Singapore, meanwhile, isn’t quite as bad as HK for cycling. As in Japan, urban cyclists ride on the sidewalks, which aren’t that busy with peds except in certain areas. There are no dedicated bike lanes, but we do all right. The night we arrive, C and I head out to get something to eat. We stop at the Hindu section of town on the way to dinner.
The Hindu area, called Little India, is mostly lined with sari and jewelry shops, but in the middle of it all is a typical Hindu temple, with gaudy polychrome sculptures of Ganesh, Shiva and a host of others. We take off our shoes and wander in with all the others, who are there for their evening prayers and pujas. It’s a cacophony — an invisible voice sings along with a tambura drone as people move from one shrine to the next. Some hold cups of chai, and others make offerings and pour oil over the statues or light incense. There’s a grotesque Kali with a skull and blood dripping from her teeth. On the way out I nearly trip over the singer, who is casually sitting on the floor, mic in hand. An assistant guards a little box that electronically produces an endless tambura drone, and feeds it into a tiny amp along with the singer’s voice.
On a previous trip to Singapore, I arrived during Thaipusam, a Tamil Hindu festival during which devotees in trance pierce their bodies with metal rods — through their cheeks and elsewhere. Some hung limes from their chests using little hooks embedded in their flesh, while others carried elaborate apparatuses overhead, supported by rods and poles that dug into their skin.
There was no blood. Not a drop. I watched as one man was getting pierced. A musician playing a double reed instrument wailed into the adept’s ear, while another man wafted incense all around him, creating a heady, overwhelming environment. Then, fairly quickly, a priest thrust a rod through the guy’s cheeks. There was no feeling of suffering — this was not a kind of penitent deal like the Catholics do. It was beautiful, and not for weak stomachs.
We continue on, riding along the sidewalks, as do some food delivery guys. Away from the center of town or the bustle of Little India there’s little or no foot traffic. On my previous visit I had stumbled upon areas of outdoor food stalls called hawker centres. I remembered that the food was fresh, local and delicious — and the place had character and liveliness, in contrast to the restaurants in the glass offices and condo zones that make up much of this city. There are a few of these hawkers in town — this one is called Newton Circus.
We find an available table and order dishes from the myriad of surrounding stalls offering cooked food. In structure it’s a bit like the food courts in shopping malls or airports, but in content and vibe this is another world. Here the food has wildly unexpected flavors — all good and inexpensive. You can get huge shrimp (more like lobster, really), stingray in sambal sauce, (delicious) crab…
…cooked vegetables, snails, marinated meat — and for dessert, a mountain of shaved ice with sweet syrup poured over top. Singapore, being a place where a lot of cultures and peoples met — Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese — has some of the best tasting food anywhere. The mixtures of flavors are like nowhere else. Though we would have more delicate and refined food in Japan, and more delicious seafood in Australia and NZ, Singapore might come close to taking the prize for:
The next day C and I went on a more ambitious ride — halfway across Singapore Island to Haw Par Villa. Aw Boon Haw was a businessman who, along with his brother Aw Boon Par, developed Tiger Balm and made a lot of money from it. As a kind of give-back to the community, he built the deco-futuristic Haw Par Villa and gardens (and similar ones in HK too — since torn down, of course), which he opened to the public and decorated with statues representing Chinese mythology and Buddhist Hells. I didn’t know Buddhists had hells, but in this manifestation, they sure do. The difference between this and the Christian hell is that this one is temporary; after a period of horror and unimaginable suffering, you are given the cup of forgetfulness and you move on to your next life. So, welcome to hell — you can have a picnic lunch or a durian popsicle (I did) sitting next to a giant crab with a woman’s head, or a monkey taking a photograph. Or, in this case, a chicken couple having a domestic spat.
The bike ride to get there was long — and the last part, paralleling an elevated highway, was no fun — but the park is one of wackiest roadside attractions you’ll ever see. Below is the punishment for moneylenders who charge exorbitant interest rates! Thrown onto a mountain of daggers. Isn’t that part of the new economic recovery program?
A teeny bit suggestive, the placement of some of those daggers, eh?
Singapore, unlike HK, does have some public amenities. There are quite a few parks scattered about; playing fields open to the public; a long waterfront promenade and bike trail with seafood restaurants and picnic tables; trees and shade; and institutions like the hawker’s markets that allow people to mingle and relax together. There are streets and neighborhoods with small, locally owned shops and stalls, not just chain stores. There’s a new, incredible looking performing arts center that resembles two halves of a split durian fruit — a curious choice, as durian is notoriously stinky, but maybe it’s an inside joke, as it’s a local fruit. Sadly, we didn’t play there — it wasn’t available; we did a convention center, similar to the place in Hong Kong. Ah well. It went well — the audience was a mixture of locals and expats. The food at catering was (this is Singapore) unbelievably good.
