adventures in sao paulo...

September 21, 2010
I arrived at 5 am in Sao Paulo via Frankfurt from Berlin. Met the promoter Holger and sat drinking too many espressos as we waited for the others to show up on a flight from Rio. We were picked up by one of Debora’s brothers and went into the city. It’s smoggier than anything I’ve ever seen, makes Mexico City seem like a wildlife preserve. Smog Paulo.

They drove us to Debora’s parents house on the outskirts of the city, through the downtown, through ‘the mirror of the heart” Old sharp looking men with sunglasses and thick skin sat on chairs outside their shops. Museum under the freeway of crazy graffiti faces in cartoon styles with bugged out eyes. Edgy jagged like the work of thousands of crack heads. Symbols cut together like blades of grass, metal whistles screeching thru ears, the whistles of blood and black spray paint cut through wood, shine in the sun. Everything run down, beautiful houses with triangles written on piles of stones and clutter. The city is endless, people wading through it, sharp intense faces coming out of supermarkets, waiting for the bus.

Debora’s parents live up a hill on the edge of the city but already civilization is spreading like wildfire up the hill. We drove through power plants with electric banana forests cutting through them, factories that bake bread for children. It was her father’s birthday and he didn’t know Debora was coming so we got to surprise him. When we arrived her mother was in the kitchen making lunch: fried veal, salad, hot sauce, black beans and rice. Her younger sister is twenty; she reminds me of my sister who’s the same age. Beautiful & innocent and really spaced out, like she’s caught between the dimensions of childhood and something else, the next world. Her mother is cute, a bit crazy. I took a nap and the rain started, hard and harder, palm trees on top of a hill, rainbow colored laundry hanging from newly built porches. Debora’s father is the director of a samba school in Sao Paulo. He talked to me for a long time about it, the status of his position, as her brother translated. He showed me the symbol of the samba school embroidered into all his clothes. He signed a shirt for me, he said they will always have a room for me there. The house isn’t finished yet but it’s very nice, more secluded than usual for living in a city. You feel like you’re in the country up there. Carnival is a very respected part of society here. Big business in Brazil. The family sat on a bed looking through old photographs dating back to the 70’s her father is athletic, singing, announcing carnival. In the background, spectacular colorful parades and outlandish costumes. It’s incredible to think that this is just a way of life.
As we leave her brothers girlfriends car got stuck on top of the hill cos its so steep and we had to get out and let them dislodge it. A very steep and muddy hill. At the bottom of the hill a florescent blue bar was playing “Funk” at all hours. Brazilian booty shaking music with raunchy lyrics. Women walk the streets wearing skintight jeans and have big hips and ass. Tough faces and hair pulled back tight.

Faces on the street seem so harsh. The people are much louder than what I’m used to, like Italians, screaming out of cars at each other. Debora’s family all shouting across the room at one another. I don’t mind this, I like it loud. The drawn on houses, scribbled by crack phantoms secret languages like the markings of herds. Unknown symbols. Now its night we’re downtown, shouts and tears through the traffic. The heartbeat of it all. Traffic is so bad everywhere its slow and full more cars than people. So full that rich people pay 1000 bucks to take helicopter cabs across the city.


Sep 22
We woke up at 5 am, the traffic was immense, screaming and pounding like waves all in synchronicity together. We drank coffee, ate breakfast. They took me down through Japan town and through the Cinco de Mayo St. All carnival costumes and decorations for Carnival. Beads, Halloween deco’s, headdresses, feathers, sequins. Junk and adornments, all beautiful and plastic ! Amazing what a huge business decorating their bodies is.


Sep 23
Toby arrived and we spent the afternoon looking for maracas. We took the subway, endless vaults of low lit fluorescent lights, many levels like a labyrinth, thousands of people like rivers of bodies, traveling through this place. Graffiti on all the houses looks like fangs, sigils, crack graffiti like spells a secret language spun by spiders across buildings. Seems almost satanic, as though the houses that are attacked are cursed now. Or maybe they are blessed! Dracula teeth and chantings scribbled on walls and houses.


Sep 25
Our concert was at an art gallery, “Blinddate Berlin.” The show was a festival of Berlin artists only 2 bands and 2 Djs. It was so fun !!!


