>>PREVIEW
2006 MARDI GRAS MASQUERADE
Saturday, March 11
The Gateway Lounge (SAIT)
So, Mardi Gras is coming to town. Mardi Gras, steeped in a Brazilian Carnaval beat and wearing costumes.
Two things you may not know – Mardi Gras means "Fat Tuesday," the day before Lent begins, the day you eat anything and everything in the house. Carnaval is a Latin word that translates as "goodbye (vale) to meat (carne)," for the same reasons. Thus are the wild celebrations of New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro connected. They are also connected through the dispersion of African people throughout the world and the music and rhythms they brought with them.
Malcolm Lim and Barbara Oliveira, the founders of the Calgary School of Samba, have a self-determined mission to bring the rhythm and spirit of those fabulous cultural festivals to Calgary. They both come by their passion for the driving music of the carnival honestly, especially Brazilian-born dancer and singer Oliveira. Having relocated to Calgary in the last four years, Oliveira grew up surrounded by the magic of Carnaval in Rio.
"The samba escolas (groups, or ‘schools’) that compete during Carnaval are connected to neighbourhoods," says Oliveira. "People are wild about their own escola – samba is in Rio what hockey is here. Each escola has maybe 400 drummers and 4,000 dancers. And you dance for hours. The dancers enter a trance. I’ve danced for hours, and later I find blood and I don’t know where it came from."
A samba school needs as many drums as it can get – from the bass drums (surdos), snare drums (caixas), tenor drums (repiniques) hand drums (tamborim) and noisemakers (chocalho and agogo bells) – to make the sound of samba so massive and hypnotic. For Lim, it was a much needed reminder of why he chose a career in music.
"I was born in Singapore… which is quite a reserved culture. Then I moved to Alberta when I was nine or 10 – another reserved culture. And then I studied classical music at the conservatory at McGill," Lim muses. "And by the time I was finished, I really needed to remind myself why I’d chosen a career in music in the first place. So I moved to New York, met some Brazilian musicians and heard what they played. And then I had to go to Rio to visit the source."
Lim and Oliveira met and married in Brazil, and moved back to Calgary four years ago, with a dream to bring the tradition of samba to life here.
"It’s important for people to experience something like this," insists Oliveira. "People need this kind of joy in their lives."
They started the Calgary School of Samba, which currently boasts 12 to 15 regular drummers and a varying number of dancers, led by Oliveira.
"The long-term goal is to create a big community of percussionists and dancers that honours those Brazilian roots, but reflects life here," says Lim. "We’re trying to create music that reflects Calgary’s multicultural personality."
Part of building that goal occurred to the two when they heard about Hurricane Katrina and began to discuss ways the School of Samba could help.
"The music of Brazil and New Orleans are definitely linked," says Oliveira. "It just made sense to us to host a Mardi Gras kind of event as a fundraiser.
"And we’ve also got a great array of musical friends to play along with the School of Samba," adds Lim. "We’ve got Masacote, a great Latin band, and Israel "Toto" Berriel, who’s originally from Cuba. He used to play with one of the foremost rumba groups in Cuba, and is definitely one of Calgary’s musical jewels."
The Mardi Gras Masquerade fundraiser is planning to honour the spirit of its predecessors – "It’s going to be a hot and sexy party," laughs Oliveira. "It’s a masquerade party with a very open concept. Costumes are optional, but we encourage people to treat it like a Halloween party.
"Think of it like this – how daring can you get without being naked?" |
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