Saturday, 13 November 2010

Maracatu

Further to Paul's post below, just a few notes.

When a few of us were in Rio in 2006, we did a Maracatu workshop and we also saw a Maracatu performance, which was very impressive. Since then, we have done some attempts to imitate some maracatu rhythms during some of our own samba school rehearsals. Whilst this was a lot of fun, this never really got off the ground, and certainly wasn't up to standard for public performance.

Paul Dennis joined the samba school a few weeks ago. He has previously been playing Maracatu when he lived in Berlin, and would love to continue playing now that he lives here in Brisbane. We agreed to try to incorporate Maracatu in the repertoire of the Samba School, and Paul has kindly agreed to help teach everyone.

So, regarding his request below, I fully support the purchase of a few alfaias, but before we go too far down that track, I like to get some feedback from the samba school. So please vote in the poll to the right of this page, and let us know if you like to incorporate Maracatu into the samba school.

If the majority supports this, I will advertise in advance which classes will be dedicated to Maracatu. I will also consider purchasing a couple of alfaias for the samba school.

Comments very welcome!

6 comments:

Brian D. said...

If we incorporate Maracatu rhythms into the Samba school repertoire, switching different type of drums during performance can create logistic problems. Not considering whether Remko's trailer can take extra alfaias ?

Can we just play Maracatu in Surdos ?

Remko said...

Problems are there to be solved. If I walked away from problems we wouldn't have a samba school today!

Patty said...

I'd love to do Maracatu! After we returned from Rio, I was very disappointed that we didn't do much Maracatu at all.

Sadly I can't play alfaia, but it'd be fun to play along on agogo or something. Plus I'd get an opportunity to wear the Maracatu skirt I had made. :)

Like Brian, I did wonder about the logistics of taking two sets of drums to gigs, but I'm sure we could work things out.

Remko said...

Ahhh, Patty was disappointed....;-)

Yes I certainly didn't feel I was qualified to do much more than we already did in this area. It's very different from samba!

Looking forward to seeing the famous skirt in action. Maybe Claire might be tempted to come back too!?

Here's a solution to stop Patty wondering - she's got a magic car that will fit AT LEAST 8 alfaias I'm sure ;-)

Patty said...

My car is a Tardis. :)

Paul Dennis said...

This is great - nice one Remko

The whole group should definitely decide if Samba, and NE rhythms like Maracatu are to united. Personally of course I vote in favour! Hopefully others will too.

In response to Brian's comment - alfaia's=trovao(thunder) and they are more resistant to being hit they way that Maracatu demands. I have a car as well now. So mine at least will be with me. SurdoĊ› do sound pretty good as well though!

See you on Thurs