Despite all this Singapore hasn’t been able to resist the lure of developers during the heady years of the South Asian economic boom — most of the city is high rises and glass-walled offices. We saw one neighborhood that seemed to represent what Singapore used to be like — charming houses on winding streets with porches and gardens, and small shops on the corners. The area seems preserved, like a monument or physical memory of what the city used to be — like Greenwich Village in NY. Another such area has a sun-covering over several entire streets, creating an indoor/outdoor arcade. The city must have realized at some point that those areas — like Little India and Chinatown — are what give the city its identity and flavor… and are tourist attractions, too.
One of the public parks is like no other park I’ve seen. To save the public the effort of climbing up and down the hills, they’ve built a high, elevated walkway that takes you through the treetops. A sign says “Don’t feed the monkeys. Have a nice walk in the park, but don’t lean over too far."
Why does Singapore have all these things for its citizens when it could have easily covered these hills with more condos, as Hong Kong has done? Both were island “nations” colonized by the British, established (in the British point of view) as commercial hubs where goods from neighboring lands could be traded and exported. Both have large percentages of Chinese, especially in the business worlds — though Singapore is certainly less dominated by the Chinese. What is it that gave one island nation the nerve to say, “No, we will save some parkland for our citizens; we will save some chaotic marketplaces and hawker centres?” (— though I’ve heard that the hawkers here are under attack on health grounds, much like the Red Hook Ball Field stalls have been in NYC). What causes one place to say no to immediate profit if it destroys something in the public’s interest, and another to always see profit as the right way to go?
We played in a curtained-off area of a floor in the new convention center. The entire room is the size of an airplane hangar; massive black curtains hang from the ceiling to define a smaller section, where chairs, risers and a stage have been arranged. It works as a venue, at least technically (the sound isn’t as bad as one would think), but it’s about as inconducive to conviviality as anything one could devise. It has all the elements needed to present a show, but some critical part of the experience is missing.
The convention center has a number of these massive, hangar-sized spaces, filled with trade fairs much of the time — they’ve been so successful that an addition’s being built onto the back of the center. Bamboo scaffolding around the construction covers the exterior of the addition, and is even used to create a false ceiling for the workers building the interior.
Our hotel is in Wan Chai, close to central Hong Kong. The rooms have amazing views looking towards Kowloon and the New Territories. Everywhere, except on the steepest hills, there are almost identical tall condos and office buildings. A forest. We passed one such grouping on the way in from the airport that was like Co-op City in the Bronx times two. Most are unremarkable; though the new convention center on the waterfront looks like a giant sea turtle, and across the water I can see the distinctive curve of a performing arts center. In central HK, the Norman Foster bank building that looks like a vertical Beaubourg is dwarfed by the higher office buildings around it. Ferries and merchant ships move back and forth across the water; as the day advances the haze builds up.
The evening of our arrival, a group of us walk to a nearby restaurant — an unremarkable place specializing in local (Cantonese) food. 12 of us sit around a table and gobble down veggies, dumplings, abalone, crab and delicious shrimp. The place is a bit like the brightly lit joints in NY’s Chinatown — nothing to get too excited about. Daria, an acquaintance of Paul and Mauro’s from our previous trip to Perth, lives here now, and she offers to take us to a more interesting place the next evening.
C and I walk back to the hotel along the main street of the neighborhood. Beautiful old neon signs advertise hostess bars, seafood restaurants, rock and roll discos and Irish bars — where soldiers serving in Nam would sometimes get their R&R. It’s a pretty sleazy area, and it’s surprising that only a few blocks away is the sterile and lifeless zone of hotels, mirrored office buildings and the convention center.
The next morning C and I decide to try our luck sightseeing on bikes. A pretty crazy idea for this town, but we decide to see how hard it really is. Turns out to be pretty hard; not only are there no bike lanes — which is not a big deal, as lots of cities don’t have bike lanes — but sometimes there aren’t even sidewalks, not to mention parks, promenades or public amenities. We negotiate a road crossing under a flyover (underpass), and encounter a group of women gathered in the shade under a concrete column, huddled together singing hymns. We ride mostly on the sidewalks when we can find them — most of which are not crowded, until we get to Central where the shoppers are out in force.
