Stirred awake to the sound of a woman singing an aria across the hall. This hotel is a trip, a haunted, ageless place framed by high ceilings and classical columns. A 500-year old former monastery, this convent is filled with ghosts of priests long gone & their answered and unaddressed prayers…these small rooms we occupy today were once filled with Catholic monks in a new world, hence the name, “Convento do Carmo”…
Had the pleasure and privilege of having lunch with Rosalie and Marina Moraes, LB/Sao Paulo’s veteran PR rep, and an organizer of this conference. A lovely Brazilian woman with a bright smile, Marina, as it turns out, used to work for Brazilian TV in New York. As our conversation over lunch inevitably turned to music, she mentioned casually that she has souvenirs of her days spent working with Paul Simon, filming a documentary for Brazilian TV on how the man crafted the Graceland album, working with South African musicians Ladysmith Black Mambazo… That album, which is iconic and central to anyone with a world music bent, features tracks like “You Can Call Me Al”, “Graceland,” “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Feet,” and “Homeless.” It’s one of my favorites. To know someone who was following Paul Simon around with a camera crew during that period makes me really happy. Marina’s a character, and as we talked some more, she told me she worked with folks like Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali as well. Sweet Jesus… I wish I had pictures of me with Miles Davis… people like that rub off strange juju just through their pores…
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