanning through my e-mail in a distressed daydream
to see a short message from home...
...so a yogi i've come to know crossed the threshold into another incarnation,

abandoning her body in pursuit of higher vibrations...

a long-time scholar of the secrets of bones

sees fit to return the skeleton she had on loan,

passes away,

her story suddenly dissolving into memory's shadowy grays...

my day shifts to surreal in a second
because far in the distance a dark reaper beckons
harvesting a heavy crop,
taking down high souls before they wanted to drop...
gone is a woman i barely know
a student seeking to embody esoteric sanskrit glow
i offer up unsolicited condolences

with the sincerity of a stranger from afar

a range of illogical feelings courses through all my senses

the gates of raw emotion suddely ajar

i offer this up as a tribute
in memory of sedef olcer
a universal yoga devotee
a mentor from a distance to me
a priestess equipped with secret siddhis
a woman whose superior focus was perceptible in degrees
from across a room she exhibits balance & form ,
a moving portrait of a mind that's managed to still its own storms

almost perfect alignment

she promoted her perspective through carefully connected pics

her spirit departs her body

the way flames devour a wick
i honor the passing of a yogi whose awareness was beyond mine
she was an exquisite collection of harmonious, balanced lines
and so i offer up this prayer
this mantra
this meditation:
a spell to bless an old soul with a superior incarnation:

may your soul find the purity you are seeking…

may you sustain a yogic state through which the gurus are speaking

may your prana never weaken

may you attain the oneness you are seeking…

...rest in peace...

Dida Banda

eight queens tapped into the afro-glow

rolling cadences e ancião ritmo

keepers of the teachings of time's lost codes

offering the tributes the orishas are owed

...caught Dida Banda @ the hotel, at an informal dinner organized by the good folks from LB/Sao Paulo. A magnificent ensemble of female drummers rocking out deep paradiddles in tight formation, this crew turned out a ferocious rhythmic assault in carefully choreographed interactions.... They even let us get in on the action, offering a handful of us drum sticks, so we could keep time with them... something loosened deep inside when i felt that bass drum kick out the jams... check out their site... sweet jesus, the music out here is powerful...

un-pc thought of the day: 8 powerful and righteous women banging out an ovation to long-neglected African deities is everything the fundamentalist puritans of this planet are missing in their religions...

Bahia Nightlife I

I spent yesterday evening at a fantastic restaurant/bookstore/performance space called Tom do Sabor, along with the rest of the delegates working at this conference. Bought a famous book entitled "Dona Flora e Sois Dois Maridos" by famed Brazilian author Jorge Amado, rubbed elbows with some amazing people, and ate a fantastic meal of shellfish, plantain-wrapped delicacies, and a heavenly shrimp risotto. I was privileged to sit next to the very lovely and charming wives of two of my mentors from Dubai and Beirut, members of the old-school Lebanese elite that have spread out across the world in the last three decades in a diaspora unlike any other... (Brasil, in fact, has the largest numbe of Lebanese immigrants of any nation in the world) My two friends, armed with formidable French educations and inimitable personalities, are veteran marketing hands who've long maintained an omniscent, market-centric perspective of the tumultuous happenings in the Middle East and beyond. Suzy, one of my new dinner companions, who’s lived in Beirut for decades, offered up the quote of the day. While talking about last year’s devastating war between Israel, Beirut, and Hezbollah, she dropped this conversational nugget across the table as we were munching on appetizers: “We've gotten used to war. It's not unexpected. And it breaks up the monotony.” I thought that was quite amusing, in a black humor sort of way, in that a city as perpetually besieged as Beirut is filled with such stoic citizens who can laugh off the tragedy enveloping their country. It seems the residents of Beirut have accepted their fate to be on the front lines of a war that is largely irrelevant to many of their personal beliefs. You can learn a lot from people who’ve lived through bombings, civil wars, occupations, and terrorist attacks…i sometimes think that the people who live their lives under constant siege achieve the greatest feat I know of, that which the Satyagraha disciples believe is so transformational: to manifest non-violence in the midst of aggression and a climate of fear...

