Music on a Sunday

When I left my apartment this past Sunday afternoon I couldn’t have known that I would enjoy not one, not two, but FOUR distinctive musical happenings before I cabbed it back home at midnight. These are the things that happen when you allow yourself the luxury of an unplanned afternoon in a culturally generous city.

My first stop was Parque de Agua Branca, just a few blocks from my house. When I entered the park (this fowl-filled park will have its own entry) I saw a sign announcing Dia da Franca em Sao Paulo (the day of France in Sao Paulo) and heard distant music and applause. Wandering through the park I came across various events: an acrobat hoolahooping atop a swaying pole three stories above the crowd, a parkour exposition and training ground, a puppet show, a troop of clowns miming a raucous busride, and, my favorite, a French brass funk band all of whose members were dressed in trench coats and fedoras. It looked like there would be many good (free) performances to come, but I chose to wander on down Avenida Francisco Mattarrazzo to Casa das Caldeiras, my usual Sunday stomping ground.

This Sunday’s program included three different experimental music workshops and a roundtable discussion on the future of instrumental music in Brazil. One of the workshops performed a few numbers using found-object instruments made from an old metal sink, cardboard tubes, and used computer keyboards.

After Caldeiras I went from low tech to high, meeting some friends for a free concert at the Centro Cultural Itaú, part of the current exhibition, Game Play. I arrived too late to see video games on display in the exhibit, but enjoyed the show. A VJ manipulated old Nintendo and Sega images on a screen behind the DJ who used a laptop, a cymbal, a small key board, and I'm not sure what else to create electronic music out of bits of video game music. It was awesome. And half an hour of it was the perfect amount.  

The night ended with beers at small bar on Rua Wisard in Vila Madalena listening to a woman with a Jobimesque voice croon bossa nova and samba classics. Tudo tranquilo, beleza.