Blog
Drums…drums…and more drums…Brazil and another Lu
Written by Jimmy
Just heading back from four days in Brazil, where I’ve managed to help Mike’s drum habit and start more partnership discussions with another fantastic music organisation…(and get a bit of work done)First, and for the record: I was in Brazil for four days, did three breakfast presentations to about 50 people each, 2 major meetings with client management teams, 2 internal meetings, 2 major press interviews and a CEO dinner. So I was busy. But that is all I’m going to say about that.
What I also did is got very up close and personal to drums and drummers. My search for music started as it always does with a country visit – ask the person that picks you up to find you music. Really good music. In this case I hit the jackpot with Saint Elana from SpinTours … appropriate name. And the really good news is traffic is so horrendous in Sao Paolo that we had a lot of time to organise things. So what did we do?
- Bought Brazilian Drums: You can never have enough and besides it was a great education. I contacted our percussionist Mike and asked him for his wish list. And here’s what we got, and a nice chance to learn about samba drums:
- Tamborim – a really small handheld drum, you hit it with a special stick which is almost like a brush with loose, long plastic ends.
- Agogo – think a double cow bell and you’re in the right ball park. We got one with four cowbells, and one with two gourds.
- Cuica – a small handheld drum with only the top skin on, in the middle it’s got what looks like a chopstick and when you pull on it (honk) with a rag or something it makes this crazy noise like a seal..
- Caixa – a snare drum, with unique Brazilian sound
- Repinique – a really big tom, quite resonant. Just looks like a normal drum, probably like a foot and a half deep.
- Surdo – almost like bass drums – pretty massive – and you have two, they’re meant to be like the ‘heartbeat’.
Here’s a good link to learn about samba drums: click here. The store we went to was Batucadas 1000, which specialises in percussion and is a very cool music district at the Rua Teodoro Sampaion, Jd America. Ended up having two massive bags delivered to hotel and then dragged them around all day Friday to presentations. Very cool.
- Meet Flavio Pimenta, Founder of Meninos do Morumbi. Okay, this is now seriously cool. Start with the man’s work and then we’ll talk:
Over 14 years, 13,00o poor city children have moved thru his classes, 3,00o currently play music and dance in his concerts (87 last year) and attend his classes; his facilities serve 27,000 hot meals a month to these children. Please read that sentence again. And when you talk to Flavio, he doesn’t talk about this as a charity. No, he talks about creating a band. A very big Band. He wants these kids to understand that they join him to work. This is not a hand out. Five times he said 70% of what life gives you is thru sweat and hard work. All he talked about was the music. He showed us around. And there were a lot of drums. And a lot of mics hooked up to record a lot of drums. His drum kit had about 80 separate drums and 100 separate mics. This guy is very, very cool.
And we told him what we do. And we talked about Ketebul. And we’re going to be a tiny part of his very cool, coolness. So watch this space. But first, we have to get Ketebul’s new site on line and start fund raising for Singing Wells.
Finally, and we must be setting a record, we also recruited another Lu to join us. Different spelling but we anticipate choas. She’s Luciana, a Brazilian singer, who is passionate about Flavio’s mission and wants to help him and us. You’ll be hearing a lot from her soon.
Jimmy
(From Brazil)
