Abubilla Music

Notes from Sáo Paulo

Written by Mike Park

So after a week’s recovery from a sleepless but amazing trip to Brazil, I’ve had time to reflect on and process the events of my short but intense trip to a pretty amazing city. Advance warning – this is long, and until I work out how to add photos and videos it is a wall of text. Get comfortable.

If you happened to be in Lisbon airport on Wednesday night you would’ve seen the underwhelming sight of me halfway through a four hour transfer slowly coming to the realisation that the trip was indeed happening, that I was potentially completely out of my depth, and that Portuguese is, contrary to my preconceptions, not exactly the same as Spanish. Forward wind a decent night’s sleep on the plane and an airport pick up from Eliana, a completely lovely and thankfully bilingual driver/guide arranged by Jimmy, and I was feeling much better and ready to get the most out of the trip.

First stop was ‘Batacudas 1000’, a great percussion shop in Sáo Paulo. Armed with Jimmy’s instructions to ‘go there and buy some stuff’ I picked up, among a general variety pack of percussion, an exotic looking instrument I can only describe as a dinner plate with about 150 door keys hanging off it (picture pending…). As well as looking incredible, it actually sounds amazing – think of a thousand happy pixies flying out a window and you’re in the right ballpark – and I’m working on finding a way to indiscriminately crowbar it into every single Abubilla recording made from now on.

The rest of the day was spent confirming that Portuguese is indeed not a language I speak, but through a combination of sign language and Portuspanglish I managed to try out some local food, find out about some good areas to check out some live music, and fail to buy a sim card.

Following up a lead from earlier in the day I went to see a samba ‘rehearsal’ in an area called Villa Madalena. By day it had been nothing but an empty warehouse, but by the time I arrived the entire room was packed, sweaty, and very very noisy; I’ve never seen the lines between performer and audience so blurred, and what followed was a completely relentless hour and a half of incredible drumming, singing, and dancing. I walked out on a high and with the overwhelming suspicion that if a single person in that warehouse walked into any club in London they would think it was completely shit.

The next day was spent further acclimatising to the city, taking the subway and a few buses, being approached by some insane people, but in general finding that people were incredibly helpful and responsive to the clueless traveller approaching them. Another lesson learnt was to be careful if you ask for a ‘bottle’ of beer – 4 in the afternoon or not you will receive what I can only describe as a hefty vessel filled with the stuff.

That night I got in contact with Luciana, a contact of Jimmy’s who works in the city, and with her and a few of her friends we went to another Samba ‘rehearsal’ I’d heard about during the day. Despite being in a stadium rather than warehouse, I soon realised that the principles which had made the night before so remarkable were still all there; relentless, incredible drumming and dancing, unselfconscious involvement from every single person in the building, and generally a complete display of energy and enjoyment unlike anything I’d ever seen. Shattered but elated once again, I walked out the door wondering how an entire country of people could be so much cooler than me.

Saturday morning, and Jimmy is in the country. A gentle wake up call at 8am informed me that he would be with me in about 20 minutes, and pretty soon we were in a car on the way to Meninos do Morumbi, the incredible school run by Flavio Pimenta who Jimmy had met previously to see how we could help and get involved. Meninos do Morumbi is a completely self sufficient, completely free school, which serves 9000 hot meals to its children a month. As well as educating them and instilling them with incredibly important values, it is completely geared towards teaching the children performance both in music and dance. Watching a performance by the children I was completely blown away. The quality and originality was incredible, but what really resonated was the passion of the children. I can honestly say I’ve never seen such joy expressed in music and dance for its own sake, and it was genuinely inspirational, so much so I even got a bit teary – afterwards I went off and punched a wall to get back into manly mode.

That evening Luciana took me to a gig by Monobloco, a young Brazilian band comprising mostly of drummers, but also singers and instrumentalists. She explained how this was the kind of music that young people in Brazil listened to, and it seemed to bridge the gap between the traditional performances I’d seen earlier and the younger generation. I’d guess the venue held about 5,000 people, and once again a glance around at any given point showed there wasn’t a pair of feet in the building that wasn’t dancing. Dancing amazingly.

So after a good 3 hours sleep came the final morning, which turned out to be the highlight of the already pretty special trip. Through the drummer who worked at the original drum shop from day one, we’d arranged to meet him and five other drummers, and using the Abubilla portable recording studio add some Brazilian percussion to 71 Hours to Monday. After meeting him 45 minutes late (punctuality is a trait shared internationally by musicians) we were led into the town centre of what seemed to be a pretty poor but very vibrant area, where waiting for us was a group of around 16 drummers. They gave me a drum to keep me happy which I pretended to know how to play, and it was impossible not to get caught up in the moment. Our attempts to get the group to follow the track never really made it further than a minute or two, at which stage the entire ensemble would go off-piste for another 30 minute performance. It quickly became apparent that there was no point in fighting it, and in the middle of the town centre with seemingly unphased locals walking by I was lucky enough to get a first hand taste of the Brazilian percussion I’d spent the past few days admiring from a distance.

So a massive massive thank you to Jimmy for the opportunity – four days and three nights in Brazil gave me an amazing taste of the country. As Eliana put it, Brazilians can’t stand up while music is playing and not dance. In England, for some of us music is a hobby, passion, or career. In Brazil it’s experienced on a completely different level; whether as a musician, dancer, audience member, or general citizen, it is fundamentally ingrained in their culture and every day life, and the result is completely inspirational. This is a country that loves music for its own sake, without pretension or agenda; amongst the setbacks, contradictions and insincerity I see every day as I start a career in the music industry, that’s something to hold onto.

Deep.