Life is great and busy here and there have been so many things to do I have not had the energy to write before. I will try to be better next time. Last weekend we went to Porto Alegre to visit musician Renato Borgetti and his family. It turned out that we found ourselves in an enormous party held for Dora, Renato’s beautiful smallest daughter who was 1 year old. Apparently Brazilians make big parties when somebody is 1, 15 and 21. There were more than 200 people invited to Renato’s father’s fazenda (farm) – an absolutely astonishing place on the banks of the river with large houses, a restaurant, guest house, and lots of horses. In the most southern state of Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul) live the gauchos (pronounce gaushus – not to be mixed up with the Argentinian gauchos who are pronounce gautchos) or cowboys. They have very strong traditions and they keep this tradition with pride. The hat, the special trousers, the mate tea and its beautiful equipement, the horse riding and the music are all part of the gaucho tradition. Renato’s music was born from this tradition.
We met a lot of musicians and producers there and – as far as my Portuguese went – we had some very interesting conversations. We also got to know Marcos Borgetti who is the brother and the manager behind Renato’s success. The funny thing is that here all the musicians or intellectuals know where Budapest is and that we have a horribly difficult language because Chico Buarque, the super famous and much loved composer and musician and also a very famous writer recently published a book called Budapest. The book is “about a ghostwriter who immerses himself in the Hungarian language… While having a beer one day, he decides to buy a ticket to Budapest. In the city by the Danube, he falls in love with “the only tongue the devil respects” – this is what the sleeve says. So we are coming to Brazil with this reputation – and I get a lot of compliments that I am able to apprehend Portuguese despite of the fact that I speak such an impossible language. I ordered the book in English from Amazon, recently received it and very much look forward to reading it. On the cover front page there is a picture of Rio de Janeiro with Chirsto and the names of our Budapest bridges written and on the back cover there is a picture of Budapest. Chico Buarque is famous for his fantastic and original lyrics and his sensitivity to languages. His father is a great linguist and apparently, his uncle wrote the most important thesaurus here – so no wonder he is interested in awkward languages such as Hungarian.
Now back to the fazenda and the birthday party. Renato’s father is a fantastic men of almost 80 and a very proud gaucho. He loves horses so much that about 10 years ago he crossed the south the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean on horseback – it took him two month to do it. He is called Borghettao. Well, again a little bit about the language – people here love to play with names. If they want to say that someone is small or very kind to them, they would say “inho” eg. Ronaldinho (the little Ronaldo). If they want to say that somebody is old, grand and reputable, they say “ao” eg. Borgettao (the great Borghetti).
Of course we had lots of meat because there was a big barbeque (a very big one, enough for 200 people), great vegetables and a lot of chopp (this is what draught beer is called here and pronounced shoppe). Talking about the language again – Brazilians are not able to finish a word with a consonant therefore they stick an “e” or and “o” in the end so rock becomes rockee, pop becomes poppee and hip-hop becomes hipee-hopee. Very funny… The fazenda where we were was beautifully decorated with lots of ballons and Dora got so many presents, too huge wooden box was not enough for them. She also had a pink and orange birthday cake. When the party was close to its end we went to see the horses coming back to the stables for the evening and we met the people and their families who look after them. In the evening we went to Renato’s fazenda which is equally beautiful and very peaceful (except all the little frogs that were occupying the bathroom – and Robi made Renato – the great musician and superstar of Brazil – to catch all of them for us. We have to get used to animals…
The Borghetti family and Robi
We had a lazy morning on the bank of the river with the family while Renato was drinking his mate tea. Drinking mate is a ritual – they put a lot of the green herb in a specially and usually beautifully made special cup, than they put the hot water over it and sip it with a very nice silves straw. Usually one cupful of herb lasts for hours as they keep pouring more and more water on it. It comes with a whole set of gear people carry with them everywhere (apparently the Borghetti band never goes without them for a tour in Europe and no day starts without drinking about a liter of it). It tastes rather strong and bitter, a bit like green tea. After a nice lunch we went to Porto Alegre. We saw the Borghetti office and later Robi bought some more scores. Now his bossa nova songbook series is complete and he is very happy. Porto Alegre, I am sorry to say, is a terrible city – hot, smoky, smelly and chaotic. It was a wise decision to only spend the two days on the fazendas and to stay there for an extra day. Although we heard that the music scene is good there, mainly that of the gaucho music.
Last week Robi continued teaching and started preparing the girls for the concert that will be on 14th May. Everybody is very excited. The choir was also rehearsing the song we all know – Brazil – and were encouraged by Dulce to dance samba while singing. They were very funny and enjoyed themselves a lot. It is rather difficult sometimes to teach for Robi and it is obvious that it is not easy to teach these children in traditional ways for instruments (well, this is what was asked from him). These kids many times do not have the time, place or energy to practice, have a lot of problems and although they are really excited about the instrument, do not get the support they would need from their families (well. many of them don’t have a family on the first place). But hopefully, still, they will benefit from learning an instrument and learning more about music. Robi spent time with them playing with rhythm, explaining the score which they very much enjoyed. For some of them, who like mathematics, it was a revelation to realize that music and math are not the far from each other. It would be fantastic to create a special music school for there children with special methodology.
Last week we also spent some time with Joao Egashira – the Director of the Orchestra das Cordas – and his girlfriend. They invited us for dinner on Tuesday and back for lunch on Sunday. Julia, the girl is of Italian origin and Joao is of Japaneese. We also met Joao’s brother, Rafael, who is a photographer but also started to work as a manager/ producer (producao as they call it here) for Joao and a couple of other musicians. Music production and music management is very chaotic here – at least in Curitiba. There are not so many professionals and we keep hearing that who exist, sometimes charge so much money, they earn more than the artist and many times the artist does not even know what is the deal. It seems to be a quite a chaos. So hopefully people like Rafael can bring some professionalism into this area. I want to learn more about the system here and I hope to meet some people working in cultural institutions soon.
Joao and Robi are really fond of each other and Joao is keen to learn some gypsy tunes. Robi is very happy to show him some and they already played together some tunes in gypsy – choro style, a very interesting, and, I have to say, a rather adequate mixture. Why adequate? Because choro is composed music as well as the style of gypsy music that is Robi’s own tradition, but both are based on folk music and both require rather high level musicianship (as opposed to some folk music). The choro tunes are very sophisticated and melodic, the style of playing is rather virtuoso. The tunes allow improvisation – as well as gypsy tunes – but have a structure they follow. We will see what will come out of it but it seems that they want to do something together for the future and also, with Claudio, Robi’s guitar teacher and maybe some other musicians. On Sunday Claudio, Joao and Robi played a lot together after lunch, they formed a “roda du choro” (a choro circle).
This week we have holiday because of the Semana Santa (Easter week). The children are on holiday so Robi does not teach. Instead, he plays the guitar all day and we are having our classes. This weekend we are going away to Florianopolis, the beautiful city in the state of Santa Caterina on the beach.
