by congastu » Wed Mar 31, 2004 1:13 am
To be honest, Zaragemca, Brazil was not so much in my head when I asked the question as I understand and respect the situation over there and, anyway, as James said, it is not so hard to get access to the likes of Olodun nowadays.
It was more to do with the fact that even within a fifty mile radius of where I live there are perhaps 20 baterias [professional and amateur] and none of us depend on carnival competitions for survival. Many of us, moreover, are coming up with new ways of playing all the time- taking the samba instrumentation and applying it to the music we hear around us.
This partly comes from the challenge of working with children. I do a lot of work in Toxteth, Liverpool and there is a real problem with drugs, gangs and such like. To make what we do interesting to the kids, we often have to work with the sounds they can identify with- so as well as doing batucada, samba-reggae etc, we also teach samba variations of ragga, drum n bass, hiphop, even garage. A forum where one can share this kind of stuff with other teachers and students would be great: all our voices together can make more difference than apart.