Near the HSBC bank building and the ferry terminal we use an underground passageway to cross the street — there is no other way to get across. In the shade and semi-darkness under the street, hundreds of women are arranged, most on tarpaulins, sitting with bags of food, picnic-style, talking to each other and to distant friends and family on phones. When we reach the concrete plaza at the base of the bank building, there are hundreds more. They don’t look destitute — they’re passing snacks around and smiling as they chat — but what are they doing here? They don’t look Chinese, though they’re Asian — Malaysian maybe? Indonesian?
Later it’s revealed that they’re all Filipino maids, and today (Sunday) is their one day off. They gather to exchange news of home and socialize, but HK being HK, there are no shady parks, esplanades or plazas where the public can mingle and hang out. I’m not talking about a Central Park, Tiergarten or Hyde Park— here in HK there is nothing at all. They have nowhere to meet but in the shade of an underground passageway or around the entrance plaza for the HSBC bank, which of course is closed today. It presents the strange sight of citizenry improvising when their city government doesn’t provide for them.
C and I bike — slowly, carefully — along the glitzy shopping crowds in Central. I’ve heard that there may be a wet market open today; they’re “wet” because the stall owners regularly hose down their fish and vegetables. First, we check out a discount clothing market where the stalls are squeezed into the space between two high rises. There’s barely space to walk, but everyone makes room. With the good real estate around here in the hands of big corporations and brand name chain stores, the local merchants improvise and squeeze themselves into the cracks where they can.
Further down the road we lock up and head into the Graham St Market, still somewhat busy even though it’s Sunday and already early afternoon — and too late for the really fresh fish. The market is elongated, the stalls strung out in a long line between taller buildings. There are vegetables we’ve never seen, fruits arranged especially for the upcoming New Year celebrations, and Styrofoam containers of shrimp and fish swimming about. A system of hoses pouring into the containers keeps their water fresh. At one point we see a fish successfully flop right out of its Styrofoam tank and land on the concrete sidewalk right in front of us. The poor thing began to slither along the ground pretty rapidly, using its front fins for propulsion — as if the sea might be just a few feet away.
We run into my friend Andrew Corner, who lives here — I’d tried to contact him earlier, so this is fortuitous. Andrew is doing some vegetable shopping at his wife’s favorite stall. He says this market is due to be vacated (torn down) soon. At present it’s hemmed in by six-story old-style apartment buildings with clothing lines strung outside the balconies, but the local real estate developers (and the government) see financial opportunities, and plan to tear down the funky buildings on either side and erect much higher condos to squeeze the vendors out. Like many other places, the old, the handmade, the social, are all vanishing quickly — this is the last wet market in all of Hong Kong Island. Old colonial or deco buildings — many pre-air conditioning, with verandas and window vents — are almost a memory.
Andrew shows us a charming street nearby. Balconies and birdcages. He volunteers that traditional Chinese society doesn’t have a place for what he refers to as civics. He suggests that traditional Chinese social decisions came from two sources — the top down, via the legendary Confucian beauracracy, and from within one’s extended family. Any sense of community was therefore non-existent. You obeyed the Emperor and took care of your own, and the rest was none of your concern.
His implication is that those attitudes are deep-rooted, and the Communists simply inherited those social structures — which is a way of explaining both the general lack of public amenities and lack of a sense of community or of neighborhoods here. This city is truly all about business. Yes, there are undeveloped areas along the steep hillsides where one could conceivably enjoy fresh air (if you can get high enough above the smog) or take a walk or picnic with some friends, but those hard to reach areas aren’t much use in anyone’s daily life. They’re useless to the Filipino maids. It does seem that the idea of community-oriented institutions and events — like culture, for example— is simply not on the Chinese radar.
Andrew says some small groups are becoming active in trying to preserve green spaces, old buildings, places that have some charm — but it’s a new idea, and runs counter to the “It’s Glorious to Make Money” ideology that has overrun China for the last few decades. If that attitude, the disdain for civic life, seems rampant to me here in Hong Kong — where the British influence is still slightly felt — I can only imagine how it must be in Shanghai and Beijing. The future, as represented by the Chinese powerhouse, will be merciless, tasteless and heartless, but the food will be tasty if you can afford it.
It’s fitting that the US Republicans and the Chinese Communists — sworn enemies in the past — actually have a lot in common that way. They both could care less about public amenities and public good. Houston, Texas, a town dominated by oil money and the good old boys that profit from it, is in some ways like Hong Kong — a merciless machine for making money, but not a very good place to live if you’re not already rich or obsessed with scrambling up the ladder.
