My portuguese class is finally coming to an end, and I'll actually miss some of the crazy people in it. On Wednesday I spent some time with Jewel, the older Southern African American guy in the class, who I wrote about earlier. We rode to lunch in his Ford truck (American style...) to meet his friend James. Now Jewel and James should be in their late 60s or early 70s at this point, but they're living life as if they're in their 20s, such a good life lesson. Jewel, on a few different occasions, waited nervously after class to ask this teacher out on a date like he was still in high school, haha. He talks about his son a lot, who wants to go to business school and maybe someday move to Brazil to live with his dad. And James apparently is just chilling in Brazil, with his daughter coming to check on him every once in awhile. Both don't miss home at all - Jewel is from Fort Myers and James is from Oakland. Every once in awhile they'll go on double dates, and they've been to tons of museums and restaurants. They're both very funny because they have their "senior" moments every now and them. For example, they dwelled on how to turn off the windshield wiper for a good 15 minutes in the car as there wasn't even a cloud in the sky. James was impressed with me because, in his words, "brothers just don't travel." I appreciate that in this context I can have friends three times my age who are living life with the same sort of freedom of spirit that shouldn't be defined by one's age.
In other news, last night I went to this bar in Rio Vermelho and heard Lazzo Matumbi and his band play again (first time was on New Years Eve). This time they were joined by Geronimo. Now I thought Geronimo was a band, which it very well might be, but last night there was just one man. Maybe its a band and he was their lead singer - who knows? Anyway, it was a nice event. It was in this smaller stand-only room with plain white walls and a stage. I thought the lighting was a little ghetto. It pretty much felt like someone was turning the lights on and off hahahaa. I tried to ignore the girl in front of who couldn't dance and did the same move for 3 hours by herself. But I digress...Lazzo was wearing what seemed to be very traditional West African attire. His presence filled the room just like it did last time and his music was even better this time as I recognized some of the songs. I didn't even notice when Geronimo took the stage, but my friend said it was him and so I listened a little closer. During an awkward interlude he was basically telling everyone "to wrap it up" like they say on those BET commercials during Carnaval. He was talking about penis and vagina for like 10 minutes - nope, not awkward at all...The band was great, they had two guitars, a horn section, which had some amazing solos, a piano player and a secondary voice. I guess Geronimo and Lazzo do similar types of music because it definitely sounded similar. The highlight of the performance - going back to the question of defining Africa here in Bahia - was when Lazzo Matumbi invited a young man up on stage and they brought out a drum from the back. The man preceded to do some crazy drum solos during two songs. Occasionally Lazzo would shout "Africa!!!!" as the man conjured up some ridiculous rhythms. It was interesting to see yet another vision of Africa coming into focus - one based generally on the idea of drums and specific rhythms. This is of course the usual connotation that comes with all things African in many parts of the world - and apparently here, it has remained intact...
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