Sep 28
The city is so big so spread out, like Los Angeles, but a hundred times bigger, denser, truly a concrete jungle, everything falling apart and decaying, gigantic jungle trees growing up through the streets, they seem as tall as the skyscrapers. Ancient giants climb through the junkyard of man. Like New York City in the 70’s. It’s so dense with smog you can never see the sky or the sun, never blue, it always seems to be a dirty brownish. Dirty white seeping into everything, our hotel room, cigarette smoke seeping through the neighbor’s door. Everything dreaming in pollution. It makes me want to take drugs, poison myself, like a vaccine, inject me, let me become one with it. Days and days here spent searching for something, traveling everywhere by taxi to different neighborhoods, looking for drums, looking for records!!




We bought many passionate records by Brazilian singers. Gal Costa, in her half naked gold painted face poses. Like a beautiful monster, free chaotic, ‘Fatal” “India” with her crotch shot, camel toe underneath a straw skirt. Indian feathers in her hair, legs spread wide onstage with a guitar in hands, savage sailor of the blues. As we were listening to her music last night I was falling off to sleep I had the most beautiful & awful image of her being lowered into a cage onstage. The cage resembled the kind of trash cans you see here on the streets, giant black cages with locks, apparently there is so much trash here combined with so many people going through the trash that you have to have giant containers with locks. It was a so tragic and symbolic to see her like that like it was necessary but impossible to continue, a crying bird, a shrieking prisoner of the heart, Tortured cries through beautiful red painted lips, to the other side. Explain this place, I’ve been here, or exist here too sometimes.

We spent days looking for records, Rita Lee, rock and roll high priestess of Brazil. Man with the birds painted on his face. Ney Matogrosso,… Secos & Molhados. Os Mutantes. Paulo Beta and Luciana took us to the flea markets, along the major streets and walkways; it all looks like post-futuristic vision from of the 80s thought up in the 50s. Street ramps that criss-cross like subterranean highways, below the main drags where the beat graffiti artist display their beautiful visions. The graffiti here is immense different from anything I’ve ever seen before. Very tribal, ancient in away. Big crazy eyes rolling out of heads, crash landings of airplanes on winding roads. In the afternoon we went to record fair in a rock n roll bar. Very cool, meeting people, walking around hanging out. We met Walter and at London Calling, a great record store.

It was a rainy and muggy day. We were in the car at about 2 in the afternoon on Augusta St. when we heard a woman screaming bloody murder from a car, which was parked right across the St. from us in front of a fitness gym. She was desperately trying to get out of the car, screaming for help, but the driver pulled her back into the car. The car was shaking like crazy. She kept trying to open the door and get out but he kept pulling her back in, pulling her hair, beating the shit out of her. We couldn’t see the driver cos his window was tinted; all we could see was her poor face and his thick hands punching her, strangling her! The terror in her face, the mans arms strangling her and beating her over and over. The car shaking back and forth, people passing by some not noticing, some walking by alarmed. We called the police, the woman inside the fitness center called the police, she looked like she was going to have a heart attack. By now the passenger door and the trunk of the car were hanging open and the beating continued. After 20 minutes the police still hadn’t shown up, nobody was going to interfere, maybe the guy had a gun? I have a friend who lost an eye at a party getting involved, I know better, but it was just heartbreaking. Was he her pimp? These discussions are so irrelevant, they really disgust me. A situation of a man beating a woman should be enough, why do we need to pry further into what their relationship is? Does it really matter? Finally after like 20 minutes suddenly the woman had a big knife in her hand! And she began stabbing him, over and over like a Hitchcock film, Wack ! Wack ! Wack ! And the psycho look on her face as she was putting the knife in him! A few minutes later the driver door slowly opened and he sort of stumbled out of the car, looking drunk and disgusting, huge pot belly, and blood pouring out of his skull and stomach in long red rivers, he was literally drenched in blood. Like a disgusting creature that crawled out of a lake of blood. He stumbled out of the car and she followed him, both still screaming at each other then he threw himself back in the car and drove away while she smashed her fists against the windshield, almost getting dragged down the street by the car, then stumbled off in the opposite direction, distressed and searching for a cab. Probably he had her drugs or her purse still in side the car. We didn’t bother her, let her be, enough drama, another day on the streets, shit!!!