There don’t seem to be many cultural institutions here either. Not that Asian cities should necessarily be like European cities, with opera houses, art museums, theaters and symphony halls announcing their membership in the culture club. But some equivalent maybe? Someplace where people can get together besides a big round restaurant dinner table? Maybe someplace where issues are gently aired, social mores symbolically examined, or cathartic humor or common humanity let loose? Aren’t social institutions how we discover who we are as people? I’ve seen one performing arts center here and one in Kowloon, across the bay — and as far as I can see, that’s it. Our concert is in a sectioned off area of the convention center. It’s a beautiful and weird modern place — and the acoustics weren’t even that bad — but it’s typically cold and businesslike.
Maybe shopping and haggling at the traditional markets fulfilled that social role here at one time, but they’re rapidly disappearing. I’ve never seen a society (except in Houston or LA) so hell-bent on erasing every vestige of culture or history as this one. There’s a fury and determination to it. They can’t wipe the slate clean fast enough.
C and I take our bikes on the Star Ferry over to Kowloon. Besides the wet market, I suggested that she see a temple, and if we’re lucky, the shops that make paper funerary items. Having been here a couple of times before, that’s my itinerary for her. On the Kowloon side, we ride along the water until a gated apartment complex halts our progress. We retreat and head inland, past another forest of towering condos — each one simply numbered so you know when you’re home. There is no street life in this zone, but at least there are sidewalks. We could be in some big Middle American city with similarly vaporized street life, but here it’s more concentrated, with more towers — denser and more vertical.
Eventually we turn onto a street with shops and street-level activity — and luckily, the funeral supplies are there right in front of us. We see coffins and wreaths — but more interesting are the paper objects created to be burnt with the deceased. Symbolically, the burning sends the objects to the deceased wherever they are. There is money — Bank of Hell notes usually, but also more symbolic currency that is simply a blob of orange and gold leaf on a piece of paper (kind of like miniature Rothkos) — and material goods that the deceased might covet.
There are mansions (below) filled with paper furniture, full-size paper refrigerators, soccer balls, Adidas shoes and paper Rolexes. Paper boom boxes and neatly folded paper dress shirts. On the sidewalk, a paper Mercedes, turned on its side.
In the above picture, there are paper Louis Vuitton shoes in a bag, a full-size aqua-colored refrigerator and a few other luxury items you might need when you’re dead. Beautiful stuff, eh?
So, that's it. We keep riding in Kowloon, get on an expressway ramp, and eventually make it to the ferry back to Hong Kong. It was a real struggle. I would like to congratulate Hong Kong for being the worst city for cyclists that I have encountered in the whole world. That's saying a lot. Worse than Napoli, worse than Istanbul. Worse than Manila! Hong Kong takes the prize.
In the late morning C and I walk around, buy CDs at a local shop, and stroll down a street selling wallpaper and fake wood floor coverings until we reach Cidade Baixa, the lower city. This area, which used to be called Commerciao, is a strange lifeless zone on a Saturday. It used to be filled with warehouses, trading companies, mercantile banks, and all the other businesses that had to do with the nearby port, but now it is mostly filled with charmless modern office buildings that house banks.
There are remnants of the old commercial spaces and buildings on some streets, scattered here and there, some in good shape but many decrepit and falling into disrepair.
At Caetano’s house C flips through a book of Pierre Verger’s photos of Bahia and Salvador from mid 20th century, and I am taken by a shot of this commercial district taken from Cidade Alta (the upper city). In this shot one can see the same grid of commercial buildings, but when the picture was taken they were all of moderate height, and all beautiful colonial edifices. “What a shame what has happened here,” I say.
Caetano agrees, and says that this legacy of incredible architecture — which existed in numerous places all over Latin America — should have been treated “like a European City.” I think he means that many European cities — London, Milano, Torino, Brussels, Lyon — also have what were once commercial centers that emerged during a historical era, but no one would have dreamt of razing those centers and replacing them with steel, glass and concrete office towers. But in the Americas, North and South, that’s what mostly happened — except in a few isolated spots.
I’ve been reading a book, “The Brazilian People,” by Darcy Ribeiro. He points out that while history may be written by the victors, and therefore what is often taught might contradict what he says, the fact is that most North American cities were slight and impermanent during the initial settlement, while Latin American colonial cities were substantial, grand, ostentatious, and built to last; for example, the churches that dot Salvador, its Pelorinho district, Old Cartajena in Columbia, the Zocalo and surroundings of Mexico City, Old San Juan, and Havana. Compare those with the clapboard houses, lean-to structures and log cabins of many of the early North American settlements. The Latins, though they may have claimed otherwise, were there to stay. They made mirrors of their European capitals in the New World while the Puritans were eking by in pathetic villages of wooden houses.