During dinner the band started to play, about ten feet away from our table. The group was a glorious 4-piece ensemble, featuring a woman vocalist, a dreaded percussionist on kit, a phenomenal bass player on upright & electric, & a clean shaven younger guy playing some very tasteful keyboard lines. They spent about an hour and a half working their way through a fantastic set of original material, with the occasional Marley cover and standard thrown in for good measure. They were ridiculously tight. Brasil seems to be chock full of colossal musicians, with chops to kill for, and most of the cats i've come across in my short stay seem to be playing with a transcendent rhythmic sense that's rare in most parts of the world... I mean, people everywhere are just not this oriented to rhythm... The band last night was a good example, in that they played an interesting amalgam of reggae, jazz, and afrobeat, with your standard global pop motifs thrown into the mix to smooth it out and make it palatable. But everything came back to the rhythm section, which was nonchalanetly in perfect sync. Needless to say, I was transported. Drunk too, as it turns out a half-dozen Caipirinha’s will eventually catch up to you and kick your ass something fierce...

After dinner a couple of us still felt inclined for one more drink, so we headed down to a club on the ocean front, but the band shut down the minute we got there, so it was a bit anticlimactic. All the Samba dancing we were looking for will have to wait for another night... Had a great time, though. Got to talk to Matthew Shirts a bit more, who’s a walking reservoir of funny Brazil stories and insight into the publishing world. Stumbled back into my room at 2 am and barely made it to work on time this morning. A couple cups of good coffee later, and another day starts to unfold in this strange city in the state of Bahia, a crucible of culture that even the Brazilians consider magical…


Quote for the Day:
“The Brazilian takes his play, as he takes his life, in his stride, and his quick speech and gestures do not reach back to his mind. He has studied samples of every nationality established under the skies these many, many years… If the [Brazilian] likes you as an individual, he will do more than anything for you. If he doesn’t, he will do less than nothing. If he knows little about you, but perceives that you have manner and a few trifles of that sort, he will wait and see. And he has heaps of leisure.”
Rudyard Kiplin, Brazilian Sketches

Journalistos & Benevolent Colonialism I

Had the pleasure of meeting Matthew Shirts, the ‘Redator-chefe’ of National Geographic Brasil, who was invited to welcome the conference guests to Brasil with a brief conversation over breakfast, before our meeting began. Matthew is quite a character, a Brazilian import turned native, a wide-eyed kid who first came to Brazil in the mid-70’s as a high school exchange student, suddenly summoned to a border town in the interior hinterlands to study with elderly nuns amidst the sweet siren song of samba… it’s a beautiful thing to encounter archetypes you recognize on your journey, elders on parallel paths a little bit further on down the line, with similar stories to tell… we’re all threading our way into the same tapestry, hacking the slipstream in search of the most seductive sell, sipping on the same wine, studying the science of light and lines, drinking from the same well….drinking from the same well…

“Every foreigner in Brazil becomes an amateur sociologist…”
Matthew Shirts, from this morning

History to meditate on:
“…the first impulse toward independence was given by the Portuguese Royal Family. Terrified by the prospective invasion of the country by a French army, late in 1807 the Prince Regent, the royal family, and a host of Portuguese nobles and commoners took passage on British vessels and sailed to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil thereupon became the seat of royal government and immediately assumed an importance which it could never have attained as a mere dependency…The colonial subjects could not fail to contrast autocracy in Brazil with the liberal ideas that had made headway elsewhere in Spanish America. As a consequence a spirit of unrest arose which boded ill fo the maintenance of Portuguese rule.

Of all the Hispanic nations, however, Brazil was easily the most stable. Here the leaders, while clinging to independence, strove to avoid dangerous innovations in government. Rather than create a political system for which the country was not prepared, they established a constitutional monarchy. But Brazil itself was too vast and its interior too difficult of access to allow it to become all at once a unit, either in organization or in spirit. The idea of national solidarity had as yet made scant progress. The old rivalry which existed between the provinces of the north, dominated by Bahia or Pernambuco, and those of the south, controlled by Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, still made itself felt. What the Empire amounted to, therefore, was an agglomeration of provinces, held together by the personal prestive of a young monarch.