Later that evening we went to the samba school run by Debora’s father. It was a rehearsal for carnival. Around 3000 people from the community filled a large auditorium with handmade flags and banners hanging from the ceiling like hundreds of colorful piñatas. Hundreds of dancers dressed in different types of costumes, cheerleaders, singers, musicians, performers. They were there to work on their moves and beats and to perform 3 different sambas and decide collectively which one they would do for carnival this next year. Debora’s father came out at first on the stage, the master of ceremonies. The almost immediately announced our presence there” Jessie Evans here from Germany!!” Welcoming us. People turned and smiled, realizing instantly that these two honkeys must be from far away, maybe big celebrities from Antartica.

Then the drummers began, loud and bold wall with shiny green marching rums and percussions, then the dancers started, real beautiful hoochy girls with short red skirts shimmying and moving so quick and sexy. Each girl came to the front to take her turn, do her moves, as the big mama of them all dance teacher shouted out at her and coached her through all the chaos “ Head up, move those hips!”” dip lower! As the girls moved their hips faster and faster to the samba groove, knowing all the moves, and the other girls, formed a line behind her, mirroring the same moves, each in their unique way. Every body was shaking! More! Then the parade began, men and woman in partners dancing. The Flag bearers-Men and women partners, some were just small children. Then men wore sharp suits, white or red and danced an African / break-dance samba dances, jittering across the floor so slick, like dominoes splashing down across white tile, while the woman carried large flags and spun in circles, always looking directly in her partners eyes at each 180 turn with a big glamorous smile. Then the older women “ Ala de Bajanas” joined the parade, their hair up in white scarves, dressed to represent the women from Bahia who sold goods in the streets of Rio during the 19th century. Many other dancers joined the parade and went around and around in circles in the auditorium, like delirious babies laughing falling into a stream of ecstasy. Some wore cheerleading outfits, others in more official dress, patches like the leaders of the ritual, a cross between sports coaches and shaman’s, the “old school” ones, showing the new kids how its done. While I searched for my gods they were dancing with the gods. The people cried out like crash landings everybody marching and dancing in circles, dissolving contagiously into magic waters. Frenzy, for real. As the ritual continued the dancing and drumming only ceased for moments in which Debora’s father took again to the mic and announced what was to come, each time mentioning again “JESSIE EVANS is here!!” it was so surreal. Then a singer in a white suit, looking strikingly like the Mexican singer SILVERIO in all his 70s sleaze took to the mic and began singing and dancing through the crowd with the people. Another director of ceremony, his voice belting out loud and distorted through the huge PA system, which was EQ’d at such a high pitched and shrill frequency like out of spinal tap or like he was a drunk wedding singer. A beautiful little girl, about 9 years old was looking up at me, at first uncertain, but very soon, smiling and introduced herself, then eager to introduce me to all her friends. She asked me if I knew how to samba and wanted to teach me. She was an amazing dancer, and all her friends were also professional dancers in the parade. It was so beautiful hanging out with her. She was absolutely enamored with the gold snake in my hair, like I was an alien from some other planet. Isabelle, dancing so fast already a natural, a real special girl.

Each year they chose somebody from the community whose life to celebrate. This year it was this actor guy who was a clown. At one point he came out, this cute little old man with a big smile. Suddenly everybody in the crowd had picket billboards with large photos printed out of this man from different stages in his career. As a clown, as an actor. And were waving them with all their might, as though it was for freedom, as though it were Election Day. His cartoonish face was silkscreened on giant posters and beautiful girls wore elaborate dresses with his caricature photo silkscreened across the chest. At one point there was some girl about 12 years old that came on the stage and sang a song sort of like in the style of Whitney Houston but in Portuguese. The PA was hissing and crackling and unbearably loud and she had her back to the crowd. It seemed absurd that she wasn’t facing the 3000+ people in the room, but then I noticed that the clown man was up there in a high window above the stage, like the principal of the school and she was serenading him! As the night progressed for over 7 hours, it manifested in different forms, the singing, dancing, a parade of bodies moving and marching in circles around the auditorium, at times waving flags singing, drumming. By end of the night it just went on and on into mass hysteria. The stage was filled with people jumping up and down and screaming and shouting. The band was playing and I was dancing with the SILVERIO lookalike onstage. There were little girls age 3 and up dancing samba in small circles in the hallway next to the bathroom. Their ritual was the samba, they danced this their whole life.