Alan
Hetherington, the mestre of G.R.E.S
de Toronto lead us through a wonderful day of Samba history,
technique and specific songs, with very well timed interjections
of descriptions of what a Brazilian samba escola is like and how
important samba is to the culture and health of communities. That's
Alan above in the red t-shirt right behind our own mestra Matthieu
Keijser. On the right are the trombone players
Dan Martin and Pierre Villers who you can hear by downloading
the mp3s. On the far left is highland bagpipe player
Alex Obroso who you will hear later on, and who can be
heard on our intro page at http://sambanova.org.
From what I have been told, Alex's appearance at that particular
outdoor session was more of a wonderful accident than a planned
event. I am willing to bet the sound is unique and at the recording
session we spent a bit of time getting it right, with the generous
help of sound engineer Jonathan Keijser.
The
day began at 10 am with a samba circle where we talked abut how
the day would go and a bit about Alan's experiences in Brazil and
about samba culture. We even sang together with no percussion, going
through Vou Festejar a few times. It added flavour
to our day and helped further establish the feeling of group cohesion
so essential to making good music together. (see the mp3
file on the Samba Toronto website).
We
spent some great time making music after that laying down a beat
and getting assembled in lines and at a certain point Alan signalled
us with whistles and arm gestures to all turn around and voila!
we were all ready to hit the street for a parade! (at least that's
how it felt). The instruction was top notch and a lot of fun.
Everyone
broke for lunch in little groups that scattered through the downtown.
I went with Valerie and Carolyn and Doug. Three of us went upstairs
in the Blower's Street Paper Chase cafe where I had an excellent
African peanut soup. There were some nice cheese melty things being
wolfed down as well, and we had a great chat. In the afternoon we
worked on a piece that was to be recorded in the evening. At around
7pm we got back together and set up on the stage where Johnathan
had assembled a recording studio with panels and mikes and headphones
and cables. It was pretty neat. There were communications challenges
because the bateria was split up by these huge panels that kept
sounds from bleeding between sections, but at the end of the evening
we had three tracks down, after much work, and laughter and satisfying
progress. We will be posting these sound files very soon! Check
back often.
This
is just a quick review that has not been edited or re-written.
Any and all comments are
welcome!