Thanks to the political discretion and unusual personal qualities of “Dom Pedro”, his popularity became more and more marked as the years went on. A patron of science and literature, a scholar rather than a ruler, a placid and somewhat eccentric philosopher, careless of the trappings of state, he devoted himself without stint to the public welfare. Shrewdly divining that the monarchical system might not survive much longer, he kep his realm pacified by a policy of conciliation. Pedro II even went so far as to call himself the best republican in the Empire. He might have said, with justice, perhaps, that he was the best republican in the whole of Hispanic America. What he really accomplished was the successful exercise of a paternal autocracy of kindness and liberality over his subjects.”
William R. Shepherd The Hispanic Nations of the New World, 1914

Tonight in the Pelourinho I was accosted by a large, hostile, one-armed Brazilian man demanding money from my friend. Threatened me, pushed me a bit, and cursed me out in Portuguese, and luckily, I’m too ignorant too grasp all the nuances of what he said he would do to me and what I deserved and how I would receive a “gift” from him if he came across me again. It left a bad taste in my mouth… I lived in Bangladesh for 6 years, so I’ve grown accustomed to every kind of solicitation conceivable, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give money to someone threatening my friends, no matter how many limbs they’re missing… that sounds heartless, but it’s true. Once you know your way around enough 3rd world con-men, their novelty wears off, you see through their tragic air, and appreciate the method in their madness, the game they're projecting through all their shit talking… Sympathy becomes harder and harder to trigger… We all grow numb to poverty, if we’re constantly overwhelmed by it, but I hope in time to find a way to navigate the pitfalls of unhealthy charity and stupid generosity, and replace them with something that actually makes a difference. But who am I kidding, this is all just blowing smoke and words to conceal the fact that I had no money to give and refused to give cash I didn't have to an angry poor crippled man who threatened to hurt me… Talk about something to dwell over and sleep on…

Quote for the Evening:
“Here there is a cosmopolitanism which is not the expression of a comprehensive and generous philosophy, but is merely a symptom of moral inertia…
There is no doubt…that there is a vast disparity between the different strata of the population. This lack of homogeneity is probably the cause of that instability… The decadence of our people presents a deplorable mixture of the savagery of the new-born races with the degeneracy of the races that are now becoming exhausted. There is general confusion. The currents of immorality flow trough our people without meeting obstacles in any of our institutions. Such a nation as ours is ready to receive the worst evil that can befall in the world; arbitrary and despotic governments. If society is a creation of suggestion, what can you expect of the feelings, the ideals of the uncultured masses when their imagination is being bewildered by the spectacle of he most brazen degradation in the governing classes? What reaction will not be caused in dull intellects by the scorn of those leaders for an ideal, for superior things, and their love for position and graft? And it isn’t the government only. It is all of them: the subservient judiciary, ready to plunder private property, the public servants, the military, the clergy, all of them are sliding down a dangerous incline…”
Jose Pereira da Graca Aranha Canaan, A Pessimistic Novel of Ideas
1902

Sundrenched & Fish-filled...

Spent the whole day at Porto da Barra, chilling @ the beach, getting licked by the surf…
Would’ve liked to check out some Museums and places of historical interest, but work starts tomorrow and I’ve got plenty of time to do that on my own time after the meeting’s over next week. Figured I’d keep my boss company and check out the scene by the ocean… and it was a SCENE… plus It never hurts to get sunkissed in a foreign place before you start trying to be a productive worker bee and process all the information coming at you…

Had lunch @ a Seafood restaurant called Barraventa overlooking the ocean, a beautiful lighthouse perched on one end of the bay, wit lovers lounging in the sand below as huge waves crashed on the rocks beneath us… An incredible vista of the ocean, with tiny black figures standing on rocks in the distance, profiled against a setting sun.... God damn this place is gorgeous…

Un-PC thought of the day:
If I were an African slave in the 17th century, and someone kidnapped me and transplanted my disgruntled, disoriented ass to a continent across an ocean, I’d be a million times happier with the circumstances in Brazil than if someone took me to North America where the winters are vicious, the crops are flavorless, and the Christians are puritan protestants… to hell with that!...