It would have appeared that the North Americans weren’t planning on putting down permanent roots. They didn’t build cities — not at first — but settlements. Except for a few exceptions — New York and Chicago come to mind — this impermanent way of building continued and continues in North America. There was apparently no need to build cities that announced “now, you are in it,” as Caetano put it. LA might be the apogee of that attitude, but all over North America you find cities and settlements so spaced out that you have little sense of being located — being in — anywhere.
Racism and Rainbows
C and I go for a ride on rented bikes heading north up the beach from the Ameralina neighborhood. There is a dedicated bike path along the beach that goes for at least 10km. We pass a zone of little cabanas in the sand with plastic chairs in front; later, a grassy area with massage tables dotted here and there; then an area where big men are flying little kites (competitively, I suspect); and, further on, larger cabanas that bordered on being actual restaurants (they take credit cards). There are kiosks with men pressing sugar cane, adolescents playing football (soccer), joggers and folks out for a Saturday early evening stroll.
C comments on the difference between the ride along this beach and the bike rides we took in Miami — one ride there took us from South Beach, with its bars, restaurants, boutique hotels and hotties, further up past the towering condos of Miami Beach proper. Mile after mile of almost identical, immense beachfront condos. There, as she said, one tended to presume that the joggers were all fairly well-to-do and probably lived in the nearby glittering edifices, whereas here the folks jogging or at the cabanas were middle class at very best, while the vast majority seemed fairly poor. They might be from the surrounding neighborhoods, but just as many may have walked or come by bus. It’s beautifully funky, relaxed and casual. People don’t consider the beach a luxury holiday spot here — it’s a place to meet friends, hang out, socialize, get a massage, eat, drink, kick a ball around, take a sunset stroll or get some exercise. In some ways it’s an outdoor living room or a communal backyard.
Most of the joggers, casual strollers and folks hanging out are black, as Afro-Brazilians make up the vast majority of this town. The rest feature a mixture of skin tones, which is typical of Brazil. Racism here is not exactly like it is up north. Everyone here is fairly comfortable with folks with lighter or darker skin tones than their own. Miscegenation has been going on so long and is so ingrained here that everyone, just about, by US standards, would be considered black. Here they might not consider Colin Powell black, for example. He’s way too light.
Here there are a myriad of words and phrases for the many gradations of skin color. Caboclo means a mix of European and Indian; Mamelucas are the 1st generation of this mixture. Mulattoes are a mixture of African and European, and pardo means brown, preto means black and branco means white. Moreno can mean simply mixed. There are pure Africans and of course remnants of the myriad Indian tribes who once covered the continent. There are pure Italians and Germans; and, in São Paulo, the largest settlement of Japanese outside of Japan. It’s definitely not just black or white. In some ways — like at the beach, on the street of the jogging path — everyone is comfortable mixing together, though it’s not exactly the post-racism utopia that some claim.
The racism is there, in other ways. In politics and on TV, for example, almost everyone is white, or very light. There is definitely a hierarchy based on color — a “light” person very often will act superior to a person with slightly darker skin. A branco might have a mulatta for a girlfriend, for example, but more than likely he wouldn’t marry her. Most “help” have darker skin tones. Nonetheless, the difference in attitude from the States is palpable. Since slavery was abolished here there was no legacy of overtly racist laws, as there continued to be in the States.
At Paulinha’s party and at Gilberto Gil's the next day the full rainbow of folks were present — dancing, drinking and chatting. C mentioned that she would make eye contact and say "hi" and "welcome" to guests of every hue and they smiled and responded in kind. Sad to say, this is not the usual situation in the States. Here everyone is just a little more relaxed around everyone else, whereas in the States when races meet there is always a slight tension, some fear, suspicion; and, from the Afro-American side, anger, envy, and resentment that colors everything. I’m generalizing, of course. We musicians don’t behave that way — at least in my dreams we don’t. The separation of worlds and the ghetto-ization of peoples — distinct music, food and culture — that exists up North and that poisons everything, is to a large extent much less prevalent here — but the racism still can’t be denied.
Here in Salvador there is also Afro-tourism. This city is so known for its strong African culture and its pride in that culture that it draws people from all over the world who savor a taste of that affirmation and positive outlook. Up North there are celebrations of sports heroes and great musicians, but here everything is celebrated, the whole culture. That acceptance and pride in Afro-Brazilian culture is evident everywhere — statues of the Orixas (Afro Atlantic deities) in the city park fountain, the Pelorinho paintings (as tacky as they are) the tourist ads that focus on Afro-Atlantic culture — the blocos, afoxes, the Baianas, and the syncretized Candomble rituals — all say that this city is more than proud of this element in its culture — this is its culture. For some Afro-Americans this might come as a bit of a shock — not being forced to the outside of society might be initially traumatic if one has, for one’s whole life, defined oneself and one’s identity as oppositional. Maybe Obama will help us Northerners edge away from that just a bit. A visit here reveals what is possible.
