I'd actually forgotten that I'd posted a blog entry to start May off, so I was about to apologize for just now acknowledging the month had arrived, but it's been slamming me and beyond classes and my syllabi I barely can keep up with what day it is, let alone month. I thought this week was going to be slower, but it's been just as rough, but June is, thankfully, just around the corner....
Amidst all the reading, I have attended a few events at the university, all of which have been edifying in different ways. Starting backwards, tonight I went to hear the musician Paulinho Garcia present a short (1 1/2 hour) tour of Brazil. Truthfully, as all who know me will readily acknowledge, anything having to do with Brazil gladdens me immensely, and this didn't fail in that regard. The interactive performance felt like the best way to end a busy week. Garcia, a native of Belo Horizonte and 3-decade long resident in the US, was introduced by my great colleage Ana Thomé-Williams (above at right, with Garcia) also from Brazil, who had also helpfully created a slideshow featuring not only a map of Brazil but featuring song authors, titles, and lyrics, to which we could all sing along with Garcia. And sing people did as Garcia walked us through the samba (giving us information on its origins in Bahia and before that the Congo region, and word's Bantu etymology), then several different sertanejo (from the sertão, the harsh scrubland interior or backlands of the northeast) forms, and then the choro and chorinho, then a caipira (another type of folk song--and the source of the word, on through bossa nova. Tracing it via songs and musicians, he sang (beautifully, touchingly) Ari Barroso's "Aquarela do Brasil," Luiz Gonzaga's "Asa Branca," Tom Jobim's "Andança," Pixinguinha's "Lamento," Zequinho de Abreu's "Tico-Tico no Fubá" (one of the earliest Brazilian songs to achieve fame in the US, and which made Carmen Miranda famous), Pixinguinha's "Carinhoso" (so achingly moving), Renato Teixeira's "Romaria" (which Ana graciously led us through in chorus), Tom Jobim's and Vinícius de Moraes's "Eu sei que vou te amar," Jobim's and Vinícius's "Chega de Saudade" (from Marcel Ophuls's Orfeu negro/Black Orpheus), João Bosco's and Aldir Blanc's fairly contemporary "Coisa Feita" (with its strong Afro-Brazilian storyline), and finally, to end the event, Ana and Garcia sang the always stirring Carnaval melody, "Tristeza," a snippet of which I captured on camera. Afterwards I chatted briefly with Garcia, who was explaining the ins and outs of Brazil to some undergraduates and other attendees, and I ran into a former student, from my earliest days at the university, who was doing really well. I also spoke with a young math student from Belo Horizonte, who suggested I tell a friend now conducting research in Niterói, just across the Guanabara Bay from Rio, about the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics that sits between Rio's Botanical Garden and its Tijuca Forest. How on earth could you get any work done in such a remarkable setting? I'd like to find out.