The edges of this continent once merged seamlessly with the African coast, there are parallels here, correspondences, ancient linkages well worth exploring... a culture is only as potent as it's most powerful ghosts, and Brazil reveres a pantheon well worth poring over...

..the ultimate melting pot...

Food for thought...

Stefan Zweig - 1942 on Brazil

“For four hundred years now the masses have been boiling and fermenting in the enormous retort of this country – new material constantly being added, and the mixture being constantly shaken up. Is this new process now definitely finished? Have these millions already taken form and shape of their own? Is there in existence today something one could call the Brazilian race, the Brazilian man, the Brazilian soul? On the question of race, Euclydes da Cunha, the gifted expert on Brazilian national character, long ago gave a definite denial when he explained simply: ‘Nao ha um typo anthropologico Brasileiro.’ -‘There is no Brazilian race.’ Race, if one must use this doubtful and today most over-rated term at all, means a thousand-year-old combination of blood and history. With a real Brazilian, on the other hand, all memories of prehistoric times slumbering in his unconscious must hark back to the genealogy of three continents at once: of the European coasts, the kraals of Africa, and the American jungle. The process of becoming a Brazilian is not only one of becoming acclimatized to Nature, to the spiritual and material conditions of a country, but above all a problem of transfusion; because the majority of the Brazilian population – with the exception of a few late immigrants – represents a mixed breed of the most complicated and diverse kind. Besides, each member or part of this threefold home country – the European, the African, and the American – has layers within itself. The first European arrival in Brazil, the Portuguese of the sixteenth century, is anything but of pure race. He represents, in fact, a mixture of his Iberian, Roman, Gothic, Phoenician, Jewish, and Moorish ancestors. Actually, the original population of Brazil is divided into two separate groups – the Tupis and the Tamoyos.”
Stefan Zweig, Brazil, Land of the Future
1942

Olodum & Pelhourinho Beats

Wandering out into Tuesday’s pagan Bahia night
Everywhere drumming and choreography,

cachoeiranos robed in white
Music spilling out from every possible niche
drawn towards slave church hymns of CatholicAfrica unleashed
I stroll into a 400 year old church while the service is swinging
Yoruba echoes of absent agogo bells ringing
40 meters up the way Olodum is holding court
Surfing polyrhythmic intricacies with Eleggua as an escort
The music here is beyond sound
A path to the beyond each time the crowd feels the turnaround
Cycles of growth and decay
Saintly spirits grind and sashay
as tourists in the earthen realm pay their deepest respects
to where Africa, Europe, and America intersect;
Throughout the Pelourinho the churches are aged and defaced
but still open up portals to those seeking contraband grace…

Walked out the hotel for the first time tonight… Was scared initially, braving the world outside the sheltered enclave that is this former convent. The streets are chaotic, replete with sketchy characters and uneven paths, shadows lurking in every doorframe… Ventured to the steps of Sao Francisco Church, where Olodum delivered the weekly Saint Anthony Blessing, a tight knit rhythmic invocation that fills the square and the winding, hilly streets that spill away from it in all directions. After Olodum concluded we ventured down into a storefront basement to discover a branch of Mestre Bimba’s Filho a Capoeira, with a roda in full session, presided over by a stern looking mestre rocking a solo birembau. Wandered down the block into a hipster bar called “Habeus Copos” where a battle of the bands was in full swing. Caught six acts, ranging from groups that sounded like Toad the Wet Sprocket singing in Portuguese to a a terrible band that sounded like the Kinks if they had no talent, and others that sounded like crosses between Counting Crows and Supernatural-era Santana. It was quite the spectacle, a feast for the ears, and we departed only to stumble over a half-dozen bands filling the streets on the way home. This place is tapped in to something deeper, something darker, an old-continent awareness coloring every face in this place… the spirits are palpable, their worship inevitable… swaying in Church I gazed upwards to find myself staring at a cracked façade, as the Church band swung into a practiced hypnotic refrain littered with Conga beats… The thought arises: if Jesus was only this funky everywhere…