Dance

so yesterday i had my african drumming recital. it was a great experience and as anyone who was there will tell u it changed everybodies “life forever”… haha, well thats what every student said at least. on another more important note, the question of the day:

How do you overcome writers (or whatever it is that you do) block?

heres a quick deviation from volume 1 of capoeira to a short storie from volume 2.

“…the argument over the blow, said to be illegal, angered people who’d bet against Mestre Bimba. One of them, Mr. Lúcio de Tal, nicknamed Barra Preta, was so furious about the “injustice” (and the money he’d lost) that he organized an ambush at Engenho  Velho by the Ladeira da Vila América. Mestre Bimba was returningfrom a liason with a local beauty late one dark night in the area of the Ciriaco Candomblé house when he was attacked by seven me, including Mr. Lúcio (carrying a gun, and no less than six police officers armed with sabers. He dumped Lúcio into a garbage container after disarming him, and knocked all the soldiers senseless. According to Angelo Decâni, Mestre Bimba cooly collected the various weapons and hopped on his streetcar, without dropping the straw hat he’d had under his arm.”

-Gerard Taylor (Capoeira: The jogo de angola from luanda to cyberspace Vol. 2)

Translating the heading: “The ship turned over, in the depths of the sea there is treasure.”

This traditional folkloric capoeira song is an apt metaphorical lyric to represent Kongolese religious ideas that have been described by T.J. Desch Obi. He explains that the counter-clockwise roda, or elola, was essential to central African cosmology, which “linked human combat to the interplay of spiritual forces from across the kalunga, or the threshold between the lands of the living and the dead.”

Kalunga in Central Africa, in N’Bunda language, meant the sea. The word also means rivers and the kingdom of the ancestors. In Kongolese cosmology, the counter-clockwise circle represents a solar cycle. If a cross were drawn within the circle, the horizontal east-to-west line is the kalunga. The kalunga divides the material world from the spirit world or afterlife. East represented birth, north was the peak of strength, west was death at the intersection with the kalunga line, and regeneration came at the southern extreme of the cross.”

-Gerard Taylor (Capoeira: The Jogo de Angola from Luanda to Cyberspace)

more will come tomorrow on this theory

heres some of the capoeira from brasil day:

here is some of the pagode (paw-gO-djee) from yesterday, the capoeria is coming up tomorrow i think.

today i hung out at brasil day. this cultural festival was held at the la brea tar pits from 12-6, sorry i hadnt informed you earlier, i have been kinda consumed with school, i have two tests on monday and a bunch of preformance peices coming up, yikes! anyways… brazil day was awesome! there was pagode, a style of street samba that developed in rio de janeiro, there was forró, a style of dance and music that derrived from baião, and capoeira, the famous brazilian martial art. i also picked up one of these:

  a tamborim.

they are really fun to play. expect videos today or tomorrow of some of the cool preformances at brasil day.

Bem-te-vi

i miss atabaques

so my latest interest has become break dancing, or the more correct term breaking or b-boying. heres a basic step learn it so when i come we can break!