Cowboy Country

Well, I didn’t expect to come across cowboys in Brazil. Shows how much I know. On my first weekend here in Barão Geraldo, I found myself invited to a birthday celebration at the Casa São Jorge – a jumping joint downtown on the main drag, as our American friends would have it. I was expecting Samba – well you would, wouldn’t you? But no, it was Country & Western, Brazilian style. A very odd hybrid of maudlin waltzes and polkas and electro-country pop. Special guests were a cowboy-hat-clad entourage of ‘dancers’. I use the term loosely. At various points in the evening, three or more generations of the family group on the top table sheepishly (or perhaps bullishly) shuffled into position – two lines facing each other – for a few choruses of a clapping and tapping song that someone explained to me was representing the hoof movements of the cattle… Apparently they come from the countryside west of São Paulo. Or perhaps from the next state along, Minas Gerais. No-one could be completely sure. But given that beef is big in Brazil, ergo there are a lot of cows – and someone has to take care of them, I suppose.

So the following Tuesday, I’m invited to the Bar do Jair. Mine host Simi explains that this was once a tiny bar – right next to LUME’s first home in the church hall – but it has grown and grown over the years, and is now a fashionable bar and restaurant that people drive out from Campinas city centre to visit. It’s certainly got quite a very different vibe to the Espaço dos Amigos (see earlier blog). No yellow plastic chairs here: it’s all tasteful wood and tiles. The extensive circular bar services an enormous number of tables in interconnecting rooms. The bars are decorated with busts (and really, this is the only word) of smiling ladies from different regions of Brazil, the colourful statuettes set into the bar top. There are also great swathes of cloth hung across the ceilings – those lovely fabrics typical of Brazil, in deep earthy reds patterned with yellow and white flowers, or rainforest greens printed with turquoise and red parrots.

They serve Caipirinhas (city style – with a choice of liqueur bases, and all the fruit and ice trimmings) and are famous for their Coxinhas (which English readers of this blog can imagine as a kind of posh version of the Scotch Egg) and their Escondinhos (which English readers can imagine as a variation on the Shepherd’s Pie idea, although rather a lot spicier). Inevitably, there is live music. But is it Samba? No, not on Tuesdays – it’s cowboy country today, featuring two gents styled under the title Moda de Viola, wearing the inevitable Stetson hats, and plucking away at the Viola de Gamba and Brazilian Guitarra. Actually, they are very good – and certainly know how to keep the crowd happy, playing tunes the names of which I do not know, but which everyone else in the bar is obviously familiar with. Should you wish to make music of your own, there is a ship’s bell hanging from a rope in the bar that clients can take a swing on whenever the need takes them.

Two days later – Thursday 2 February – it’s music of a more refined kind over at SESC (the Campinas arts and sport centre). We’re here for a concert by Carcoarco, an ensemble of four, one of whom is a percussionist (playing a basic drum kit embellished with tamba, bells, rain-makers, xylophones and more), with the other three playing stringed things of all sorts – violins, violas, violin-cellos, guitars of many sorts, and all sorts of variations on the ‘rabeca’ (an instrument that probably originated in the Middle East or North Africa, finding its way to Brazil many centuries ago). And masters of their instruments this quartet certainly are…

The music is a hybrid of contemporary and traditional forms – a touch of Samba or Tango here, a jazz improvisation there – and self-penned numbers, such as the rather wonderful Tem Carrego? by percussionist ‘Magrão’ Roberto Peres, this a whimsical composition that gives him the opportunity to whip out his bird whistle mid-way through the tune… I also enjoy the group’s Tico Tango No Fuba, a variation on the theme of Tico Tico, composed by Esdras Rodrigues, and made famous worldwide by the magnificent Carmen Miranda. I’m less taken with the variations on JS Bach (too much of a hybrid jazz cliché), and find the lengthy chats inbetween numbers a little wearying – although of course my limited understanding of the language didn’t help. But quite a few of the Brazilians present got a little swamped by detail too. That said, I know some people who would be very interested in the detailed explanations of types of wood, thicknesses of strings, and tunings! In fact, when my concentration drifted, I’d find myself looking up at the array of instruments strung from the ceiling and thinking that it looked a lot like my front room at home up there…

The following night, the music is provided by the natural world in a sunset walk through the old farm of Barão Geraldo – which companion Simi describes rather charmingly as ‘the hotel for horses’. At this time of day, the horses are stabled, but we can hear them whinnying behind closed doors. As for the rest of the live soundscape, it’s a pretty heady mix of clicking crickets, barking frogs, hooting owls, and honking geese – accompanied by the gentle rush of water from the stream that feeds the lake, and the rustle of birds in the trees. And what trees! Tropical and ‘cross-Atlantic’ varieties jostle for space – young trees and old trees alike. My favourites are the ‘Butoh’ tree with its dislocated limbs extended to the sky, and the enormous ‘old man’ tree, bent double with the weight of the years.

Later on Friday evening, it’s back to the Sede do LUME for the 11pm showing of A Beira do Nada, directed by Claiton Manfro and performed by Eduardo Aranbula, with an eclectic soundtrack that includes tracks from Tom Waits and Radiohead, found sound, and Japanese Koto. It’s something of a tour de force, taking the form of twenty short pieces on a connected theme – a study of the effects of dementia and the physical manifestations of learning disabilities. In each of the twenty vignettes a character (or ‘figure’ to use the LUME vernacular) is presented as an abstracted observation, judgement free. It’s often uncomfortable viewing, raising questions about the morality of the portrayal of so-called ‘vulnerable adults’. But although it sometimes provokes discomfort, I have every confidence that the director and performer are engaged in a project driven by love and respect, not mockery.

Eduardo Aranbula has a very strong stage presence, and delivers the work with physical prowess and an admirable care and attention to detail. I particularly enjoy two scenes that feature a pair of highly polished black patent shoes. In the first, the shoes are handled with almost fetishistic desire. The second circles round the desire to wear the shoes vying with the worry of putting dirty feet into such lovely new footwear – resulting in a painfully, poignantly funny repeated ritual of trouser removal, foot washing, shoe donning, and attempts to get trousers back on whilst wearing the shoes – then taking the shoes off, but dirtying the feet in the process of putting the trousers on, this setting up another desperate cycle of foot washing etc…

The piece ends with an empty stage, save for a tiny music-box figure, turning to the tune of Für Elise. A song I am very fond of, although it must be said that one can tire of it in Barão Geraldo as it is the jingle for what I took, on my first day, to be an ice-cream van (Brazilian friends: yes, in my country we encourage small children to run into the streets to buy candy from strange men in vans), but which turned out to be the ‘Real Gas’ truck which tours the streets day and night.

All together now: La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa la-la-la-laaa la-la-la-laaa…