Why is it different? I gather it’s not exactly an accident. When the first Europeans arrived they were hell-bent on making money and getting rich quick, but they also felt that heaven had sent them to enlighten the local savages. Their interests may have been in gold and lumber, but they justified it by claiming that they were bringing the heathens to God and to Civilization (substitute “democracy and freedom” and you have the last 8 years in a nutshell).
The early European settlers found that if they married a local Amerindian they immediately had a large set of kinship relationships. They might acquire 80 relatives all of a sudden — many of which were extremely willing and able to help and assist their new relative, due to the elaborate and strong kinship rules among the tribespeople. The Europeans took full economic, practical and financial advantage of this — they could get their new relatives to help them hauling lumber and everything else. It became evident that there was a huge financial incentive to intermarry, and intermarry they did, unlike the Protestants up North.
So, within a generation or so the racial boundaries were already blurring and becoming fuzzy. It would be little harder to be racist towards one’s own children, for example. A few more generations and you have the rainbow in formation — though the Indians were fast dying off from European diseases.
Schopenhauer and the Tropics
In the evening a small group heads over to Gilberto Gil’s house where his daughter is having a birthday party. Gil and Caetano and I are talking and Caetano goes off on one of his riffs — this one about how the German philosopher Schopenhauer made some surprising statements about the tropics and race. According to Cae, the philosopher claimed that humanity was originally black — as we emerged from the tropics in Africa. This is hard to dispute. Of course we were. Schopes continued to follow this line of reasoning, saying that black is therefore our default skin color, the “true” color of humanity, and that other colors or non-colors are therefore marginal — notably, and especially, white. He claimed that from a global perspective whites, especially blonde blue-eyed ones, are a fringe group that somehow managed to survive in the chilly and forbidding Northern climate. This didn’t go down all that well at the time with his countrymen.
Not sure if it was Schopes or Cae doing the extrapolating from there — moving on, it was reasoned that such a harsh Northern clime would therefore foster an ethos that would necessarily evolve strict rules and behavior limitations. To stray from the norm — to be lax regarding time, sloppy, relaxed, indecisive or simply to be too flexible — would mean either death or turbulence in the social pond, which would be seriously frowned on. The inference is that the Northern ethos and character is what it is because it’s a survival mechanism.
This all came up because I asked Gil (and Caetano) where they wrote. (I didn’t see what one might call a music writing or project room at Caetano’s house). They both say they write anywhere — sporadically, every now and then, the place doesn’t matter. Caetano says he’s even written during a party such as the one we’re at. He’ll pick up his guitar and quietly work out some bits — with the party going on all around him — sometimes a whole song will get written, so he says.
This would maybe not be impossible but would be pretty unlikely for me. I offer that my “Protestant” character makes me more disciplined — I “go to work” in a specifically designated writing space (a room in my loft)… but of course that discipline and formality comes with drawbacks and limitations as well. I don’t write songs on the road, for example. “Pros and cons” says Gil.
The next day a small group of us goes for a bike ride — a bike ride in Salvador! It turns out there is a nature reserve on the northern edge of town — more or less a raw jungle — situated around a lake just inland from the sea; a 17km bike path circles it. It’s quiet and idyllic. There is a bike rental place at the park entrance, so we are all set. A few kilometers along the path we come upon a man selling fresh coco (coconut milk) from coconuts he probably gathered locally. I go off to pee and see this old guy with leathery skin, who has most of his possessions stashed a few meters away in the undergrowth.
As we suck on the coconut milk, up ride Margareth Menezes and her husband. I invited Margareth to join me in the early 90s on my Rei Momo tour. She sang backup and had two or three Bahian tunes that she did as part of the show, accompanied by my band. She was a ball of fire on stage and reportedly still is — you have to see her live. She was Queen of Carnival for some years, and her shows here are legendary. We haven’t seen one another for about 15 years — so it’s a lovely surprise to see her — and on a bicycle!
An older man, a childhood friend of Caetano’s from their little town of Santo Amaro, pedals along with us. He wears only a floppy hat, a pair of shorts and some flip-flops and his tan (he’s white) is deep deep brown. I’m told he’s a great guitarist — ah yes, I saw him on Marisa Monte’s tour a couple of years back. He continually gets offered studio gigs in Rio or elsewhere, or offers to tour, but says he hates travel, as “then I’d have to wear shoes.”
