Mocidade, Guerreira!

(Actually, the title is from last years samba...I like it better than this years'!) Went to Mocidade with Sue, John, Bruno, his fiancee, his family, and his and her extended family. Mocidade sounded great, John and I played on the stage until the wee hours, I had my first 'hotchee dogee' of the trip and then we all had greasy but good coxinhas before hitting the sack at 6am. I only slept for 4 hours, but I expected that. I find it very difficult to sleep in. It was a little bit like old times...me playing chocalho in the row in front of the tamborins, in front of me are my friends playing caixa or surdo: Bruno, Hudson (Alex' brother), Vincent, a great french sambista, who is now 'carioca' and plays tamborim for all the top schools. Vincent used to be part of Sambatuc, a marvelous french samba school that used to and maybe still has as it's puxador, Jean-Christophe, who put a very good dvd on how to play samba (http://www.le-salon-de-musique.com/samba.htm . To make it even better, Renato, Bruno's brother, was also playing caixa. I've never seen him on the palco (stage) playing samba..he's great at that too! (no surprise). John was there ripping on caixa in a little semi circle with these amazing ritmistas and totally holding his own....