We head by car to Nossa Senor da Bomfim ("our father of the good end") church at the other end of town. It’s the first Friday of the month and therefore there will be a mass there tonight, but it seems like most people will be converging there because this particular Jesus is syncretized with Oxala, the cool white God of Candomblé. So, while it might appear that thousands are turning out for an early evening mass, they are really showing their respect for Oxala.
We arrive and the mass is still in progress. Thousands mill about and gather outside — almost all of them dressed in white — the color of Candomblé and especially of Oxala. Candomblé priests and priestesses gather outside, blessing the faithful with bunches of herbs, Baianas sell acarajé (fried bean cakes) and street vendors sell the famous ribbons that get tied around your wrist. I had a “reading” years ago by a Candomblé priest and a great artist named Mestre Didi when I was in town, and he said that Oxala was my saint — "the Orixa that 'rules' my head."
Tonight everyone claims that this is why I kept suggesting we come here, and also why, in retrospect, our visit went so smoothly. Some even claim that this explains why we didn’t hit a traffic jam arriving here.
We can’t get into the church yet to see the amazing room filled with ex-votos (votive offerings to a saint or divinity), so I head to a nearby religious articles shop to see if they have some for sale. They do. I buy a stomach and C buys a bunch of other body parts, all made of wax. The shop is lined with statues of Catholic saints, Candomblé beads and busts of Anastasia, the slave girl who stood her ground. A woman comes in and asks for a statue of Santa Barbara, but we all know that that is merely a stand in for Yansan, the Goddess who don’t take no shit. So, though it might vaguely look like a typical religious article shop, like many shops here this one serves multiple clienteles.
The mass is over and a procession carries Jesus around the outside of the church while everyone sings the Hino ao Senhor Do Bonfum Da Bahia, a hymn sung by Caetano featured somewhat ironically on the first Tropicalia record. We duck through the procession and head for the ex-voto room near the back. Body parts dangle like stalagmites from the ceiling and the walls are plastered with photos of the grateful who survived a disease or car crash.
Caetano says the church has tried to forbid attendees from wearing white — the implication being that by wearing white they’re blatantly here for Oxala and not Jesus — but I think if the church ever enforced that, attendance would be so skimpy that they’d be shamed into admitting the truth. Besides — the essence of syncretism isn’t either/or — it’s both/and.
Paulinha throws a party at the house in the evening. There is a room with rotating fans set up for dancing (I do) and 2 Baianas on a patio making acarajé and abara (the steamed rather than deep fried version of the bean cake). A bartender makes caipirinhas and batidas out of fresh maracuja (passion fruit).
Arto Lindsay is here with his wife. I haven’t seen him in years. He’s been in Salvador for a number of years, but now he’s moving to Rio as there will be more work there. Good to see him.
We leave around two and we hear that, at four AM, just as the party was winding down, Seu Jorge and Beth Carvalho (the singers) show up — both of them with their entourages. The bartenders rolled their eyes as if to say “now the party will start all over again.”
On the road into town from the airport we pass favelas with their orange bricks; shopping malls; a giant Santa hat on top of a local Home-Depot-type box store; and numerous billboards for local singers, drum ensembles and bands who are performing during the holiday season and on up to Carnival. They often refer to these performances as “rehearsals,” but they are in fact completely worked-out shows. The rehearsal reference implies that it’s all a lead up to the “real” performance — the one during Carnival. I see a billboard for Olodum, the famous percussion group, and one for Chiclete Com Banana (Banana Chewing Gum), a local pop band that has been around here since forever. Every big intersection has more music billboards. These are all local acts, proof that Salvador continues as a breeding ground for music.
In a way this town is like New Orleans, another place where European Catholic culture met Africans, and where a new musical and cultural hybrid was born. Also like New Orleans, many of these acts tend to remain local — their appeal is limited to either Carnival crowds up here, or to the Afrocentric culture that flourishes here much more than in Rio or São Paulo. This is, after all, the westernmost African city.
Paulinha, Caetano Veloso’s wife and a serious movie producer, invites us to join them on a friend’s boat which is going out into the harbor to view the fireworks at midnight. We stop by their house overlooking the beach and rock at Rio Vermelho. The house is modern, clean and uncluttered, with a few abstract paintings on the walls. A wall by a stairway has a kind of Mondrian 3D arrangement of white shelf-like projections upon which various souvenirs and items of personal significance have been draped and placed: some Candomblé beads, a Filhos de Gandhi turban, a traditional Northwestern cowboy hat, bottles of dende. Large balconies overlook rocks down below where waves crash in the darkness. There’s a cool breeze from the sea despite the fact that it's summertime here.
We have some dinner and drinks, and drive to a tall apartment building in the well-to-do Vitoria district where we head to the rear of the building, and take a four-person gondola down the steep forested cliff face to a tiny dock. The gondola is a little ball that dangles and sways, with 60's modernist styling that makes it seem like a remnant from an imaginary future. The ball descends into the darkness through a miniscule trace of the once-great Atlantic forests that covered the coasts here and in much of Brasil.
We end up on a little dock where others appear and eventually board a sizable motorized sailboat that heads for the lighthouse point where the fireworks will go off at midnight. Almost everyone is dressed in white (C and me included) — a reference to Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion, whose Goddess of the sea, Yemanja, is honored tonight in many parts of Brasil. In Salvador the larger seaside event for her occurs at the beginning of February, when thousands place offerings into the sea, but tonight most pay their respects simply by dressing in white and offering a few flowers to the sea. The fireworks go off in other parts of town at the same time. It’s a long display — my favorite firework is one I can best describe as a twinkly blob or cloud. This one wasn’t a blossoming globe like most of the others, but an amoeboid shape that hung in the sky, almost stationary, and sparkled. We throw flowers into the water. Some people jump into the dark waves as well — a symbolic clean start. Feliz Ano Novo. The husband of the boat owner acts as DJ; he plays some incredible Brazilian recordings I am unfamiliar with, and he also mixes in a hilarious recording of Charro singing “Let’s Spend The Night Together” with the Salsoul Orchestra. Cuchi cuchi!
There are bands playing in tents and outdoors on the various beaches and beachfront areas tonight.
Jesus on Board
I mentioned a religious procession C and I hope to see tomorrow on the 1st and Paulinha, producer that she is, arranges another boat trip. In the morning we head to a spot just inside the breakwater in front of the Nossa Senora Da Conceiçao church, near the base of the iconic elevator that has become the symbol of Salvador. This is where Our Lady’s son (Jesus) has been visiting for about a month. Today, via a small boat, he will return to his own church further down the coast at the Boa Viagem neighborhood. This particular Jesus is Senhor Bom Jesus dos Navegante, the patron saint of Navegantes (sailors and fishermen), so a large floating contingent has turned out to accompany him on his return trip.
Some of these are basically rowboats with motors, some are cabin cruisers, and some are old wooden boats configured to hold a bunch of passengers. Some of the last have been hired by various groups of worshiper/supporters, who all wear matching T-shirts. One of these boats has a brass band gathered around the prow that energetically blasts out samba-ized versions of anything in their repertoire, including a raucous version of Neal Sedaka’s song “Diana.”
Another boat has an Afro-Brazilian drum group on board; we can feel their grooves and see the dancers gyrating. A few boats have DJs on board with keyboards, playing and singing along with programmed tracks. A fireboat squirts a fume of water into the air and the tiny little boat that will carry the saint (the Jesus statue) arrives at the shore. The statue is surrounded by revelers on land, many of them dressed in white. He is transferred to his boat, nestled amongst a large pile of yellow flowers. A group of men in sailor outfits begins to row the saint to his home church. A blast of firecrackers goes off as they depart.
Now all the boats point towards the peninsula where this Jesus is headed. After a few minutes, the rowing of Jesus’ boat is replaced by a rope that allows the little craft to be towed most of the way by a police boat. People wave at one of our passengers, Lazaro, who is a young movie actor. He waves back and gives everyone the thumbs up.
At Boa Viagem the rowing recommences as the little boat with Jesus on board passes inside the breakwater close to the shore. The beach is packed with people, many of whom haven’t gone to sleep. From the nearby church emerges his mom, also nestled in yellow flowers. The two statues meet on the beach and a whole lot more fireworks go off — pow pow pow, all bangers — which gives their meeting a slightly sexual overtone. This is the highpoint of the procession, the climax, and now the two of them, mother and son reunited, go off together back to their home for the next 11 months. The flotilla begins to disperse.
Our boat now heads across the Bay of All Saints towards some tiny islands next to the larger island of Itaparica. We rendezvous with the larger boat that we were on last night, where more folks are waiting, and head off for an idyllic lunch in a beautiful old house on a tiny island owned by the family who has the large boat. This house is the only house on that particular island; the rest is a kind of nature reserve. Naturally, we have moquequa da piexe, a local fish stew flavored with coconut and dende (palm oil), which is delicious.
